[continued]

Altogether, the total Indigenous population may not have risen, on average, more than about 1.5 % p.a., and maybe by only 1.33% p.a., for the past forty years. And growth is slowing down.

Any assumptions of huge population rises in the next few decades may be just pipe-dreams. The reality, as in so many other aspects of Indigenous activity, is that no great bounty is going to drop out of the sky.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe, the bounty has been dropping out of the sky for 50 years, but the dumb ones haven't taken advantage of it.

David

"The upshot is that Indigenous population growth in the NT is extremely low"
If the silly drunk buggers stopped killing one another, it might rise a bit. We don't hear about that down south.
David

Hi David,

I don't know what you mean by 'the dumb ones' - working people don't need - and have never needed - to 'take advantage of' welfare benefits', but the welfare population certainly has, and have done right from the beginning with gusto.

In fact, I would suggest that there has always been, since settlement, those two Indigenous approaches to the new situations presented by settlement - either sit down and live off the rations etc. provided, OR look around for work and make your way in the new circumstances.

And of course, within a generation or so, whether in NSW or in SA, the new 'economies' had taken the place of hunter-gathering to a very large extent. Within two generations of such fundamental change, much of the traditional culture and economic activity had been forgotten and replaced by a more-or-less 'European' economy, way of living, 'culture' for both workers AND welfare recipients.

So maybe there have always been two populations. The working population just got on with business, worked, accumulated, looked after their kids, and provided the foundations for following generations of working Indigenous people.

And those descendants were more likely to be the people who seized opportunities after the War to work in the numerous infrastructure projects, move into towns, to provide their kids with decent education, and put them on their feet for the future. The great bulk of the forty thousand graduates can trace their ancestry back to those workers, I'm sure.

The welfare population has always been a bit casual about all that. They have bequeathed their 'culture' of skiving and boozing and brawling and putting their hands out unto later generations. And they have been the Indigenous people that policy has focussed on for the last sixty years. The working people haven't need such policy.

The upshot is that that working populations has always been there, getting on with life. But the squeaky wheel etc., has been the focus of policy since the beginning. Two populations.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

I think that sums it up pretty well Joe.
David

Hi David,

I was just looking at the NT Census figures going back to 1971, and trying to adjust them, taking into account realistic figures for mortality. Assuming low or moderate levels of mortality, the NT Indigenous population may have risen by a quarter, in 40 years. But I was a bit horrified to calculate that, assuming high levels of mortality, it's possible that the Indigenous population has not risen at all.

There's something wrong too with the 2011 figures for the 0 - 4 yr-old age-group, somehow those numbers dropped by 10 % from 2006, from 6601 down to 6118.

Meanwhile, Mick Gooda has written today about the Government's Healthy Welfare Card: "Many of our people are being forced to revisit the past trauma of income management and stolen wages."

Memo to Gooda: welfare payments are not wages; they are benefits for people in need.

People on this scheme will have 80 % of their benefits put on a credit card. Doe anybody NOT use credit cards these days ? Actually, if I was a pensioner on a remote settlement, I would plead with the agencies to have ALL my benefits put on a credit card, so that some sponger couldn't stand over me and demand all of the 20 % available in cash.

But Gooda goes into battle for his client group, the spongers: some of them, he says, will he left with as little as $60 per week of their benefits. Oh, as well as the other $240 for essentials, like very cheap rent. And of course, royalty payments, mineral and from conservation parks, are exempt, by the way. So there is still plenty of cash sloshing around the settlements.

Gooda touches on addictions and suggests, thoughtfully, that 'serious addiction requires thoughtful treatment rather than punitive measures and silver bullets.'

Thoughtful treatment .... such as, Mick ?

It's fascinating how the elites reach over working people to cosy up to the welfare population. And never, come up with any 'thoughtful treatment' of their own. But that seems to be the mark of many Indigenous 'leaders'.

Joe