OPINION
Nothing was more guaranteed to drive the Aboriginal Industry and the left into a foaming, spittle-flecked rage than an Aboriginal Australian asserting that, in fact, they owed a debt of thanks to colonisation. When Jacinta Nampinjinpa Price acknowledged that colonisation had brought a balance of tremendous benefits to Aboriginal Australians, the fury couldn’t have been greater than if Centrelink had suddenly cut off welfare payments en masse.
But, but… the gap! Shrieked the troughers and tilty-heads.
Well, what about the “gap”?
Because, like nearly all the arguments of the race-baiting left, it’s based, as Jim Goad says, “on lies and rampant innumeracy”. The problem isn’t “systemic racism”, it’s systemic idiocy.
Consider, for instance, the incessant shrieking over “black deaths in custody”. Ask a pearl-clutcher what a “death in custody” even means, and they’ll gibber something about being bashed to death in jail.
Family Feud buzzer.
No, in fact, a “death in custody” includes “escaping or attempting to escape from prison custody or police custody or juvenile detention”. So, if a bunch of Aboriginal kids steal a car, run from police and crash and die, that’s a “black death in custody”.
In fact, the vast majority of “deaths in custody” fall into two categories: substance abuse and natural causes.
And Aborigines are very much a minority of deaths in custody. In fact, statistically, Aborigines are safer in custody than in their own communities.
But, but… what about life expectancy?
Again, what about it?
Once again, the full facts, in context, tell the complete opposite story than the grievance industry would have us believe.
Prominent conservative historian Geoffrey Blainey says Indigenous Australians are “far far better” off since colonisation and are benefiting from a dramatic increase in life expectancy since 1788.
Aboriginal life expectancy today, at 71.6 years for men and 75.6 years for women, is bang on the global average. More importantly, it’s on par with the highest life expectancy in 1950 (Norway).
It’s higher than the average life expectancy today in Indonesia, Egypt, Vanuatu, or Fiji, and nearly ten years ahead of South Africa.
And the much-lamented “gap” is no different to the gap in life expectancies between European countries.
“Every country in Africa has a much lower life expectation than Indigenous Australians. Even the European Union displays more than an eight-year gap between member nations,” he writes.
“There is a wide gap between north and south England. Today the Aboriginals have a life expectancy equal to that of Bulgaria and Romania. Their life expectancy is higher than that in peacetime Russia and Ukraine” […]
“I myself believe that most Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are far, far better off today than if they were living in 1788.
Even academics who claim to be “experts” in the “health of Indigenous Australians” can’t help but peddle race-baiting sophistries.
Former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley said she had researched the health of Indigenous Australians for 50 years and the evidence was against the arguments of Professor Blainey […]
“Yes, Aboriginal outcomes have improved. But a gap is there because white outcomes have improved more quickly.”
The Australian
Which is, in fact, exactly what Blainey said.
Maybe Fiona Stanley ought to get a job as a “fact checker”.