Indigenous city slickers depriving disadvantaged Aboriginal people, commission finds

A SHARP rise in the number of east-coast city slickers identifying as indigenous is depriving the Australia’s most disadvantaged Aboriginal people of crucial funding, a productivity commission has been told.

Warren Mundine said there needed to be more stringent rules around how people can identify as indigenous. Picture: AAP

A SHARP rise in numbers of east-coast city slickers identifying as indigenous is depriving the most disadvantaged Aboriginal people of funding, a productivity commission has been told.

The Yothu Yindi Foundation has told the commission’s inquiry into GST distribution a dramatic increase in numbers of people from Melbourne and Sydney identifying as indigenous had led to reduced funding for Aboriginal people in remote Northern Territory areas.

Last year’s Census showed the number of Aboriginal people in Victoria and NSW had almost doubled since 2001, while the Northern Territory’s indigenous population had remained almost stagnant.

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Youth Yindi CEO Denise Bowden said this was “alarming” and “cannot be explained by natural increases in population growth. We assume it comes about because of lax Census data, through self-identification in the Census and through the children of marriages between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the other states and territories identifying as Aboriginal”.

The productivity commission is trying to determine whether changes should be made to the way the GST is carved up between states and territories.

Under the current system of horizontal fiscal equalisation, jurisdictions are given extra funding depending on the percentage of its population that is indigenous.

Ms Bowden called for a change in the way the Commonwealth Grants Commission, which distributes the GST, assesses indigenous disadvantage.

“Illiterate welfare-dependent families living in humpies in Papunya clearly should rate higher than a double-income, university-educated family living in their own home in Parramatta,” she said.

NT Treasurer Nicole Manison said it was important any assessment of indigeneity looked at levels of disadvantage.

“The circumstance of somebody living in Yuendumu or Papunya is going to be very different to the services that somebody can access in Sydney or Melbourne, that’s just the facts,” she said.

But the Youth Yindi Foundation also criticised the Northern Territory Government for using Commonwealth money intended to address indigenous disadvantage to pork-barrel in Darwin’s mostly white northern suburbs.

Former Federal ALP President Warren Mundine said there needed to be more stringent rules around how people can identify as indigenous.

He said it should involve the same process used in native title claims.

“It makes it quite clear who you are and your genealogy and your cultural ties to that country and I think that’s the best way to make sure that the system isn’t corrupted and that the people who do identify as indigenous have strong basis for that,” he said.