Health and homelands: good value for money?

• Gavin Mooney
• GavinMooney.com Health Economics

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19 January 2010This paper examines the question of whether and how a study of the costs and benefits of the homelands might be conducted. It is concluded that cost benefit studies of different designs are possible.

As others previously have established beyond reasonable doubt, there are positive health benefits from homelands living. Current policy statements by governments regarding centralization of services (and inevitably populations) are a threat to this improved health and, in the current parlance surrounding Aboriginal health, risk widening the health gap rather than closing it.

Compiling this report has involved examining in some detail the evidence that exists on the benefits in particular but also the costs of homelands living. There is solid evidence on the health benefits of the homelands. The evidence on the costs of the homelands is not as solid but it does suggest that they are not large and may even involve cost savings to governments. Strangely too the extent to which equity figures as a consideration in debating the homelands is largely absent. The paper argues that it ought not to be.

Research for this report has unearthed no evidence to support those current government policies which threaten the existence of the homelands movement. An interim moratorium on policy action on the homelands is proposed until findings are available from the sorts of studies suggested in this report. Only then, once good evidence in a cost benefit framework is available, ought policy decisions be made about the future of the homelands movement.