Page 593 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 May 1992
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The quantity and quality of statistical information on the Aboriginal population has declined over the last few years, for a range of political, cultural and methodological reasons, despite an increase in government spending on special programs. Commonwealth departments appear to have downgraded their efforts to maintain accurate data. The Department of Social Security no longer has accurate information on Aboriginal recipients of benefits, the CES no longer publishes statistics on Aboriginal unemployment, and special Australian Bureau of Statistics surveys do not contain Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander identifiers. Dr John Altman, director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, stated:
It remains unclear whose interests are being served by the current data void and why the Government tolerates this lack of information on indigenous populations.
Behind the royal commission's recommendations was a belief that more accurate presentation of the socioeconomic situation of indigenous Australians would result in a more urgent focus and a greater government financial contribution to addressing underlying issues. What was needed was ongoing data to assess the effectiveness of government policies and programs; to gauge the extent to which Aboriginal and Islander people have equality of access to mainstream programs and citizenship entitlements; to assess housing and community infrastructure backlogs and monitor the extent to which different levels of government are meeting function responsibilities in these areas; to make rational decisions about the allocation of public resources, especially under the institutional umbrella of ATSIC; and to assess overall Aboriginal and Islander disadvantage in the context of the royal commission and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Act of 1991.
The following problems face ABS attempts to collect accurate information if it is approached in the traditional way. First is the nature of indigenous populations. The normal mechanism to collect statistical information is to focus on the household; but such an approach may be inappropriate, given the geographic and cultural diversity of Aboriginal and Islander populations and difficult socioeconomic status of significant components of these populations. The second point is the issue of the appropriateness of standard social indicators devised for mainstream Australia for populations that are both heterogeneous and in some circumstances fundamentally different. The third point is how to define "Aboriginality" for data collection purposes, and how to target Aboriginal and Islander populations for special data collection exercises outside the context of the national census.
Before the ABS goes ahead with a special survey it should develop a clearer idea of the real data needs of Australia's indigenous population and policymakers. There is a need for a wider perspective, advocating the streamlining of existing administrative databases and the need for ongoing comparative data. Finally, such a survey would have to be thoroughly negotiated with Aboriginal people and their organisations, and the resulting data should be readily accessible to them.
I want to refer now to uniting Aboriginals and Islanders with their families, culture and spiritual links. It seems that all States responded positively to upgraded funding for programs such as Link Up, which is reuniting Aboriginal people with families following government enforced separations of families, communities and cultural groups. However, acknowledgment is still to be
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