Sixty four per cent of Aboriginal couple families are unions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal partners. The largest concentrations of indigenous people are in Sydney and Brisbane and the major urban centres of NSW and Queensland. Another part of the strategy is that Aboriginal people should live under their own law. Frank Brennan points to the unacceptable standards of some customary law in the Murgon case, where a young Aboriginal man was charged by the police for allegedly stabbing to death a publican. Given the current celebration of indigenous cultures, there is a marked unwillingness to consider whether aspects of traditional beliefs such as a sorcery theory of misfortune and disease might not be even worse than old-fashioned prejudice directed against Aborigines.
Some Aboriginal leaders persist in the fantasy that a return to an earlier economy is an option.
John Watson, chairman of the Kimberley Land Council wrote recently, 'what needs to be recognized is that Aboriginal people had an extremely viable economy before our lands were occupied by white people late last century'. Without it, some remote communities would simply not exist'. This demonstrates how artificial some communities are. A more enduring and realistic economic strategy recognizes an increasing absorption of the indigenous workforce into paid employment. Unfortunately, the prospects for creating employment in remote communities are poor.