Alleviating poverty in remote Indigenous Australia: The role of the hybrid economy

While Australia is one of the world’s richest countries in both absolute and per capita terms, many of its Indigenous peoples live in poverty. This paper seeks to elucidate some avenues for addressing poverty in remote Indigenous Australia via appropriate pro-poor growth strategies. While the Development Bulletin focuses on the Asia Pacific region, the case for including remote Indigenous Australia is twofold. First, there are many similarities in the development problems facing Indigenous poor in Australia living within a rich developed state and those in developing Third World nations. Second, Australia’s development discourse and aid practice offshore generally focuses on failed states, problems of governance and policy failure, while conveniently ignoring economic development problems at home.