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Abstract: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission ("ATSIC") opened its doors in 1990 with the main objectives of advising the Australian Commonwealth Government ("Government") on Indigenous policy and providing services for Indigenous communities and individuals. Fifteen years later, with Indigenous living standards still well behind other Australians, the Government deemed ATSIC a failure and abruptly gutted and abolished the Commission. At the same time, the government transitioned to its New Arrangements in Indigenous Affairs program ("New Arrangements").
The New Arrangements are based on two fundamental ideas: better coordination between governments and agencies; and, most important, engaging and empowering Indigenous communities to run their own affairs and find their own solutions. To implement these ideas, the Government relies on negotiated agreements as the best way to reformulate Indigenous-State relations. Under this model. Government Indigenous Coordination Centers will negotiate agreements directly with local Indigenous representative bodies to remedy issues identified by Indigenous peoples themselves. As such, the New Arrangements framework successfully incorporates the principles of modern contractualism, which has potential to fulfill Indigenous peoples' desires for sovereignty and justice.
However, in transitioning to the New Arrangements, the Government acted hastily and unilaterally, potentially undermining the success of its new program. With some adjustments and additions, the Government can strengthen the new policy and redress any harm caused by the quick and uncompromising transition.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the East Kimberly region of Western Australia, on the edge of the Tanami Desert, lives a remote Indigenous1 community of about 150 people known as the Mulan.2 In 2003, the Mulan found themselves with two serious problems to confront: their fuel pump and storage tanks were corroded, requiring a ninety kilometer round trip to the next community to get fuel; and the community's children had one of the world's highest rates of trachoma-a bacterial infection of the eyes and the most common cause of preventable blindness in the world.3 For the fuel facilities, the Mulan leadership approached the Commonwealth Government ("Government") for replacement funds but was denied.4 To combat the trachoma, the community instituted a twice-daily face-washing program at school; eighteen months later, trachoma infection rates among children had dropped from eighty percent to sixteen percent.5
As the Mulan (and many other Indigenous communities) confronted pervasive and enduring poor...