The Forum > Article Comments > Race baiters don't deserve the high ground on Indigenous policy > Comments
Race baiters don't deserve the high ground on Indigenous policy : Comments
By John Slater, published 20/4/2015Any hope that Abbott's critics would offer a reasoned reply to the substance of his argument – that remote living places serious constraints on remedying indigenous disadvantage – were soon dashed.
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About higher education since 2005: ironically, support programs at universities may have been winding down in the years between 1998 and 2006, as money from Canberra for that purpose was moved over to the teaching of non-Indigenous students.
BUT demography stepped in: the Indigenous birth-rate massively increased from about 1981 to 1991, perhaps by 60 %. Why ? Various factors have been proposed: re-identification; false identification by non-Aboriginal people; and inter-marriage. My money is on the last one.
In cities, more than 90 % of working Indigenous people inter-marry, so there is a massive boost to birth numbers thanks to non-Indigenous mothers. Nationally, the size of birth-groups rose from 7-8,000 in the late seventies to 11-12,000 in the nineties.
And inter-marriage was especially common amongst working people, working Indigenous people marrying working non -Indigenous people. Their families would be far more likely to have a work ethic than a welfare ethic. Those working families would have been far more likely to make sure that their kids finished secondary school and went beyond it. Hey presto ! Since around 2006, commencement numbers have risen (for standard degree-level courses) by more than 8 % p.a. i.e. by this year, they have probably doubled.
Again, why ? Why inter-marriage etc. since the late seventies ? Long story, but urban migration in the fifties and sixties may be the key factor.
Yes, false identification may be involved, but that's always been a problem. Some of those people have done very well as 'Indigenous'. They muddy the waters, but the proportion of genuinely Indigenous students is probably the same as it was in 1985 or 1990.
Sorry for this convoluted attempt at explanation: the point about many more finishing secondary school is that the flow-on to university also has increased. By the end of this year (as we will see in the 2016 Census figures, published in early 2017), there will be around forty thousand Indigenous university graduates across the country, overwhelmingly at degree-level and above, overwhelmingly in standard awards, (perhaps 98 %), two-thirds female.
All on www.firstsources.info - 21st Century page.
Joe