Bleak picture of Aboriginal life expectancy

Death rates among Aboriginal children are nearly three times higher than non-indigenous infants, a study of Australian health trends revealed today.

The damning figures also show that 70% of the Aboriginal population, who number almost 500,000, die before the age of 65, compared with 20% of non-indigenous Australians. The average life expectancy for Aboriginal men is 59, compared with 77 for non-indigenous males, according to the report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

While researchers found a fall in infant mortality among Aborigines in some areas, the overall findings paint a bleak picture of the state of indigenous health. The report says poor nutrition, obesity, smoking, alcohol and substance abuse are the major causes of death and illness.

Overcrowded housing, unsafe drinking water and poor sanitary conditions were also contributory factors, the study found. The most common causes of death among the adult population are diabetes, heart disease, cancer and violence.

The latest figures, which reveal little has changed despite years of government funding designed to improve the health and living conditions of Aborigines, prompted Australia's health minister, Tony Abbott, to call for a return to interventionist methods.

The coalition frontbencher, who is closely aligned to Australia's conservative prime minister, John Howard, said it was time for a "new paternalism" to address the appalling living conditions of the indigenous community.

In sentiments that echoed an earlier, more colonial-style approach, Mr Abbott proposed the appointment of administrators with wide-ranging powers to run Aboriginal communities.

Writing in Wednesday's Sydney Morning Herald, he said: "A form of paternalism based on competence rather than race is really unavoidable if these places are to be well-run."

He said the basic problem of Aboriginal disadvantage was not a lack of spending but the directionless culture in which Aboriginal people lived. The minister suggested Australia's sense of guilt about the past and its naive idealisation of communal life might be the biggest obstacle to the betterment of Aborigines.

The remarks were derided by indigenous leaders and opposition politicians. Tom Calma, Aboriginal social justice commissioner, likened Mr Abbott's suggestion to a return to the days of Christian missionaries. "We have suffered in indigenous society because of paternalism for too many years," he said in a radio interview on Wednesday morning.

"One of the problems of paternalism is that it doesn't allow individuals to learn to develop responsibility," he added. Labour's health spokeswoman, Julia Gillard, urged the minister to stop lecturing Aborigines and to start helping them.

"He should be taking responsibility for the fact that after 10 long years of the Howard government, we haven't made any difference to the huge gap in life expectancy between indigenous Australians and other Australians," she said.