From the Australian Bureau of Statistics:
- In Australia the average income is $585 per week.
- The average for Aboriginal people is $364 per week.
- Aboriginal income in cities is $435 per week.
- Aboriginal income in remote communities is $267 per week.
The most frightening thing about this is that groceries in remote communities cost up to four times more than in the city.
Indigenous Substance Abuse
It is almost impossible to sustain adequate nutrition and a healthy lifestyle in this situation - a problem which leads to despair, and of course the addictions that accompany despair. Alcohol and drug habits are even more difficult to support in such poverty. Mainstream people, earning an average of $315 per week more, are economically better enabled to manage their habits and maintain basic health, therefore living an average of twenty years longer than their Aboriginal peers.
The alcohol problems in these impoverished remote Indigenous communities are being used to justify all kinds of additional human rights violations, all in the name of protecting the children who are suffering abuse and malnourishment. "Tough measures" is a term that is being bandied about by the government and the media, in relation to the inequalities facing Indigenous people.
Indigenous Poverty Solutions
In a 2006 speech one of Australia's ministers expanded on part of the "tough measures" that are always being suggested as part of the Australian Government's victim-blaming rhetoric, with the following comments about the quarantining of welfare payments for all Aboriginal people (regardless of Individual spending habits and history):
"Few people begrudge parents receiving financial assistance from the taxpayer for genuine need. However many resent seeing the money wasted while children go without. I believe that it is reasonable for an amount in the order of 30% of the welfare payments to be directed in this way for welfare recipients who are identified as failing their children. The adoption of this proposal would have a dramatic and positive impact on some indigenous communities. It could have an equally positive impact if applied more widely."
It is patently obvious that 30% or even 50% of $267 per week is still not going to be enough to feed anybody in a community where groceries cost three to four times more than in the city. Perhaps an extra 30% in income might begin to make a difference. But in a country where the public, the media and politicians are already howling about Aboriginal people taking too many "benefits" at tax payers' expense, this is not likely to happen any time soon.
