Opinion & Commentary
Numbers don't go remotely to issue
The news that the Australian Bureau of Statistics has found the 17 year gap in the life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians has been reduced to 11 years would be welcome if it were believable.
But longer lives for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have not been achieved by better health or reductions in violence in dysfunctional Indigenous communities, but by including in average Indigenous mortality rates a larger proportion of Indigenous people who work and live in mainstream society like other Australians.
The skills, and hence the earnings, of mainstream Indigenous Australians are still skewed downward, but essentially they live like other Australians. They work, own, are buying or renting their homes from real estate agents, have the same relationship to the law as other Australians, and participate in the normal institutions of civil society. Their expectation of life is close to that of non-Indigenous Australians.
Following census data, it is estimated that these mainstream Indigenous Australians now represent more than 60 per cent, or some 325,000, of the 540,000 or so current Indigenous Australian population. Less than half of Indigenous Australians are welfare dependent. Some 145,000 are estimated to live on welfare on the fringes of country towns and in city ghettos. Only some 70,000 of the welfare dependent Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders live in discrete remote Australian communities with probably less than 20,000 of this group living on small outstations. Socio-economic characteristics, life styles and life expectancy vary markedly between the mainstream and welfare dependent groups.
The Indigenous population living on country town fringes and in urban ghettos has received little attention. From time to time horrifying statistics of dysfunction emerge. For example, 4000 Aboriginal children were recently reported in need of care in New South Wales. Although such figures in part no doubt reflect the higher child payments available to relatives caring for children than to parents, the figures are nevertheless a sign of deep lifestyle problems in these communities. It would not be surprising if the life expectancy in this segment of the Indigenous population was lower than for mainstream Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Most of the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in remote Australia do not work although a significant proportion lives within commuting distance of areas with labour shortages. But because illiteracy and innumeracy resulting from poor education are combined with relatively high incomes from welfare, CDEP (Commonwealth Development Employment Project) and royalty payments, they remain outside the labour force, condemned to life styles that shorten their life expectancy by 20 years or more. Remote communities are constantly experiencing funeral after funeral of men and women in their 40s and 50s. Mortality rates may have fallen somewhat with improved treatment of cardiac diseases, but they are still shockingly high and markedly above Australian averages. Report after report draws attention to childhood diseases no longer seen in mainstream Australia and undue delays before Indigenous patients from remote areas come to hospitals for treatment. Heavy drinking, drug addiction and violence contribute to high mortality rates.
Mortality data for the Indigenous population, like all other data, are based on self-identification. They are compiled by the territories and states. Not only is there a problem of varying definitions, but self-identification as Indigenous appears to be lower than in censuses. It seems that some of those who identify as Indigenous in censuses are not necessarily included in mortality data.
As Indigenous people move more deeply into the mainstream, the gulf between the living standards of those in the mainstream and those who remain welfare dependent appears to be widening rather than narrowing. As mortality rates are heavily influenced by lifestyles this probably means that the life expectancy gap between Indigenous people in mainstream society and those on welfare is increasing.
If life expectancy data are to have any validity as evidence of effective Indigenous policy initiatives that do away with Third World living standards, they must be disaggregated. Averaging longevity for widely differing socio-economic populations did not make any sense when the 17 year gap was calculated. It makes less sense with every year that the mainstream Indigenous population increases as a share of the total Indigenous population. Fudging data will not serve Mr Rudd's promise to improve living standards for disadvantaged Indigenous Australians.
Emeritus Professor Hughes is a senior fellow of the Centre for Independent studies.
