Is it any wonder that we’ve made so little progress on indigenous policy when the following statement can appear in the editorial of a national newspaper?
“A majority of Indigenous Australians live in the mainstream and enjoy roughly the same life prospects, health outcomes and educational attainment as non-aboriginal Australians of similar socio-economic backgrounds.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands must be shocked — and delighted — that most of them have, according to The Australian Financial Review — attained the same economic, educational and health outcome as the rest of us; so too the thousands of bureaucrats across Australia working at indigenous programs, which can plainly be scaled down.
We hate to ruin the parties doubtless underway across indigenous Australia but the AFR is wrong. Not just a little wrong. Wrong in a way that makes you wonder what was in the head of the person who wrote it.
Life prospects: Not sure what “life prospects” means but let’s try unemployment, using 2014-15 data:
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander unemployment rate, remote areas: 27.4%
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander unemployment rate, major cities: 14%
- Australian unemployment rate 2014-15: 6%
- Sydney unemployment rate 2014-15: 5.2%
Health outcomes:
- Median age at death of non-indigenous Australians in 2013-2015: 81.9 years
- Median age at death of indigenous Australians in 2013-2015: 57.9 years
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rate of heart, stroke and vascular disease, remote areas, 2011-13 : 12.4%
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rate of heart, stroke and vascular disease, major cities, 2011-13: 10.6%
- All Australians rate of heart, stroke and vascular disease, major cities, 2011-13: 5%
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diabetes rate, remote areas, 2011-13: 9.1%
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander diabetes rate, major cities, 2011-13: 6.9%
- All Australian diabetes rate, 2011-13: 4.6%
Educational attainment: In 2012-13,
- Non-Indigenous Australians, completion of Year 12 or equivalent: 54%.
- Indigenous Australians, completion of Year 12 or equivalent: 27%.
- Non-indigenous completion of year 12 or equivalent, major cities, 2006: 82%
- Indigenous completion of year 12 or equivalent, major cities, 2006: 50%
So the Financial Review is correct in claiming indigenous Australians enjoy “roughly the same” outcomes if your idea of “roughly” stretches to “double” or more.
None of these facts are hard to dig up; a few minutes googling would have saved the national tabloid from embarrassing itself. But it reflects the weird world inhabited by some powerful white conservatives in positions of power, to be so profoundly ignorant of the state of indigenous health, or education, to think the problems only exist in remote areas or on the fringes of major regional centres. Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in major cities are better than those of indigenous people in remote areas — but still often twice as bad as those of other Australians, and for some conditions and risk factors, urban indigenous people have worse outcomes than non-indigenous Australians in remote communities.
The AFR pompously demands “those behind the Uluru Statement must do much more to show that its proposals would genuinely help all Indigenous people.” How would its op-ed writers know what genuine help was when they don’t have the most basic idea of what’s happening to indigenous Australians?
Keep ’em coming Mr Keane.
Just maybe the phrase “similar economic status” is critical. Yes, we know indigenous incidence of poverty, unemployment, poor health outcomes etc is worse than non-indigenous. But how much worse is it when corrected for economic status? My guess is that non-indigenous outcomes for those of the lowest economic status are pretty crappy too.
Not at all surprising after watching the Insiders last Sunday.
It’s a bit of a reach to refer to the AFR as the “national tabloid”. It’s target market is the non-productive sector known as “Funds Management”, and its writers continue to display a Sydney-centric view of the world, although few of them would gave any first hand experience of Redfern.
The claim in the AFR is not necessarily disproven by the statistics quoted at length afterwards. It’s plausible, for instance, that 50-60% of Indigenous people are doing roughly just as well as everyone else, and that atrocious outcomes in, say, remote rural communities are dragging the averages down. That may not be the case at all, but Keane doesn’t actually disprove it.
I agree Steve – the reason are really – the disadvantaged, in the olden days used to be called unfortunately the lower classes, [regardless of colour or race or religion] are most likely to die early, have more diseases. The remote areas of society are also more likely to suffer again regardless of colour etc, and the power areas are similarly the same – Unfortunately
again there is are greater proportion of aboriginals that occupy these societal areas of disadvantage.
The urban middle class aboriginals – and those that do not actually publicise their aboriginality and just get on with their lives do have the same outcomes as is the normal distribution of all races in Australian society.
In fact if one adds up the amount of money thrown at the problems over the years it could sustain another small country – – money is not the answer but planing society’s fringe dwellers to be more integrated in mainstream is the answer.
In fact Bernard’s ignoring the explicit qualification “non-aboriginal Australians of similar socio-economic background” makes his statistics irrelevant to what is claimed – though one wonders how on earth the Fin got its [supposed] data!
Edwin – remember he is a journalist and a mini essayist – they have to make a point, espouse a particular point of view which is their role – not to analyse a problem- but create talking points.
Exactly… the words “of similar socio-economic background” i.e. with a similar level of education, place of residence, family structure,disability etc seems to have been ignored by BK.
Ignored with good reason. “If you ignore the disadvantaged ones, Aborigines are doing OK” is a vacuous statement.