You might disagree with their views and activities from time to time, but it is hard to argue that they could not as easily sit in the Cabinet or in the boardrooms of major corporations as they do in holding high office in Government and community organisations. Less noticed, but just as real, are the tens of thousands of Aboriginal individuals and families who are proudly Aboriginal, are successfully integrated into the Australian community on their own terms, and make contributions in fields as diverse as medicine, sport and farming, as loving parents and devoted community workers. But there is consistently a statistically unbalanced proportion of Aboriginal Australia which is disadvantaged in almost every measure. Government after government, Minister after Minister describe their condition in similar terms. Indigenous infant mortality is still more than 3-5 times higher than for other Australian children.
Infectious diseases are twelve times higher than the Australian average.
Everyone, whatever their politics and whatever their other differences, want things to be better. Aboriginal people frequently draw out attention to the same matters as the Minister has talked about. Arguably, there is a better framework available to us which would better enable us to avoid the farce of each new Minister arriving, seeing what has passed and what is today, condemning what has passed and what is today, promising to do better but in the end leaving the job knowing that his or her successor will go through exactly the same exercise. Many of the comments made here may seem critical, however, they are as equally referable to the brief period in which I held Ministerial responsibility as to any other period. My first proposition is that the present approach to Aboriginal affairs has structural defects which must be addressed if we really want to see the deficiencies referred to by the Minister remedied.