Around twelve percent of people who were currently in an area affected by drought have mental health problems compared to seven percent in areas which haven’t been hit by drought in the last three years according to this paper. Note: This paper was given at the 2009 Australian Social Policy Conference and is only in...

This short paper discusses some of the issues of current adverse macroeconomic conditions on a small segment of the national population, Indigenous Australians. Like other disadvantaged minorities they may be particularly susceptible to the prospect of large increases in unemployment and reductions in national wealth, but with a few notable exceptions such issues have been...

Analysis of the Repeat Offenders Database collated by the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows that the Indigenous population of offenders are substantially undercounted in administrative data collections. Hunter and Ayvar are concerned that the failure to account for this will understate the ‘gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes.

There has been steady improvement in most socioeconomic outcomes as measured by standard social indicators in the last 35 years. This finding is at dramatic odds with the currently dominant discourse of failure in Indigenous affairs. However, evidence of convergence between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes is not consistent. There have now been eight censuses since...

The terms social exclusion and social inclusion originated in Europe (especially France) and were intended to provide a contrast to the notion of poverty which focussed excessively on the lack of money at a particular point of time, rather than the dynamic social processes that perpetuate the lack of social participation and contribution to the...