Numbers reveal strong growth in the Indigenous population

The latest five-yearly national census records significant steps towards the goal of reconciliation.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during the Garma Festival at Gulkula in East Arnhem in July.

The 2021 census revealed strong growth in the Indigenous population, up 16 per cent from 702,039 in 2016 to 812,710 in 2021. This compares with growth of 9 per cent for the nation as a whole.

It is evident that an increasing proportion of Indigenous Australians are choosing to acknowledge their heritage via the census.

In aggregate terms the Indigenous community now represents 3 per cent of the Australian population.

In comparative terms the Indigenous community sits between Australia’s UK-born population (1.1 million) and the India-born population (673,000).

But whereas the UK-born and India-born populations are largely capital city-based (71 and 90 per cent respectively), around 63 per cent of the Indigenous population is based in rural, regional and remote Australia.

It is also evident from census data that there are serious health issues afflicting the Indigenous community (see line chart). Proportionately fewer Indigenous Australians survive their 30s in comparison with non-Indigenous Australians. This trend continues throughout the 40s and beyond.

A separate ABS dataset (Life Tables) tracks life expectancy, which shows that an Indigenous male baby born today has a life expectancy of 71.6 years, whereas a non-Indigenous female baby born today is expected to live for 85.3 years.

There’s a 14-year “life expectancy gap” that has yet to be closed with the Indigenous community.

Comparing gender with gender, life expectancy for non-Indigenous Australians is a decade longer than that of their Indigenous counterparts.

The Indigenous community clusters in rural, regional and remote Australia, but especially in the Northern Territory and across the remote and desert parts of Western Australia, South Australia and far western Queensland.

In provincial cities such as Broome, Mount Isa, Port Augusta and Alice Springs – each with between 14,000 and 26,000 residents in total – more than 20 per cent of the local population is Indigenous.

In places such as Cherbourg (pop 1200), 250km northwest of Brisbane, and Yarrabah (pop 2500) near Cairns, the Indigenous community represents no less than 98 per cent of the local population.

Australia’s largest “Indigenous city” is Sydney, with 90,954 Indigenous residents, followed by Brisbane with 76,940, and yet across these cities, and many of the other capitals, there are remarkably few clusters, let alone enclaves.

Darwin is different and so too, but to a lesser extent, is Hobart: Indigenous densities in specific suburbs rise well above the national average in parts of these smaller capitals.

This is especially the case in the Top End, where there is an Indigenous cluster located close to the Darwin CBD and with generally higher densities scattered throughout the suburbs including Palmerston.

In a geographic sense Australia’s modestly scaled (3 per cent) Indigenous community is spread thinly throughout our largest cities as well as across the traditional lands of rural, regional and remote Australia.

A shift in community thinking, and especially in matters relating to heritage, appears to have supported a sharp increase in Indigenous identity at the 2021 census.

However, while there was a 16 per cent increase in indigeneity over the five years to 2021, this uplift was 38 per cent in the ACT and 31 per cent in Hobart.

The latter is particularly important in the sense that it perhaps represents some reclaiming of an Aboriginal identity that was largely and quite systematically removed from the mainland of Van Diemen’s Land in the 1830s.

Much of the absolute increase in Indigenous identity between the past two censuses was delivered in big cities such as Brisbane and Perth, as well as across regional Australia.

The uplift in Australians recognising indigeneity via the census was strongest for those in the oldest (65+) age group, which jumped 54 per cent from 30,952 to 47,677 over this period.

The second-highest increase was recorded by those aged 60-64, up 43 per cent from 19,541 to 28,008.

More modest uplifts of around 12 percentage points applied across the 40-something cohort.

The shift towards recognising Indigenous identity, as evidenced by the census, has been seized upon by those in life’s later years.

Perhaps the simple act of reclaiming, or of proudly proclaiming, one’s heritage via the census is something that is especially important to those whose journey through life reaches back to harsher times. In this sense the 2021 census may well be contributing to the healing process.

Indeed many Indigenous Australians aged 60+ at the 2021 census would not have been officially counted in any census until they were (almost) in their teens or in their 20s at the 1971 census. (A referendum in 1967 approved “Aboriginals” to be included at the next five-year census.)

In some respects the 2021 census represents an important step forward in recognising, in counting, in better understanding the extent and the expanse of the Australian Indigenous community.

And it’s not just the healthcare needs of this community that are better understood because of the richness of the data collected by the census; it also brings to the fore the cultural contributions Indigenous Australians make to our nation.

The 2021 census tells us, for example, that there are 7596 speakers of the Yumplatok language in the Torres Strait. And that there are 3399 speakers of the Pitjantjatjara language in the remote northwestern corner of South Australia.

I am sure there are linguists who could tell us how many thousands of years these precious living languages have been heard across the Australian continent and offshore islands.

Australia’s Indigenous nation is a large community thinly spread across a vast continent. There are no large clusters or statistically significant enclaves within our largest cities; their presence isn’t as physically evident as some other ethnicities that have come to dominate large parts of capital cities.

In Melbourne, for example, there is no single “suburb” where the Indigenous proportion exceeds the national average of 3 per cent of residents.

Indeed of the 2500 SA2s – the ABS’s term for local suburbs and districts comprising the Australian continent – barely 100 have no local Indigenous residents.

Here is a community that could well exceed one million by the 2031 census. But it is also a community with a much diminished life expectancy. And with unique challenges associated with the fact that a large proportion live in remote parts of the Australian continent.

An important step towards reconciliation was made with the 1967 “census” referendum.

The 2021 census takes this process a step further by counting, by including, by better understanding the full extent of the demographic and the cultural contribution made to our nation by the Indigenous community.

Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics group; research and data by Hari Hara Priya Kannan.