TRTL, I would have used sarcastic as the term to explain the tone of the article, but yes, certainly not serious.

Shell, I'd appreciate some links to information if you are able to get them. I did some digging around on the Net last night re figures about life expectancy. Problem is that even the best records only go back 40 years, and those are for the NT, which would arguably be worse than the rest of Australia given the large number of remote communities. Even so, the study I found shows that over the last 40 years indigenous life expectancy has risen by between 8-14 years, while average australian life expectancy has risen by between 9-11 years in the same time frame. This suggest to me that perhaps the indigenous population started behind the 8-ball, so to speak. At any rate, the rate of increase in life expectancy is faster than for the general population, even given the large number in remote communities. That suggests to me that the push for better health care is achieving something. There is no magic wand approach though, and people in general need to stop expecting that.

In relation to statistics, while I was digging around for the above, I came across a report on prison populations, that suggested that the indigenous percentage of the overall prison population was 20%, with aboringal deaths making up 18% of total deaths in custody. That strikes me as very interesting - to me this says there is no crisis at all. In fact aboriginies are less likely to die in jail than the general prison population. I intend to get back on the Net tonight and look into this a little more....

Yeah Shell, would really appreciate any links to per capita spending.

I'd also be interested to know if the difference in negative health outcomes varied depending on location, i.e are aboriginal people living in cities more healthy than those living in rural areas?

If so then maybe the answer is to just increase funding in rural areas?

Is this an issue that applies to all people in rural areas? Is a poor white person living in the bush likely to suffer the same issues?

cheers,

gw

Such a sarcastic simple blame the Government approach to far more complex issues. If pouring bucket loads of money was the answer to indigneous health then Bob Hawke would of seen poverty vanish among all children in this country as he had promised.

Country Girl, you are right to say that Indigenous deaths in custody are now roughly commensurate with their proportion of the prison population. However, when you ‘look into this a little more’, would you consider why 20% of all prisoners in Australia are Indigenous – that is, why Indigenous Australians who make up 2.4% of the population are 11 times more likely to be in gaol than the rest of us? (ABS 4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, 2005 gives a succinct summary of some key points; the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody set up in 1987 gives a more detailed analysis.)

Self-styled ‘renegade white men’ like Leigh dismiss all this as ‘a problem mainly incurred by the aborigines themselves and people like Ring who urge them on’.

If you think there is something inherent in the people’s make-up to explain their disproportionate rates on imprisonment, you might like to explain why Western Australia has a ratio of Indigenous to non-Indigenous prisoners of 17 to 1; whereas in Tasmania the Indigenous rates are four times the non-Indigenous rates (ABS 4102.0). Why would there be such a wide discrepancy between the various jurisdictions unless there were political, economic and social policy differences that make a difference?

There is a up-to-date and reliable summary of statistics including a discussion of the problems of being too gung-ho about life expectancy data at:
www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/statistics/index.html#fnB55

Not that ‘renegade white men’ would be interested in this ‘same old nonsense’. Their minds have been locked up too long.

FrankGol, I expect that the disparaties between WA and TAS can be explained by their overall number of indigenous people. Eg, very few in TAS - original inhabitants completely wiped out, vs lots in WA (remote communities and the like).

I am not one of those that think someone is more predisposed to crime because of their skin colour. I do think though that people are predisposed to crime (and much of it is continual petty crime) based on their upbringing and their ecomonic circumstance (eg those working full time just rarely have the time to be petty criminals). Going off my experiences of living in NSW towns with 80% indigenous population, they are less likely to be arrested and charged with an offence than if same crime had been committed by the white population. The comment when reporting broken shop windows, stolen goods, house break-ins from the local police.... "Were they black? Yes, well then forget it, we cant arrest them - if we do they'll only cry racism and the judge will throw it out of court". Didnt matter if you saw them do it or if caught on camera. The police werent interested in doing anything. Based on what I have seen from this, I believe that any over-representation in the prison population is due to the fact that they are committing far more crimes (apart from perhaps the NT with their zero tolerance approach).

Excellent article. At first I thought it was a serious attempt by Windshuttle or Albrechtsen, who are convinced that there are still reds under the beds and that nothing bad happened to indigenous Australians as a result of white invasion and subsequent government, church and social actions.

As far as funding analysis goes, I would like to know what percentage of bureaucrats working in Aboriginal health and welfare (and what percentage of the budget expenditure on these items) live and work on the coast as opposed to the remote inland, where the worst conditions seem to be. The figure I heard was that over 90% of bureaucrats working in the so-called "indigenous industry" are in coastal settlements, generally larger regional centres and that there are very few government workers prepared to go out in to the real problem areas. I don't believe throwing more money at the problem will help, perhaps it would be better to spend the money more appropriately, in the areas of the most need.