Tamsen Territory

Aboriginal and TSI Finance

Research into the cost of Australian Government services for our almost one million Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander people shows how it compares with the cost of similar services to our 25.690 million non- indigenous citizens.
According to Australian Treasury figures for the 2023/24 fiscal year, the Aboriginal and TSI annual budget was a little over $4.2 billion for 3.9 per cent of the population while the non-indigenous budget amounted to $122 billion for the remaining 96.1 per cent of our total citizenry.

In detail, Canberra intended to spend $1.9 billion of the total Aboriginal and TSI financial share of the budget on “special initiatives for all Aboriginal and TSI communities.” The main items under this heading were for the “further building of community partnerships and the community-controlled sector.”

This money was also aimed at “supplying economic opportunities through education, skills development and employment, better health care and critical investments in housing, infrastructure and judicial services.”
Plans were also to be enacted to “strengthen efforts to end Aboriginal and TSI family violence” and to give support for a programme known as ‘A Better, Safer Future for Central Australia.’
The Federal Government was also bent last fiscal year to also extend existing funding to “enable the investment of $20 million to progress Regional Voice arrangements.”

In addition, the 2023-24 budget was aimed at building on the additional $1.2 billion invested in October 2022 to “improve the lives and economic opportunities of First Nations Australians.”  

This plan included spending $314.8 million for “health and wellbeing institutions,” $100 million for home and essential infrastructure on Northern Territory homelands, $99 million to improve judicial outcomes and $83.8 million for “developing and deploying microgrid technology across First Nations’ communities.”

To support First Nations’ elders, the previous budget committed $7.6 million to “building up the Aboriginal Controlled Organisation to potentially provide aged care services.

The Government also planned to invest $11 million from the budget to establish a “First Nations’ Languages Policy Partnership” and to conduct a national indigenous language survey.

A further $13.4 million was invested to protect the “First Nations’ cultural expression and artists through the introduction of stand-alone legislation, mentorship and training programmes.”
To protect traditional First Nations knowledge, Canberra provided $3.8 million for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and TSI Studies to “digitise and store at-risk audio-visual materials.”
A little over $21 million was spent on those First Nations’ students living in boarding schools away from home. A further $32.8 million was earmarked to encourage young First Nations’ schoolboys to engage with society in general through the medium of sport.
A total of $46 million was set aside for training 2,000 First Nations’ jobseekers until mid-2027. A further $97.7 million was set aside for the development and trial of a new jobs programme while $40.6 million was to pay for indigenous rangers and biosecurity.

A 12-month Time-to-Work Employment Services programme for First Nations’ people living in Australia’s non-remote areas was also to benefit from a $5.7 million payment from the overall Aboriginal and TSI collective budget.
In the health sector of this Aboriginal and TSI budget, $900,000 was to be paid out in connection with the Australian Indigenous Doctors’ Association and $3.5 million was to triple the Government’s bulk billing incentive to encourage more doctors to offer bulk billing consultations to Australian and First Nations’ concession card holders. 

The ongoing Indigenous Smoking Programme benefitted by $141.2 million with the aim of reducing vaping among first Nations’ people.
Money was also set aside to pay for ending First Nations’ violence against women and children.

Over $7 million was allotted to piloting alternative approaches to First Nations’ services run by the existing National Disability Insurance Scheme. Also on the health front, $11.8 million was assigned to ensure food security in remote First Nations’ communities and to make essential foods more affordable and accessible in these days of high inflation.

Although some Aboriginal and TSI people have originally referred in depth to the need for the Australian Government to fall in line with the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People by the year 2030, research indicates that the First Nations’ budgets of the past two years have not made any mention of this initiative.
Both Aboriginal leaders and TSI spokespeople originally assisted the U.N. in drafting the declaration aimed solely at “freeing all indigenous people from allegations of discrimination and dominance.”
In the words of this declaration, all indigenous people have the “right to own, use, develop and control the lands and resources they own by traditional ownership” and have a legal right for compensation. As it is at present, Australia has no legal demand to levy taxes on Native Title payments or benefits.
The U.N. declaration was supported and endorsed by the former Rudd Government on 3 April 2009 after it was first introduced to the world in 2007.