In October Liam Grealy and Kirsty Howey began the first tranche of interviews for the project “Housing Repair and Maintenance Policies in Remote Indigenous Australia.” Having received approval from the University of Sydney’s Human Research Ethics Committee, these interviews aim to speak with individuals who are differently located within the policy worlds and networks that design, implement, and manage repair and maintenance programs for Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory. This includes peak organisations, Aboriginal corporations, remote service providers, and householders.
Grealy and Howey also visited the remote town of Borroloola, which earlier in 2018 experienced a series of water contamination events. Their primary interest was with housing construction, or its lack, given that $14.6m had been allocated to Borroloola for housing, in 2009 under the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing. Grealy asks why these houses have not yet been built in this Crikey article.
