This paper explores the complex and never-ending dialectic between equality and difference in Australian Indigenous affairs. It begins with examples from debates over the inclusion of Aboriginal people in the income security system in the 1960s and 1970s, and then explores Noel Pearson’s contributions on this topic in the early 2000s, with his advocacy of a less ‘passive’ and responsibility-based welfare system.

The West Kimberley is the latest region in Western Australia poised to reap huge benefits from a super-cycle of resource exploitation. Labour demand is at an all-time high and challenges in securing an adequate labour supply are already emerging. Juxtaposed is an Indigenous population that has sizeable cohorts moving into working-age groups but is poorly situated to share in the benefits of economic growth for want of adequate capacities to participate.

Indigenous Australian females are under-represented in the Australian labour force and in employment. According to the Population Census of 2006, 49 per cent of Indigenous females were in the labour force compared with 58 per cent of other Australian females. The unemployment rate for Indigenous Australian females was almost three times the rate for other Australian females, 15.4 per cent compared with 5.3 per cent.

The delivery of basic government services to remotely living and frequently mobile Indigenous populations is a highly contentious issue; one which has recently received considerable focus at a Federal policy level. Because of distinct motivations, frequencies, and spatialisation, Indigenous mobility practices in many rural and remote areas unsettle conventional Western frameworks of government service delivery, which assume relative sedentarisation.