Aspirational goals for Indigenous Australians

Recommendation: decriminalise public drunkenness, fine defaulters, obscene language, and a myriad of other minor offences that have been used to incarcerate our mob.

Family violence

In Tjunparni: Family Violence in Indigenous Australia family violence is defined as behaviours and experiences including: beating of a wife or other family members, homicide, suicide and other self-inflicted injury, rape, child abuse and child sexual abuse and physical abuse.

Recommendation: as a preventive measure fund more men’s groups to address this escalating problem. And have a zero tolerance of perpetrators who should be dealt with swiftly by the law.

Native title

Native title is a property right which reflects a relationship to land which is the very foundation of Indigenous religion, culture and well-being.

Recommendation: make Indigenous representative bodies more accountable and less intimidating to traditional owners by reviewing their performance annually. Don’t reward poor performance.

Employment

In the 2001 Census, 52 per cent of Indigenous people aged 15 years and over reported that they were participating in the labour force (meaning that they were engaged in mainstream employment or participating in CDEP). This compares to 53 per cent in 1996. The participation rate was higher for Indigenous men (60 per cent) than Indigenous women (45 per cent). And yet some communities have as high as 90 per cent of their working age population unemployed.

Recommendation: revert back to the 1985 Miller Report and make all public sector organisations set target dates to guarantee Indigenous employment equity (2 per cent of total employment). In instances where work is available for able bodied workers in the mining, agricultural, tourism or pastoral industry and they fail to report they should have their benefits forfeited.

Housing

From the 2001 census 63 per cent of households with Indigenous person(s) were renting (compared with about 27 per cent of other households); 19 per cent were purchasing their home (compared with 27 per cent of other households); and 13 per cent owned their home outright (compared with 40 per cent of other households).

Recommendation: provide first home owners with a higher first home owner’s grant (20 per cent of total value) and lock in fixed term monthly repayments of 5 per cent for the entirety of the loan.

Education

From the 2001 census the retention rate for Indigenous students fell from nearly 90 per cent in year 10 to 67 per cent in year 11. By comparison, the rate for non-Indigenous students falls less dramatically from year 10 to year 11 from 99 per cent to 87 per cent.

Recommendation: cease means testing of Abstudy for all Indigenous people and raise the weekly rate by $100. Increase funding of the tutoring assistance scheme.

National Indigenous representation

With the abolition of ATSIC and the NIC by the Howard government and the new Rudd Government respectively, there is no national Indigenous body currently advising the government on Indigenous specific issues.

Recommendation: delegates at the summit meet in their state or territory group on the second day to elect a representative to an interim national Indigenous advisory body to assist the government in the design and implementation of replacement body for ATSIC that they promised would occur in their first term in office.

The 2020 Indigenous Summit is an excellent opportunity for those invited - and who carry with them the heavy weight of national expectation - to heed the advice of David Lloyd George, who once said: "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps."