This is the first I've heard of this and I'm really appalled. Surely this is the the most vulnerable group in the country. Like the article says it is critical to gain an accurate snapshot of blood profiles, nutrition levels and renal function. How can the government be serious about closing the gap if it ignores this chance to obtain information? Maybe this information, if it was gathered, would be proof that health clinics are needed in these communities. Maybe there's more to this than I realise but it stinks.

Amanda,

Yes, health clinincs but also dietitians and recreation officers - if self-determination means anything at all, surely it means that people have to take responsibility, to take responsibility for their own PREVENTATIVE health as much as possible, and certainly for their kids' health as much as possible. Better food choices, more exercise - this might do wonders to the health of Indigenous people in remote communities.

Better food - but it's so expensive, you may say. Yes, for anybody, Black or White, out in the sticks. Back in the mission days, the missionaries had the sense to grow much of the food for the community - vegetable gardens, fruit orchards, chook yards for eggs and chickens, a few cows for milk, a flock of sheep for meat. Noel Pearson says that suggestions like vegetable gardens are rubbish, and he may be right, but what does that say about the amount of effort that he knows people are willing to put in ? Or about the willingness by councils to have the gumption to negotiate some form of leasing of land, obviously to Aboriginal enterprises ?

'Expensive' is relative and you may say that people are living in poverty, Amanda. I wonder: standard welfare payments plus mining royalties plus remote area allowances for education etc., plus (if a community has leased out a national park) a share of the park's income for each family - and all for little or no effort. Maybe somebody with courage (obviously not an academic: this would be the end of their career) could stay in a community until they knew it intimately, and then carry out a thorough income survey. Of course, they would then probably have to migrate. But I think we all would be surprised at the outcome.

Of course, only in George Orwell's horror-world of double-speak, lifelong welfare and total dependence on outsiders, would be called 'self-determination'. Aren't you glad we don't live in such a world ........

Joe

It may well be that the decision to exclude indigenous children from blood and urine testing is related to the problem of non–response. It is all very well to say that the ABS should select & stratify samples properly but this has nothing whatever to do with non–response. If the latter is 30% or more then the results are very suspect, mainly because the decision of the child or guardian to have or not have the test done is not a random one. Therefore results are biased in an unknown way. It is far far better and safer to have no data, than data that is non–representative and liable to produce wrong generalisations.

Andrew, a good article, obviously you know what you are talking about. Is this going to exclude all kids claiming aboriginality, or just those aboriginals in the sticks. There needs to be a distinction. In a previous post by Loudmouth who probably knows as much about aboriginals as the rest of the OLO posters put together, he pointed out that the lives of the urban uneducated whites was about equal to the urban uneducated aboriginals and the educated aboriginals were equal to the educated whites.

Joe, you left out the income from running the many cattle stations in the outback, although this took a hit with the ban on the live export fiasco.

Gorufus, better to have a somewhat skewed sample, than no sample at all.

David

Yes sorry, David, it should be remembered that there ARE enterprises operating successfully on Aboriginal land, land which has been leased out by community councils and Indigenous land-holders.

Strange: councils don't seem to have much trouble working out lease arrangements with cattle and mining enterprises and, down here in SA, share farmers. But it seems that to work out the terms with a local group of Indigenous people, of a lease of land for a vegetable garden/chook yard/orchard, is just too complex. [By the way, if you think that remote communities don't have enough water for vegetable gardens, check out a community at random on Google Maps: a mile or so out of town, you will see sewage ponds, ergo flush toilets, ergo running water. Plus a mountain of fertiliser if chemically treated properly. Go on, pick the most remote community you can think of :) ]

And of course let's not forget that all of this relates to only a small minority of Indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are living - mostly successfully - in towns and cities.

You have a point, that a thorough health survey, one which was differentiated by regions and towns and suburbs, would tell us a great deal about the dramatically different health conditions of the remote, vis-a-vis the urban, and non-working vis-a-vis working, populations. Thank you :)

Joe

Every non indigenous person who lives in Australia should be made to know that the Aboriginal people could not easily adapt to the European mode of life as the Europeans could not espouse theirs.

Every one knows that we ‘of the superior race’, should have paused at least to observe their needs.

We disregarded their humanity and now, to their plight; the civilized among us believe that the Aboriginal problem is a matter for the politicians, the charitable among us give whatever alms he/she can and the majority of us go to a great length to avoid thinking about the whole affair.

Conversely the politician goes on counting numbers for seats, the business shark gets the money donated by the charitable people plus grants from cunning politicians and in the privacy of his ‘Not-for-profit enterprise’ lives in tax free opulence.

The machine is well oiled and calls for no attention from anybody, the least from the media.

Laudmouth,

Where from came the condition of dependency?

Gorufus,

Response, to which you refer is, normally, due to religious belief. In this instance it does not seem it does