Nearly one in three suicides of Australia's children (aged 5 to 17) are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children - "the nation should weep," Gerry Georgatos

Nearly one in three suicides of Australia’s children (aged 5 to 17) are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children – “the nation should weep,” Gerry Georgatos

Not even the latest Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report released today can describe how grim the reality is for the poorest 40 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. There is no hiding the dramatic increase in incarceration and suicide rates but it is even worse if we disaggregate to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who have always lived identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. They make up the majority of the 40 per cent of all who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living below the Poverty Line. We should be targeting the majority of affirmative support and funding to the 40 per cent.

More than 90 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides are of those who lived below the Poverty Line. In unofficial datasets I have compiled during the last five years of the suicides I have come across, they were of individuals living below the Poverty Line. It is the same grim reality for incarcerated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Those who are being gaoled are not from the half of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population who have only relatively recently identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, proudly ticking the box to the fact that Aboriginality is part of their heritage. The majority of these hundreds of thousands who now acknowledge bloodlines never lived impoverished and marginalised.

If we do not disaggregate we risk making peoples invisible, we indeed discriminate. We should leave no-one behind but indeed we do; we hide the grimmest realities.

The Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report has collated the collectivised statistics. The report notes the already known 77 per cent increase in the gaoling of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults since 2000. More than 90 per cent of those gaoled are from the 40 per cent living below the Poverty Line. I have estimated that one in 9 of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have at some period in their life been gaoled. If we disaggregate to the 40 per cent I estimate that at least one in 5 have been gaoled.

The report notes the 56 per cent increase in hospitalisation from self-harming over the last decade. These narratives grimly define the realities but these realities are majorly within the 40 per cent that I refer to.

For the 40 per cent there is the narrative of the constancy of traumas and for many the degeneration to aggressive complex traumas. For many the traumas and aberrant responses relinquish to incarceration or suicide.

The report claims some improvements in areas of health and economic participation and also in education completions. However the crude totals and averages benefit from more Australians identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. It is accurate that more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are in some form of employment. However the numbers completing Year 12 are helped along by the fact that more Australians are identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The Arnhem’s Gunbalanaya had its first female high school graduates in 2013. Groote Eylandt had no Year 12 completions last year and nor will it this year. Education is a way out of poverty but it is not happening in the numbers it should be happening particularly for the poorest 40 per cent.

Productivity Commission deputy chair Karen Chester reflects, “If we are to see improvements in outcomes we need to know which policies work and why.”

“The OID report should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.”

The suicide crisis continues and 2016 will record a higher toll than last year. Governments must focus funding to the poorest and marginalised. There has to be a triage basis to the spending. Nearly one in three of Australia’s child suicides are of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child – 30 per cent in fact. The nation should weep. There are long overdue social reforms still denied to the poorest 40 per cent.