1 Introduction 2 Neoliberal Colonialism 3 Analysing

Notes 1 Introduction 1 . I use the terms ‘classical liberal’, ‘social liberal’ and ‘neoliberal’ consistently to specify three key recent phases of thinking about the liberal state. I do this for clarity and heuristic purposes, while recognising that there are overlaps and contestations. There are also other terms that draw out different aspects of these approaches. For example, in analysing the social liberal era, many critical scholars use other labels such as ‘multiculturalism’, ‘social welfarism’ or ‘social democracy’. However, I find that the term ‘social liberal’ works well to link this phase of liberalism as a political theory to the historical social policy era in which the welfare state was extended and celebrated. Where I use the term ‘liberalism’, I am referring to the broader set of ideas and practices that encompasses classical, social and neoliberalism. 2 . Irene Watson also identifies this type of process at work in the ‘New Arrangements’, suggesting that they require ‘taking responsibility for one’s own trauma’ (2008: 18). 2 Neoliberal Colonialism 1 . Not confusing this with ‘decolonisation’ in terms of separation from the mother country of England (which has happened to different extents and with different psychological impacts in each case). This might disrupt the imperial relationship between metropole and colony, but we should no longer accede to the politically convenient claim that it somehow disrupts the colonial relationship between colonists and Indigenous peoples. 2 . Harper later clarified that in using the term ‘colonialism’, he was referring to external imperial expansion. However, in a different way, this usage also demonstrates the routine erasure of constitutive settler colonialism. Where colonialism is imagined as the expansion of a pre-existing state, the founding role of colonialism in creating that state is defined away. 3 . This claim about the perception of the end of colonialism surfaces often in academic literature identifying Australia as post-colonial (O’Reilly 2010); for a critical discussion of this literature, see Anita Heiss (2003). More broadly, it is based on my own experience of mainstream social narratives as a member of settler society, and from teaching Indigenous policy to university students. When I ask students to identify the point at which Australian colonialism ended, the majority point to the 1967 constitutional referendum and the extension of citizenship to Aboriginal people. 3 Analysing Neoliberalism and Settler Colonialism 1 . The only other term that might draw these changes together is ‘post-social liberalism’ – and, besides being awkward, this term loses the specific content 187 188 Notes of neoliberal programs. These programs become distinguished only by their temporal position as being after social liberalism – but in many situations the two logics continue to coexist in the present. 2 . This is part of governmentality’s broader analysis of the ways in which liberalism gives its objects an independent, quasi-natural status (Gordon 1991: 26; Dean and Hindess 1998: 4–6). In separating political rule and its subjects via the formalisation of the ‘public/private’ divide, liberal reason critiques the earlier assumption that the state is potentially omnipotent within its own domain. Rather, liberalism suggests that the state can never fully know the complex, independent objects of its rule (Foucault 2008: 29). This disconnect between the imperative of the state to govern completely and its inability to do so makes liberalism utopian, but always failing and under review. Various knowledges, including the social sciences, emerge as mediators translating the objects of government into more knowable and governable forms. Liberal reason, informed by these expertises, continually accuses itself of governing its objects either too little or too much, and shifts the boundaries between state and society back and forth (Dean and Hindess 1998: 4). 3 . ‘while all non-Indigenous peoples residing in settler states may be complicit in settlement, making us all settlers, not all settlers are created equal. Subject formation in settler colonies works in multiple ways, privileging in multiple ways, and settler colonialism’s conditions of possibility rely on the differenti- ated forms of subject-formation and privilege’ (Snelgrove et al. 2014: 6). Jodi Byrd, for example, uses the language of native people, settlers and ‘arrivants’ to distinguish between those who arrived to dispossess Indigenous people and assume ownership of property, and those who were forcibly brought to work that property to produce profit (2011). 4 . While in the contemporary Anglophone world the logic of elimination is less focused on the possession of land as physical resource, this dimension of the settler colonial encounter does manifest itself in the present around struggles over land that was previously economically marginal (such as the ‘northern regions’ attached to many settler colonies – Alaska, the Australian Northern Territory and Nunavut). Such land was not previously the object of comprehensive settler attempts at dispossession, but if new technologies or economies lead to it becoming economically desirable, then new strategies of economic and physical dispossession are mobilised. Such changing settler valuations of land can, therefore, create Indigenous estates recognised by the settler legal and political system that this system later seeks to dissolve. The settler colonial project may not necessarily seek to possess all land in this sense, although it may eventually calculate this to be in its interests and do so. But, once it takes the form of the contemporary liberal nation-state, the settler project does seek to dissolve all substantive Indigenous political difference. 5 . In the popular settler understanding, for example, the instant Captain James Cook claimed sovereignty and radical land title in 1788, all Aboriginal sovereignty was immediately extinguished (Reynolds 1992). Recent scholarship has shown that the actual legal and political assertion of sovereignty was much slower and more fragmented, following more closely the actual extension of settlement and the ability to enforce settler criminal jurisdiction (Ford 2010). 6 . See Hage (2006); Perera (2007); Veracini accounts for this focus on the incoming threat of racialised others such as refugees in terms of the settler Notes 189 desire to occupy the structural position of Indigenous people resisting inva- sion (2013). 4 Policy: Assuming Sovereignty 1 . ‘Historically speaking, Australia followed the United States, a chronology that involved a degree of replication. While the differences between these two White-Anglo settler colonies are as marked as the continuities, the coloni- sation of Australia was too closely bound up with Britain’s north-American embarrassment to be considered separately. In terms of preaccumulation, settler policies in Australia were significantly informed by lessons learned in North America. An obvious example is the avoidance of slavery. Of even greater significance for a discussion of race in Australia is the avoidance of Native sovereignty’ (Wolfe, forthcoming: 26). 5 Australian Indigenous Policy 2000–2007 1 . Later a source of tension, as these leaders saw bureaucrats paid well for doing the same thing. This was a particular issue in the troubled Shepparton trial (Morgan Disney 2006a). 2 . While ATSIC effectively ceased operation from the time of the announcement in April 2004, the ATSIC Amendment Bill did not pass the upper house until 16 March 2005. During this time, the bill was referred to a Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs, which produced a highly critical report of the abolition process (Curtis 2005). However, in the meantime the October 2004 federal election had delivered a Coalition majority in the Senate and the Amendment was passed without change. 3 . Although, in reality, all of these staff may have already been working together as ATSIC employees in the Regional Office, and been ‘mapped’ to the new agen- cies without moving physical location. However, they now needed to follow the administrative processes of their new departments (KPMG 2007: 13). 4 . We tend to imagine that policy problems and programs come first, and then policy tools are designed to fit them. However, as governmentality scholars point out, these tools themselves are ‘somewhat autonomous’ and in their turn ‘impose limits over what it is possible to do’ and think (Dean 1999: 31). 5 . See, for example, the Australian social services delivery office Centrelink, which since the 1990s has functioned within a neoliberal mutual obligation framework (Halligan 2008: 5–6). On its website, Centrelink describes its role as assisting ‘people to become self-sufficient’, and its ‘Newstart Payments’ for unemployed people involve signing an Employment Pathway Plan and meeting a list of activity requirements. For each day the ‘jobseeker’ does not participate in these activities, they lose a day of benefits under the ‘No Show, No Pay’ failure program (http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/ payments/nsnp.htm ). 6 . Examples of critical articles in major papers include The Age : ‘Hygiene pact in deal for blacks’ (Shaw 2004: 1); Herald Sun : ‘Wash up if you want fuel’ (Harvey 2004: 1); Courier Mail: ‘Community’s health deal fuels claims of coercion’ (Barnett 2004b: 7). 190 Notes 7 . The major Indigenous opponents included Senator Aiden Ridgeway, political leader Mick Dodson and legal academic Larissa

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