|
July 4, 2009
This week's Productivity Commission report---Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2009 showed that in most areas Aboriginal disadvantage is static or deteriorating. This is despite Australian governments committed themselves collectively to overcoming the disadvantage experienced by Indigenous Australians in 2002. The Report states:
Overall, Indigenous people have shared in Australia’s economic prosperity of the past decade or so, with improvements in employment, incomes and measures of wealth such as home ownership. However, in almost all cases, outcomes for non-Indigenous people have also improved, meaning the gaps in outcomes persist. The challenge for governments and Indigenous people will be to preserve these gains and close the gaps in a more difficult economic climate.
Gary Banks, the chairman of the Productivity Commission said that The most significant thing is that this report is happening at all. It is the first time governments have not only expressed a strong desire to do better but have created a reporting vehicle that will hold them accountable.
Moir
The Commission adds that Governments acting alone are unable to overcome Indigenous disadvantage. Meaningful change will also require commitment and actions by Indigenous people themselves, with support from the private and non-profit sectors and the general community, as well as governments.
Under the Council of Australian Governments benchmarks of December 2007 and March last year all governments in this country pledged to: close the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians within a generation; halve the gap in the mortality rate for indigenous children under five within the decade; ensure all indigenous four-year-olds in remote communities have access to early childhood programs within five years; halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievement for children within the decade; halve the gap in year 12 attainment with the decade; and halve the gap in employment outcomes within the decade.
|
This is a shocking report. Not because of what it reveals about aboriginal disadvantage and dissolution, but because of its clear privileging of 'race' as the most potent historical agent in modern day Australia.
I was pleased to see the results broken down into big city, regional centres, and remote communities. But with each of these three it went no furthyer than comparing "indigenous" people - whoever they might be, the Report never says - and NON "indigenous people.
Ultimately, the REAL data we all need to face up is the precipitous differences in outcomes for aborigines living in big cities, where they do well quite well, right down to the 3rd world remote areas and 5th world very remote communities.
There was no attempt to compare race against the two other factors that have more agency: class and remoteness from wider Australia.
Noweher is NON "indegenous" Australians broken out at all. For example, we know that Sunni Muslims have the second incarceration rate, while Jews have better outcomes than Anglo-Celts.
The binary thinking that irradiates this Report has been quite deliberate to be used by the bmembers of the Aboriginal Industry for MORE taxpayers money!