Children of parents with degrees are 60% more likely than ‘first in family’ students to want to go to university. The aspiration gap exists throughout school, but equity policies neglect its impacts.
The NDIS has good intentions, but its design doesn’t seem to support the unique needs of Indigenous people living with a disability, particularly if they’re living in remote communities.
What are the issues facing rural and regional Australia? The challenges are many and varied – and only some have made the national political agenda – but these areas deserve better than neglect.
Though commendable as a means of keeping Indigenous disadvantage on the policy agenda, the annual Closing the Gap report has come to reflect a lot of what is wrong with Indigenous affairs.
Income management was first applied to Indigenous communities before being implemented more widely. The Healthy Welfare Card policy appears to be on this same path.
Decisions being made from on high about the fate of remote Indigenous communities are symptomatic of a continuing imbalance in the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
The Northern Territory stands out for having one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world - much higher even than in the US - and it’s hard to argue that this does the community much good.
Indigenous people are jailed at a rate 18 times that of non-Aboriginal Western Australian adults, but the overall rate is high too. The great costs of this punitive approach yield few clear benefits.
Abbott’s claim that people in remote communities are making a “lifestyle choice” reveals an underlying view that social circumstances are the responsibility of individuals, rather than societies.