We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as First Peoples of Australia and Māori, as tangata whenua and Treaty of Waitangi partners in Aotearoa-New Zealand.
This website may contain names, images and voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
ANZSOG is committed to working with communities across Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand to promote and prioritise the perspectives and contributions of First Peoples.
“Public services need to become more responsive to the needs of Indigenous people, and to recognise that the whole nation can benefit from incorporating Indigenous knowledge and understandings into policy and practice," ANZSOG Dean and CEO Professor Ken Smith said.
ANZSOG is developing programs and research to assist public service officers, managers and executives in their approach to the administration of Indigenous affairs as well as to the contribution of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing to the broader endeavours of the public purpose sector. We are also committed to better representation of Indigenous people in the public service, particularly at senior levels, and to providing leadership development opportunities for First Peoples.
Recognising the value and meaning of Indigenous knowledge and culture is critical to ANZSOG's mission of ensuring the development of better ideas, evidence and networks for the public sector. This delivers public value through better government and better outcomes for all citizens.
The past 12 months have been difficult for many, not least partnerships between Indigenous communities and governments. While many have been challenged, genuine partnerships built on foundations of trust and respect have not only survived but been agile, innovative and even strengthened through the environmental trials and the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualities that have resulted in a different and successful post-COVID recovery, require detailed exploration.
The Proud Partnerships in Place: 2021 ANZSOG First Peoples’ Public Administration Virtual Conference will unpack and celebrate the successes we are already seeing across Australia, Aotearoa-New Zealand and internationally. It will also challenge participants to think beyond the way things have always operated, to consider how First Peoples knowledge, local community decision-making and new relationships with government and the public purpose sector can be mobilised to meet the needs of communities.
Find out more
14-15 November 2019
Ngunnawal Country, Canberra
On 14 and 15 November 2019, 23 senior Indigenous public servants from nine jurisdictions across Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand came together on Ngunnawal Country in Canberra for the third annual ANZSOG Senior Indigenous Public Servant Forum.
The Forum, supported by the National Indigenous Australians Agency, focused on Indigenous leadership in a changing public sector. It was smaller than previous years to allow for more strategic discussions among the most senior decision makers across both nations.
Download the report (pdf)
20-21 February 2019Federation Square, Melbourne
The Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) in partnership with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) held its second Indigenous affairs conference, Reimagining Public Administration: First Peoples, governance and new paradigms at Melbourne’s Federation Square on 20-21 February 2019.
Public sector leaders, not-for-profits, academics and Indigenous community organisations from across Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand were invited to explore new ideas and discuss better ways of engaging with Indigenous communities including Indigenous knowledge and culture in public service practice.
The #FirstPeoples2019 conference looked at the relations between the Aotearoa-New Zealand government and Māori people, what Australia can learn from the Aotearoa-New Zealand experience, and how we can build stronger links between the two nations’ First Peoples.
Download the report (Word) Download the report (pdf)
Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori public servants from all ten jurisdictions met in Canberra from 9-11 December 2018 for the second ANZSOG Indigenous Public Servant Forum. The forum, held with the financial support of the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Governments of South Australia, Tasmania and NSW, aims to develop a plan to improve representation of Indigenous peoples, culture and knowledge in the public sector.
Read more and view a photo gallery of the Forum at the Forum news article.
Download the report (Word) Download the report (PDF)
Read a news story on the report
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), the University of Sydney, and the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) held the conference ‘Indigenous Affairs and Public Administration: Can’t we do better?’ at the University of Sydney on 9 and 10 October 2017.
A range of speakers sparked ’courageous conversations’ around the need for change in Indigenous policy, the need to respect and learn from Indigenous culture and the best ways to ensure genuine involvement of Indigenous people and communities in policy development and implementation.
To ensure that the learnings from the Conference are used to work towards change, an ANZSOG report is available on the Conference webpage and continues to feed into a number of other forums ANZSOG is co-hosting with PM&C in late 2017 and 2018.
Videos and photos from the Conference are also available on the Conference webpage.
Download the report (word) Download the report (pdf)
ANZSOG hosted a Senior Indigenous Public Servant Forum in 13-14 December 2017, supported by Australian and Aotearoa-New Zealand governments and funded by the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The forum was attended by more than 60 Indigenous public servants from Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand, and allowed participants to discuss frankly the challenges of being a minority within the public service and the benefits that could be delivered by employing more First Peoples.
ANZSOG has complied a report outlining the findings of the forum that can be downloaded below.
Download the report (PDF)
Indigenous models of governance and political organisation are some of the oldest and longest continuing in the world and are a foundation for our understanding of distinctly Australian and Aotearoa-New Zealand governance models. Developing a First Peoples strategy recognises the impact of colonisation on Indigenous peoples, and the long history of government policies and actions that have disadvantaged and discriminated against First Peoples in both Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand. ANZSOG’s Strategy 2025 commits to “working with communities across Australia and New Zealand to promote and prioritise the perspectives and contributions of First Peoples”. The ANZSOG First Peoples Strategy builds on this commitment.
ANZSOG First Peoples Strategy (word)
ANZSOG is committed to an inclusive approach across all its practices and curriculum that prioritises the unique contributions and value of Māori, Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. As part of this commitment, ANZSOG has developed a Learning and Action Protocol, which offers guidance for faculty, staff, students and partners of ANZSOG.
This protocol is designed to ensure that all ANZSOG practices respect Māori, Australian Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander individuals and communities.
Download ANZSOG's Learning and Action Protocol (PDF)
This paper explores how the APS could change the Public Service Act 1999 to incorporate First Peoples knowledge and approaches into the core values and ways of working of the federal public service. It recommends working with Indigenous communities to create a formal acknowledgement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Act and to better recognise Indigenous approaches to governance through changes to the APS values.
Download the report (Word) . Download the report (pdf)
Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori public servants from all ten jurisdictions met in Canberra from 9-11 December 2018 for the second ANZSOG Indigenous Public Servant Forum.
Read 2015 ANZSOG EMPA Cohort’s report on how the NSW public service can shift its structural and attitudinal frameworks to support devolving decision-making to Aboriginal communities.
Download the report (word) . Download the report (pdf)
Hear from ANZSOG Deputy Dean Professor Catherine Althaus on her Indigenous public service leadership project:
Download the presentation (pdf)
This map serves as a reminder of the language, social or nation groups of Aboriginal Australia on the land in which ANZSOG operates. It shows only the general locations of larger groupings of people which may include clans, dialects or individual languages in a group. It used published resources from 1988-1994 and is not intended to be exact, nor the boundaries fixed. It is not suitable for native title or other land claims. David R Horton (creator), © Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS, 1996. No reproduction without permission. To purchase a print version, please visit the AIATSIS online shop.
Ngā iwi o Aotearoa provides an indication of the approximate relation of iwi (tribes), and some larger hapū (sub-tribes), to geography and rohe (region). Ngā iwi o Aotearoa, Edition 1, 2016 Copyright © Tuhi Tuhi Communications. Created by Dr Virginia Tamanui and Sjimmy Fransen. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. No reproduction without permission. To purchase a print version or subscribe to the TAKOA App (Aotearoa Indigenous networking), please visit the www.takoa.co.nz
"Timeless" artwork by Jordan Roser.
Explore more Indigenous resources at our YouTube channel.
Read the special edition of the Griffith Review launched in partnership with ANZSOG and the Melbourne School of Government.
ANZSOG offered a scholarship in early 2021 to assist the development of an Indigenous leader working in the public sector in Australia and Aotearoa-New Zealand. The scholarship, worth $15,000 to $45,000, was to be used exclusively for an ANZSOG foundation program, either the Executive Master of Public Administration (EMPA), the Executive Fellows Program (EFP) or Towards Strategic Leadership (TSL).
The inaugural 2021 Scholarship was awarded to Palawa woman Brenda McDermott, currently working in the Victorian public service. Brenda will commence the EMPA in 2022.
Due to the on-going impact of COVID restrictions on the delivery of all ANZSOG programs, the timeline for the next First Peoples scholarship is yet to be determined. If you are interested, please review the pdf selection criteria (656 KB) and email your interest to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We encourage you to sign up to the ANZSOG Indigenous news, and/or our general e-news, both of which will be used to notify potential applicants when scholarship applications open.
Join us in celebrating some of ANZSOG’s Indigenous alumni and the work the organisation is undertaking to lift the quality of public sector management by subscribing to ANZSOG's regular newsletter, Indigenous News.
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