Joe - too right, as usual. The fact that Indigenous people are just as intelligent as anybody else still seems to rankle with some.

Cornflower - what is the motivation for your disingenuous questions? You're as capable as anybody else of using Google. Why don't you read up a bit and make a case instead of engaging in snide insinuation?

C J Morgan,

You are stirring as usual.

I put the questions out of genuine interest and would like to read what Joe has to say about things, thanks.

Thanks, CJ.

Cornflour, you work late :) You aks:

<<Any break-ups available on the degrees and study areas? If it is mainly humanities maybe they are destined for academia and the public bureaucracies, or there could be a lot of unemployed and dissatisfied grads around.>>

In the period 2005-2008, when officially five and a half thousand Indigenous people graduated from universities in Australia, about 22 % of the graduates were in education (mainly primary teaching), 18 % in health (medicine, nursing, podiatry, raidology, etc.), 40 % in humanities, social sciences and arts, 10 % in business (marketing, human resources, accounting, etc.) with - as you infer - barely 10 % in sciences. But this rising generation will move much more into the sciences.

The unemployment rate of Indigenous graduates does not seem to be any higher than that of non-Indigenous graduates. Yes, currently, a high proportion find employment in publicly-funded positions: schools, hospitals, government departments, Indigenous organisations.

Two-thirds of Indigenous graduates are women. There is a huge task for genuine leaders to involve men far more in education, right up to university level, but they are probably too busy with things like Treaties, and the Stolen Generation.

<<Any idea how many are destined for 'real' work - completing trades skills through apprenticeships? That is where government keeps saying the skills shortages are. Any numbers available on the break-up by gender?>>

TAFE is a fraud: of seventy thousand Indigenous students in TAFE courses around the country, barely 1500 are in Diploma-level courses, and annual graduate numbers are barely in double figures. A very high proportion of Indigenous TAFE students are in NT communities, and have been for many years - yet the shockingly low skill levels of people in remote communities !

[TBC]

Joe

Cornflour,

The Indigenous future does not seem to involve some quiet, patient, move up the occupational ladder - as manufacturing declines, Indigenous people are not moving into working class jobs, or skilled trades jobs - they are leap-frogging over those traditional pathways into professional positions:

- Over the period from 2005-2008, the equivalent of around 20-22 % of the entire 24-year-old age-group (to choose a surrogate age-group for comparison) graduated from universities. This is likely to rise to 25 % by 2015, and perhaps 30 % by 2020.

In other words, more than a quarter of all young Indigenous people in the future - more than a third of all those employed - will bypass the traditional working class route and move directly into jobs with longer shelf-lives. And given the government's tacit policy of employing as many unqualified Indigenous people as qualified people, we could be talking about close to three-quarters of the entire Indigenous workforce by 2020, a professional-led economic miracle.

Is self-determination working ? Yes, at the individual level, for those who take theeducational route, but no, not the community level.

Is economic self-determination working ? Hell, no. Is it likely to work, ever ? Doesn't look like it.

What then will drive Indigenous futures ?

Will Indigenous people go back to the bush, as the CAEPR and the unions (the AEU, etc.) so ardently desire ? No. Every year, 1 % more of the entire Indigenous population moves to the cities: let the pseudo-left middle-class choke on their skinny soy lattes over that one.

[TBC]

Cornflour,

To conclude:

The Indigenous population is 75 % urban, and becoming more so. Jobs in the cities tend more and more towards the professional, rather than the trades, sphere. And that's where Indigenous success currently resides. Is anything else working ? I don't think so.

The situation may certainly improve in remote communities, thanks to Noel Pearson's faith and hard work, and federal government policies. But the urban people are showing the way - not the communities, not the welfare population, not the rentier economy. And in the forefront of that push are the Indigenous professionals.

And by 2020, there will be twice as many as there are now, and much better qualified. And more coming through the sciences - the hard sciences :)

Joe Lane
Adelaide

sonofgloin
I like your humour. Me too, on the rambling bit (envious of those who can say exactly the same with less words).

The M. Ali/Bert Newton piece is a good example of what I was attempting to express but you did it far more succinctly. :)