Report reveals worsening conditions for Indigenous communities 

Indigenous deaths in custody are at their highest in fifteen years. This is just one of the findings of the Productivity Commission’s updated Report on Government Services, which also found that overcrowding in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing is five times worse than the national average for public housing.

In 2021-22, eight of 22 deaths in custody involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The report found that public perceptions of the integrity, honesty and fairness of the police have reached a ten-year low. It also revealed extreme disparity in housing conditions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Nationally, 3.6 percent of community housing and 4.5 percent of public housing is overcrowded, an increase on previous years. But overcrowding in Indigenous community housing is 14.1 percent, which increases to 26.6 percent in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing.

Racist politicians, including Liberal leader Peter Dutton, have crafted a narrative that the Voice to Parliament seeks to make Indigenous people a specially privileged caste. In May, Dutton said in a speech to parliament that the Voice “will have an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others”. South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic complained that “Indigenous children are taught that they are being held back by ‘systemic racism’”, in a March Spectator article.

But the Productivity Commission’s report lays bare the reality that Aboriginal communities are deeply and violently oppressed by the structures of Australian society. This oppression reaches into all facets of life, and it is getting worse. The number of respondents living in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing whose “dwellings are of an acceptable standard” has fallen from 73.2 percent in 2018 to 63.7 percent in 2021. Australia’s Institute of Health and Welfare reports that one-fifth of those living in state-owned Indigenous housing experience poor air quality, lack of power and safe drinking water, inadequate waste facilities and major structural problems. Nine percent of Indigenous households had no access to facilities to prepare food in 2021, and almost 5 percent had no access to facilities to wash their clothes.

The highest levels of overcrowding occur in remote areas of the Northern Territory. “We have been promised new houses many times and for many years”, wrote Yanyuwa Garrwa artist Miriam Charlie in a 2020 Overland article. Charlie is a resident of Borroloola, a remote community in the Northern Territory. “Housing is an important promise for people at Borroloola: for safe homes, for good health, for young people’s education. They build houses for shopkeepers and for government employees in Borroloola. But not enough houses for Aboriginal people.”

“Old people are getting older; they’ll die soon. A lot of people are going to die waiting for houses. We have been waiting for too long.”