From Members to Leaders? Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participation in Political Parties (IN170100036, 2018-2020)

Between 2017-2019 I was the ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the project “From Members to Leaders? Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participation in Political Parties”. Led by Associate Professor Michelle Evans (University of Melbourne) and Professor Duncan McDonnell (Griffith University), this 3-year ARC Discovery Indigenous project investigated contemporary Indigenous party membership across Australia and examining the leadership opportunities and challenges experienced by grassroots Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander party members. 

As part of the project, we interviewed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elected politicians, candidates and grassroots party members across all the states and territories who have been involved over the last decade, as well as party officials in the Labor, Liberal, National and CLP parties. 

The project posed the following inter-related questions:

• How do Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members, candidates and elected representatives conceive of their roles within the major parties? How do they view the pathways to leadership positions (as candidates, internal party officials and in policymaking) offered by parties?

• How do party officials and elites see the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members? How do they recruit and prepare members for leadership positions as candidates and/or as officials within the party organisational hierarchy? What opportunities are there for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership roles in developing policy platforms?

• What differences do we find across Australia in the relationships between the two major parties and their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members as regards the above leadership roles? Do some relationships work better than others? Why?