Peace and prosperity for Indigenous Australians

The issue of Indigenous home ownership in remote communities also illustrates this complex interplay between culture and economics.

According to the Queensland Government, the average life expectancy of a house on Aboriginal land is less than 10 years. There is clearly an urgent need for Indigenous people to have an economic stake in their home, so that they take pride and care of it. The failure to take responsibility in this area seriously undermines legitimate expressions of concern about over-crowding and insufficient housing funds.

However, the continuing interaction with communal title and the absence of functioning markets mean that Indigenous home ownership in remote communities is unlikely to play the same critical role in private asset accumulation that it does in the mainstream. Under these circumstances, Indigenous families with the means should seriously consider investing in the mainstream as well, where their investment may be considered to have more chance of appreciating in market value.

It is clear that much more innovative policy thinking is needed in hammering out the terms of this reconciliation. It needs to balance the imperatives of Indigenous people living on remote, communally held lands, where markets are difficult (where innovative ideas about private stakeholding and economic use of land are very much needed), with the fact that investment, asset accumulation and economic development is most feasible where there are functioning markets (that is, in centres of economic growth in rural and urban Australia).

The Cape York reform agenda therefore needs to focus, at its core, on the issue of developing a real economy. This requires a reform agenda across a wide range of prerequisites for economic and social development. Each of these prerequisites is a necessary condition for development on Cape York but, individually, none is sufficient. Instead, the development literature emphasises that reform must span the full set of prerequisites if economic and social development is to be successful and long-lasting.

This is the challenge that the Cape York reform agenda must meet to enrich the choices available to the people there in a sustainable manner. The continuing state of crisis in the Cape means the urgency of this task cannot be overstated. We hope for a future in which Cape people can truly have the same capabilities as mainstream Australians to choose a life that they value.