REVIEWING THE NAC

The initiative taken by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in 1983, in sponsoring a review of the structure and functions of the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC) provides an opportunity to achieve significant change. The Minister expressed the desire to see a representative Aboriginal organisation at the national level which would be acknowledged in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal quarters as an effective agent of Aboriginal political initiative and to which he could turn for meaningful advice and debate. He also indicated a willingness to entrust greater power to this organisation; indeed, to make its operations a significant step towards self-determination. The Minister has drawn an analogy between the Aboriginal organisation he envisages and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the national political instrument of the industrial labour movement, and has suggested that there is a need in the Aboriginal movement for a similar overarching organisation whose relationships with other Aboriginal organisations would presumably be similar to those of the Federal Council of the ACTU to its constituent unions and State councils.

Such a body would be very different from the National Aboriginal Conference as at present structured.