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The future of indigenous Australia: is there a path beyond the free market or welfare dependency for our indigenous people.

Article Excerpt
In recent times, we have seen a growing public discourse, policy debates and much media focus on the social problems faced by many of Australia's remote indigenous communities. Much blame is sheeted home to excessive welfare dependency. This perspective, though, has limited explanatory power for the complexity of indigenous marginalisation and disadvantage in Australia today, either in remote or in more settled regions.

About 120,000 indigenous people live in approximately 1200 discrete communities on the indigenous estate in remote and very remote Australia. While numerous, these communities are small, averaging only 100 people each. In total, this population represents about 25 per cent of the total indigenous population and lives on about 20 per cent of the Australian land mass, or one million square kilometres. This is a statistic of which few Australians seem aware, except those who refer to 'land rich, dirt poor' Aboriginal people (Amanda Vanstone, Press Club speech, February 2005).

These discrete communities are a product of colonial policies. Most are predominantly indigenous townships that were the settlements and missions of the assimilation era. Some are remnants of pastoral communities that have migrated to camps in larger mixed townships, and some live at small outstations and decentralized homelands. Up until 1972, under the assimilation policy, these populations were under direct state control; since then, such control is largely indirect.

Many of these communities are highly welfare dependent, although this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the early 1980s, Aboriginal people were excluded from full access to the mainstream provisions of the Australian state: health, housing, education and income support. There is much evidence that on any equitable needs-based criteria these people remain relatively neglected, something that is also poorly understood by mainstream Australia.

So, what do we mean by welfare in such contexts? Are we just referring to income support welfare payments or are we referring to the full range of state-funded services that are provided to Australia's income poor: free health care, access to subsidised public housing, free education? Much of the current welfare debate seems to be about the former, with too little about the latter, where neglect on any needs-based calculation in both recurrent and capital terms...

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