Indigenous Affairs – A New Conversation – Warren Mundine

Issue 1 | 10 February 2009

As the anniversary of the Australian federal government’s Apology to Indigenous Australians approached, Dr Marcia Langton, head of the Australian Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Melbourne, and Warren Mundine, Chief Executive Officer, Native Title Services Corporation, addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 10 February 2009. While the tenor of their message was increasing hope that pragmatism and education was starting to make inroads into the many problems with Indigenous communities, both speakers stressed that solutions were still needed and also that the world economic crisis could overshadow recent progress in Indigenous small business initiatives.

INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS – A NEW CONVERSATION

WARREN MUNDINE

First, a few formalities. I wish to acknowledge that the speech is being given in the country of the Gattagal people of the Darwick nation. I acknowledge that the ancestors have been custodians of their country for thousands of years. I also want to acknowledge my own ancestors the Bunjalung, Gapangga and Newan peoples who have also been custodians of their land and their countries for thousands of years. I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Bunjalung, Gapangga and Newan elders past and present. And, from the tragedy unfolding in Victoria over the past few days, I acknowledge the Victorian fires and my heart goes out for all that loss and to all the people who have suffered. My mind boggles as the figures come in every day; my heart goes out to the victims and their families.

For any of you here tonight who imagined you were coming to hear Anthony Mundine, I should emphasise that I’m Warren. I can understand your confusion because Anthony and I have very similar athletic frames. And Anthony was telling me the other day that he was getting a bit sick and tired of the confusion too. He was in Melbourne and a group of very attractive, 18 and 19 year old girls come up to him, saying, “Warren, would you give us your autograph?” So with that introduction I’ll move on to information from the Productivity Commission’s “Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantages – Key Indicators for 2007”.

In the Productivity Commission’s report on “Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage – Key Indicators 2007”, the overview stated that across virtually all the indicators, wide gaps remained in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Despite Australia’s world class health system, the life expectancy of Indigenous people is estimated to be almost two decades lower than that for the total Australian population. Despite compulsory education, Indigenous students at all levels experience much worse outcomes than non-Indigenous students. And Indigenous people are significantly over-represented in the criminal justice system, as both victims and offenders.

The Indigenous rate for life expectancy is estimated to be around 17 years lower than that for Non-Indigenous. Estimates for males are Indigenous – 59 and Non-Indigenous – 77 years; estimates for females are Indigenous – 65 and non-Indigenous – 82 years. In 2005, death rates were higher for Indigenous people than for non-Indigenous people in all age groups. The greatest differences were for those aged between 35 and 54, where Indigenous death rates were five to six times those for non-Indigenous people. Kidney Disease was five times as high as the non-Indigenous rate in 2001 and in 2004-05 it was ten times as high. In 2004-05, Indigenous people were 3 times as likely as non-Indigenous to have kidney disease.

Between 2002-2006, the imprisonment rate for Indigenous women increased by 34 per cent; and the rate for Indigenous men increased by 20 per cent. The murder rate increased for Indigenous women eleven times and for Indigenous men, by nine times. In 2006, 21 per cent of 15 year old Indigenous people were not participating in school education. In 2006, Indigenous students were half as likely as non-Indigenous students to continue to Year 12 and in 2004-05, a smaller proportion (22 per cent) of Indigenous people than non-Indigenous people (47 per cent) had completed year 12. The proportion of Indigenous students who achieved a year 12 certificate (after being enrolled in Year 11 the previous year) changed little between 2001 and 2005. In 2004-05, after adjusting for age differences, the labour force participation rate for Indigenous people (58.5 per cent) was about three quarters of that for non-Indigenous people (78.1 per cent) and the unemployment rate for Indigenous people (13 per cent) was about three times the rate for non-Indigenous people (4 per cent)

From 1994 to 2004-05 the employment participation rate for Indigenous women increased from 42 per cent to 53 per cent. The rate for Indigenous men was constant and the Indigenous unemployment rate fell from 30 per cent to 13 per cent. The unemployment rate fell for both women and men and CDEP participation rates remained stable. CDEP participation significantly reduces recorded Indigenous unemployment rates and increases recorded labour force participation rates, particularly in remote areas. The proportion of Indigenous adults living in homes owned or being purchased by a member of the household increased from 22 per cent in 1994 to 25 per cent in 2004-05. In 2004-05, the proportion of Indigenous adults living in homes owned or being purchased by a member of the household in remote (18 per cent) and very remote (3 per cent) areas was much lower than in major cities (29 per cent) and inner and outer regional areas (39 and 32 per cent, respectively). In 2002, the most recent year for which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous data are available, a much lower proportion of Indigenous adults (27 per cent) than non-Indigenous adults (74 per cent) lived in homes owned or being purchased by a member of the household

In 2004-05, after adjusting for age differences, the labour force participation rate for Indigenous people (58.5 per cent) was about three quarters of that for non-Indigenous people (78.1 per cent) the unemployment rate for Indigenous people (13 per cent) was about three times the rate for non-Indigenous people (4 per cent).

The proportion of Indigenous adults living in homes owned or being purchased by a member of the household increased from 22 per cent in 1994 to 25 per cent in 2004-05. In 2004-05, the proportion of Indigenous adults living in homes owned or being purchased by a member of the household in remote (18 per cent) and very remote (3 per cent) areas was much lower than in major cities (29 per cent) and inner and outer regional areas (39 and 32 per cent, respectively). In 2002, the most recent year for which both Indigenous and non-Indigenous data are available, a much lower proportion of Indigenous adults (27 per cent) than non-Indigenous adults (74 per cent) lived in homes owned or being purchased by a member of the household.

So, how can we start to encourage people about getting into jobs, to start moving along? When I started talking about getting Aboriginals into the horticultural industry, people said, “They won’t move; how are you going to get Aboriginals to travel? It’s not in their country, not in their culture, not in their psyche to travel.” My answer was very simple. It was a bit more than one word but it was a very simple answer which was that we invented the word “walkabout” and we traditionally used to travel and look for work and do things. When I was growing up in rural NSW my uncles, grandparents, aunties used to travel; they used to work in the shearing industry, they used to work in the horticultural industry. What CDEP did, through good intentions, was pay people the dole to work and stay at home and so eventually they didn’t travel. You can work one or two days a week, three days a week at the most, and you receive the payment. There is no need to travel; you didn’t have to look for work. This stopped us from taking up our natural habit of traveling, and it cut us right out of the horticultural rural industry.

I was sitting with the National Farmers’ Federation just before Christmas and, even in this economic climate, they were looking at a 100,000 jobs within the rural industry. Aboriginal people can fill those jobs. But Indigenous communities have to start creating an environment for that to happen and start moving into those areas. The other thing, within the Indigenous community, is that we have two strengths – community activity and government activity. A lot of Western democracies and Western economies depend on private activity, private enterprise, private investment. Indigenous people encouraged to take up their own work and self-employment have been missing from those areas. Government policies and government legislation, over the last 30 years, have weaned us away from the things we can do well. So, we have to refocus the debate, start a new conversation, a conversation about economics and bringing Indigenous people out of poverty and driving them forward into the wider, mainstream Australian and global economy.

But it also means that we are going to have to allow Indigenous women to be equal and to be treated as equal before the law – and that’s L.A.W as well as L.O.R.E. There has to be major changes for that to happen and if we don’t do that then we’re always going to hold ourselves and our communities back.