There is little doubt that Indigenous Australians continue to be the most marginalised group in Australia. Social indicators tells us that Indigenous people have life expectancies that are decades shorter than they are for non-Indigenous Australians. Any other social indicator, be it health standard, education standard, level of employment or standard of housing, sees Indigenous Australians enjoying fewer opportunities, and suffering greater burdens, than the rest of the Australian population.

A recent Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report (Pink and Allbon 2008, xxi–xxiii, 16) found that Indigenous men have an average lifespan of 59 years (against the national male average of 77 years) while for Indigenous women the average lifespan is 65 (against the national figure of 82). The health status of Indigenous people is demonstrably worse than for non-Indigenous people with Indigenous people being ‘hospitalised for potentially preventable conditions at five times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians’. While over 75 per cent of non-Indigenous students are still at school by Year 12, the figure for Indigenous students is 43 per cent. Indigenous people are more likely than non-Indigenous people to require rent and homelessness assistance, and the home buying rate for Indigenous households (34 per cent) is half that of non-Indigenous households (69 per cent). Indigenous people also have far higher incarceration rates than non-Indigenous people, with Indigenous young people being ‘under juvenile justice supervision at a rate of 44 per 1000, compared with 3 per 1000 for other Australian youth’ (Pink and Albon 2008).