The UN Sustainable Development Goals, national values, and Indigenous self-determination: Australian perspectives

Abstract

Australia endorsed the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. In 2017, its Senate established a committee to satisfy itself of the goals’ benefits, opportunities, and costs to the country. Although beyond its terms of reference, the committee also found that the goals were consistent with ill-defined national values. This article uses the committee’s report as a framework for assessing the relationship between normative political values and the practical scope that exists for Indigenous self-determination. While prevailing political values mean that such scope is limited, it is also true that when the sustainable development goals are interpreted with reference to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, further possibilities for meaningful independent political influence may be developed. These include the proposal to entrench a First Nations’ Voice to Parliament, which this article presents as reflecting a value of inclusion that is substantively different from the values that the Senate inquiry identified and endorsed.