This article details how shifts in political discourse can reconfigure the intent, and effect the outcomes, of public procurement policy. Through critical discourse analysis of public procurement policies focused on supplier diversity in Australia, we explore how discursive struggles over policy meaning and intent can have real effects. Our findings show how the intent of public procurement policy shifted from stimulating Indigenous entrepreneurial activity to affirmative action in employment. We highlight how this policy mutation shifted responsibility for solving the intractable problem of Indigenous unemployment away from the government and corporate Australia and on to Indigenous business.

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