some indigenous statistics

From Helen Hughes and Mark Hughes: Gap worse for remote indigenous (not only statistics but the statistics alone tell a powerful story):

The 2006 census employment and housing data suggest that about 270,000, or half of all 540,000 indigenous Australians, are on welfare.

... more than two-thirds of the 270,000 indigenous people on welfare live in mainstream labour markets within commuting distance of jobs. The common perception that they live in remote areas where there are no jobs is wrong ...

Most of the 80,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in truly remote areas are in the larger settlements of Wadeye, Maningrida, Palm Island and Aurukun. Communal property rights here have prevented development....

... Aboriginal curriculums and poor teaching have denied indigenous children basic schooling. They leave school unable to read, write or count in any language. So-called bilingual education has been an excuse for no education at all. Children have also not learned punctuality, responsibility and individual effort. Aboriginal schooling does not equip children for modern mainstream life anywhere...

The first key conclusion of Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage (a government report) is that there is a 17-year gap between indigenous and non-indigenous life expectancy. This is simply wrong. Indigenous people in mainstream society have similar life expectancy to other working Australians but the gap for indigenous welfare recipients is probably well above 20 years.