In recent years, there has been an apparent growth of the Indigenous

HAB 102 Contemporary Indigenous Australia Assignment 1

In recent years, there has been an apparent growth of the Indigenous population of Australia driven, in part, by an increasing willingness on the part of many Australians to acknowledge/assert their Aboriginality (ABS, 2003). As at 30 June 2001, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (ATSI) population of Australia was estimated to be 458,520, or 2.4 per cent of the total population. Persons identifying as ‘Aboriginal origin’ comprised about 90 per cent of this estimated resident Indigenous population; persons of ‘Torres Strait Islander origins’ comprised 6 per cent, and those with both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin comprised 4 percent (ABS & AIHW, 2003).

This growth is occurring despite the fact that, by any social indicator, including education, employment, income, housing and contact with the justice system (Departmental of Aboriginal Affairs, 2004), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the most disadvantaged sub-population in Australia (O’Donoghue, 1992; National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party, 1989).

Non-indigenous Australians have gradually reduced the racist treatment of indigenous over the 230 years since colonization, as the initial policy of attempted genocide was replaced by paternalistic control and then by laissez faire neglect. Much racist treatment is now illegal though racist attitudes may not have reduced as quickly and continue to effect many aspects of indigenous life today.

Demographic characteristics with important effects on social and economic status include household structure and age distribution. In particular, growth in child poverty has often been associated with the rising share of single-parent families. Also, differences in the age distribution of populations may affect their rates of growth, as well as differences in average economic and social well-being. For example, poverty rates are highest among children and rates of criminal activity are highest among young adults. ((O’Donoghue, 1992; National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party, 1989).

Despite recent improvements, levels of participation in education and training among Indigenous Australians and their levels of attainment remain well below those of non-Indigenous Australians and absenteeism is massive. In 2001, only half of Indigenous youth aged 15-19 attended an educational institution and young Indigenous adults and children were less than half as likely to use a computer at home compared with non-Indigenous youth (22.5% compared with 52.8%). The figures are similar for Indigenous persons holding a vocational or higher education qualification (22% compared with 48%). The gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations increased with increasing geographic remoteness (ABS, 2004). English proficiency can be vital to getting a job and developing this proficiency can be a particular challenge if it is not spoken at home, as is the case with many remote indigenous communities where good English speakers are only 50 per cent of five year olds and 70 per cent of nine year olds and 80 per cent of young adults. Even in major cities and outer regional areas, English performance for female Indigenous 15 to 19 year olds has trended downward in recent years while those with no English has trended up (ABS 1996, 2004). Much more can be done to encourage educational participation of indigenous youth.

When compared with the rest of Australia’s population, Indigenous Australians have substantially lower levels of labour force participation (54%, compared with 73% for non-Indigenous people) and substantially higher levels of unemployment (20%, compared with 7.2%). Unemployment rates were comparatively high among young people aged 15-17 years (32%) and 18-24 years (27%), roughly double the non-Indigenous rate. In the 25-34 years and the 35-44 years age groups the Indigenous unemployed rate was nearly three times the non-Indigenous rate. (ABS, 2004)

Indigenous Australians are less likely to be working in higher paying/more prestigious jobs (e.g. as mangers, administrators or professionals) that their ...

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Indigenous Australians are less likely to be working in higher paying/more prestigious jobs (e.g. as mangers, administrators or professionals) that their non-Indigenous counterparts. In general, the less prestigious and lower-paying the job the more common it is that Indigenous workers are employed in that occupation compared with their non-indigenous counterparts (ABS, 2004). These figures are improving but Community Development Programs are not enough to address all the issues of employment in remote areas, let alone all the employment issues for indigenous persons.

Low levels of employment and high unemployment contribute to the economic disadvantage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples relative to other Australians. For many Indigenous Australians, lower levels of educational attainment and greater geographic isolation act as inhibitors to securing skilled jobs and high wages. (ABS, 2004)

A high proportion of Indigenous males are on relatively low individual incomes compared with their non-Indigenous counterparts. The incidence of relatively low individual incomes increases with remoteness, with the highest proportions of low incomes occurring among Indigenous living in very remote Australia. Indigenous lost ground everywhere relative to their non-Indigenous counterparts between 1996 and 2001 in terms of being more likely to be on low incomes (ABS, 2004).

The enforcing of equal wages for Aboriginal stock-workers in 1968, led to stations reducing their work force and families who were no longer employed on the station were required to leave what was often their ancestral lands and find somewhere else to live. They drifted to artificial Aboriginal townships and fringe settlements. This dislocation had a major social impact which Sutton describes as “the most destructive in living memory” (Sutton, 2001). Deprived of meaningful labour, boredom and will-sapping welfare dependency combined with the “psychological legacy of past discrimination, forced assimilation, the devaluing of traditional male roles [including by the supporting mothers’ benefit] and the mourning that followed the often brutal initial conquest” (Sutton, 2001) to foster an epidemic of alcohol and drug misuse following the extension of drinking rights to Aborigines in the early 1970s.

Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons, particularly those living in more remote areas, do not have access to a basic level of housing and essential infrastructure, such as the supply of power and safe drinking water, and effective sewerage systems (ABS& AIHW, 2003).

The number of residents in Indigenous dwellings is, on average, higher than in non-Indigenous dwellings, and this disparity increases with remoteness (with large increases occurring in very remote areas) (FaCS, 1999).

Indigenous households are everywhere far less likely to own or be buying their own home that non-Indigenous ones (FaCS, 1999).

People who are socially and economically disadvantaged are at increased risk of becoming involved with the legal system, either as perpetrators or as victims of crime. At 30th June 2001, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders were nine times more likely to be in prison than non-indigenous Australians (3,750 prisoners, representing 19% of the total prisoner population, compared to 2% indigenous in the general population. This had risen to 20% by June 2002 (ABS, 2003)). In 2001, Indigenous people were about 12 times as likely as other people to be imprisoned some time in their life (1,663 adult indigenous people per 100,000 were imprisoned, compared to 139 per 100,000 of all adults). By 2002 this figure had risen to 15 times more likely (ABS, 2003) and this trend applies to every age group (National Prisoner Census, 2001). The Northern Territory recorded the highest proportion of indigenous prisoners to all prisoners (73%), followed by Western Australia (32%) (National Prisoner Census, 2001). Much of the evidence to the “Bringing Them Home” inquiry suggested strong links between these rates of imprisonment and the removal of aboriginal children from their families in that the majority of those imprisoned were part of the “stolen generation’(ABS, 2003).

Aboriginal communities had been closely controlled by church, state and private enterprise organizations until the early 1970s, when liberal democratic policies resulted in a move to self-management. This sudden removal of coercive regimes resulted in a power-vacuum where formal marriages became rare and sexual violence against women and children flourished (Sutton, 2001). Sutton queries the fact that domestic violence among indigenous is seen “as the outcome of dispossession, poverty, stress and the effects of drugs” (Sutton, 2001) and somehow, thereby, overlooked. He points out that archaeological results show that severe beating of indigenous women was common before European colonization of Australia but things have worsened due to the use of “alcohol and other drugs, the absence of sober kin who can separate combatants, and the dangerous privacy of closed doors in European style housing” (Sutton, 2001). Many Aboriginal communities and fighting back by going ‘dry’ and removing babies from alcoholic mothers in town and taking them back to the dry communities to be raised by their grandmothers and aunties (personal experience in Alice Springs and media reports re other areas). These groups need more support and the right to self-determination must not be allowed to ride roughshod over the rights of the vulnerable to protection by society from those who would abuse them.

Differences in Indigenous total mortality are reflected in substantially lower life expectancy for the Indigenous population resulting in a much younger age profile. At the national level, the life expectancy at birth for the period 1999-2001 was estimated to be about 56 years for Indigenous males and 63 years for Indigenous females, some 20 years less than their non-Indigenous counterparts (ABS 2004).

In addition to elevated mortality, Indigenous Australians suffer four times higher rates of morbidity from diabetes than non-Indigenous Australians (ABS, 2004). They also experience a greater number of hospitalizations for ‘Care involving dialysis’ (6.6:1 for males, 12.6:1 for females), ‘Endrocrine, nutritional and metabolic disease’ (3.5:1 for males, 3.8:1 for females) and ‘Diseases of the respiratory system’ (2.6:1 for males, 3.1:1 for females). In 2001, reports of a long-term health conditions increased with age from 34 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged under 5 years to 99 per cent of Indigenous Australians aged 55 years and over. Eye/vision problems were the most commonly reported conditions (29%), followed by asthma (16%), back problems (15%) and ear/hearing problems (15%).

Figures for 1998-2000 show that babies born to Indigenous mothers are twice as likely to be low birth-weight (13% of births, compared to 6%) and twice as likely to suffer pre-natal death (20 per thousand births), compared with where the mother was non-Indigenous (10 per thousand births).

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, research suggests that further adverse influences contributing to such differences in health include:

Early childhood and development problems,
Substance use/misuse,
Economic participation and development (low incomes and education levels),
Greater disposition to behave in ways which increase the risk of ill-health (such as smoking, drinking, poor diet and lack of exercise),
Lack of access to clean water and inadequate sanitation, and
Inadequate access to suitable housing and health services.

Within Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples do not enjoy the level of well-being enjoyed by the wider community. They consistently experience lower levels of health, education, employment and economic independence than those enjoyed by Australians. To grow as a nation, this difference in experience must be addressed. As Indigenous disadvantage is overcome, the economy grows and the need for government expenditure is decreased. At the same time, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders peoples will be better placed to fulfil their cultural, social and economic aspirations.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. Indigenous profile. New South Wales, Catalogue no. 2002.0. Canberra: ABS, 2002. Centre for Epidemiology and Research, NSW Department of Health.

Australian Bureau of Statiscs. Prisoners in Australia. February 2003

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Australia’s Health 2004. Canberra: AIHW, 2004. Found on 8th August 2005 at

Australian Bureau of statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (ABS & AIHW, 2003), The health and welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s ABS Cat. No. 4704.0 Canberra, p.1.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2004), Year Book of Australia, 2004, Cat. No. 1301.1, Canberra, p.101.

Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (ABS & AIHW, 2003), The Health and welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, ABS Cat. No. 4704.0 Canberra, p.35.

Australian Bureau of Statistics Measuring Australian’s Progress, 2004, Cat. No. 1370.0

Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS, 1999), National framework for the design, construction and maintenance of Indigenous housing, Canberra

Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services (1997). Submission from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs Inquiry into Indigenous health. Inquiry into Indigenous health: submissions. Volume 1, House of Representatives standing Committee on family and Community Affairs: 215-316.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2001. Bring Them Home. Found on the 18th August 2005 at

O’Donoghue, L. (1992). “A vision for the future” Impact October: 11-13

National Aboriginal Health Strategy working Part (1989). National Aboriginal Health Strategy. Canberra, Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

New South Wales Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Introducing Indigenous Australia. Background briefing. Sydney: DAA, 2004. Found on 8th August 2005 at

Prisoners in Australia, 2001, Results of the 2001 National Prisoner Census.

Sutton, P. 2001. ‘The Politics of Pain’ The Age 7 December, p13

Wilkinson R and Marmot M. (2002). The Solid facts: Social Determinants of health. Found on the 8th August 2005 at