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A few of the 50,000 sheep from the Cormo Express arriving in Kuwait after 60 days on the boat.
(AP Photo/Gustavo Ferrari) |
The Awful Truth
Issue 131 - 14 Jun 2007
By Chris Graham and Amy McQuire
Issue 131, June 14, 2007: It is widely known that before the 1967 referendum, Indigenous Australians were under the Flora and Fauna act.
Akin to the native wildlife, they lived as second-class citizens in the place of their ancestors and existed under inferior conditions to the rest of the nation.
With the ushering in of the 40th anniversary of the referendum just last month, the media heralded the gains given to Indigenous Australians as they supposedly earned the right to equality in a land that frequently dealt them the harshest blow.
But although they aren't officially considered flora or fauna anymore, the awful truth is they may as well be.
Aboriginal Australia has an annual mortality rate of 2.2%.
Sheep living in Australia have an annual mortality rate of 2-3%.
But non-Indigenous Australians have a mortality rate of 0.5%.
When the plight of a societal group is closer to that of sheep than to the majority of human beings living in that nation, then you know there is something wrong, especially when you look at the things the nation holds as important.
In mid 2003, Australia became increasingly interested in the plight of 52,485 sheep.
The animals were the cargo of the Cormo Express, which was undertaking the 11-week journey to the Middle Eastern country of Saudi Arabia.
It was to be a story that would dominate television sets around the nation and would result in an inquiry by Agriculture Minister Warren Truss into the industry.
The reason?
The sheep had been rejected on arrival at their destination because of what the Saudi Arabians claim was an unacceptable rate of the disease scabby mouth.
On arrival, the sheep also had a mortality rate of above 2 percent.
An Australian veterinarian had inspected the ship within hours after the Cormo Express docked and told the ABC that there had been no evidence of common diseases that are usually a concern to international trade.
The fiasco sparked debate over the ethics of live animal export after the sheep were kept on board the vessel for a number of weeks while the industry and the government tried to find an alternative offloading.
Finally, the sheep were given as a gift to Eritrea, who claimed that they were fit for human consumption.
But the damage had already been done and several animal rights groups, as well as the Australian Democrats, campaigned for an end to the controversial live export trade.
In a media release in October of the same year, the National President of RSPCA Australia, Dr Hugh Wirth struck out over the conditions the sheep had endured on their journey.
"We do not dispute that the animals are disease-free, but over five and a half thousand sheep died on the Cormo Express and animals do not die when they are in peak health!" Dr Wirth said.
"There is no doubt that these animals have suffered tremendously and we call on the government to arrange for an independent animal welfare expert to assess the sheep.
"This whole debacle has again proved, without a shadow of doubt, that the live export trade is not viable."
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) enforces a law on the mortality rate of animals.
If the mortality rate exceeds two percent in the course of loading the sheep, transporting them or unloading them, then the captain of the ship is mandatorily required to report the deaths to AMSA.
In other words, if a ship takes 200 sheep and three die en route to their destination, then the AMSA has to hear about it.
For cattle, the number is one percent, and just 0.5 percent for a voyage lasting less than 10 days.
And we have the nerve to tease New Zealand.
Obviously, Australia cares a lot about its sheep... and even more about its cattle.
That said, Australia also purports to care about its Indigenous people, but the proof is in the statistics.
Gideon Polya is a biochemist living in Melbourne and working at Latrobe University.
He has recently published a book entitled Global Avoidable mortality since 1950, an analysis of avoidable mortality rates all over the world."
His statistics show that with a mortality rate of 2.2 percent in 2001 for Indigenous Australians, the amount of annual Australian Indigenous deaths for that same year should be 10,236 out of a population of 459,000 Indigenous people.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics, while noting that the actual deaths per annum is probably much higher due to unreported instances, rejects the figures as too high.
But then they would.
If you read the 2004 yearbook produced by the ABS, it notes that in 2001, there were 2,060 deaths "registered in Australia... where the deceased person was identified as being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or both origins (Indigenous)."
It then notes: "It is considered likely that most Indigenous deaths are registered but a proportion of these deaths are not identified as 'Indigenous'."
Which is right. Technically.
But if you take the ABS figures to their logical conclusion - ie you use them to establish a raw annual mortality rate - you get a much higher figure.
If there were 2,060 Indigenous deaths in 2001, set against a population estimated by the ABS elsewhere in the Yearbook of 458,500 Indigenous people, here's what you get: figures that show Indigenous Australians have a lower mortality rate than non-Indigenous Australians.
That is, according to the published ABS statistics, about 4.5 Indigenous people died in 2001 for every 1,000 members of the population.
That translates to a mortality rate in 2001 of 0.4 percent of the Indigenous population.
But the annual mortality rate for white Australians, according to the ABS, was about 0.54 percent.
Obviously, the ABS statistics are ridiculous.
How can a black population which died, on average, 20 years younger than the white population enjoy a lower mortality rate than the white population?
Clearly, it can't.
The actual mortality rate of Indigenous Australians is unknown. And that's a good thing too, because if the real figure ever becomes public, there would be plenty of red faces all around.
That said, if the annual excess mortality rate was ever widely known, it would prove a formidable tool in protesting for Aboriginal rights and extra funding.
The annual excess mortality rate is the amount of deaths a year that could have been avoided but wasn't.
As Dr Polya states later in this feature, Aboriginal Australia suffers 7803 avoidable deaths each year.
That is a 1.7 percent avoidable mortality rate in a nation where the non-Indigenous population has an avoidable mortality rate of 0 percent per annum.
The Indigenous death toll is equal to the death toll of 89 Bali bombings a year, 110 Cyclone Tracys and 15 Vietnam Wars.
And yet, despite Australia's emotional response to these tragedies, the plight of Aboriginal Australians continues to be ignored.
NIT has compiled only a small list of these tragedies through the pages of this feature.
But of course, Indigenous disadvantage is not anything new. Just recently the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report commissioned by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) found that on basically every social statistic, Indigenous Australians fall behind the rest of the population.
Not only are Indigenous Australians dying 17 years earlier than the rest of the population, they are more likely to commit suicide and have a homicide rate 5-15 times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.
Indigenous people are also 13 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous people.
They are more likely to enrol their children in early education, but are also less likely to reach grade 12 or go on to complete tertiary education. They are less likely to drink alcohol but more likely to suffer health problems.
The findings of the report were alarming and resulted in a denial by the federal government against allegations that they had not undertaken appropriate action despite being in power for more than a decade.
Understandably, it also resulted in considerable finger pointing in all directions from the opposition as well as Aboriginal and human rights organisations.
But what would happen if the real truth got out?
The truth that says Aboriginal Australians have an annual mortality rate equal to that of sheep?
It would surely be a disgrace for the nation that prides itself on being "the lucky country" and yet still continues to perpetrate institutionalised racism against its original inhabitants.
Because unlike sheep, there is hardly an economic incentive to be made in helping Aboriginal Australians.
In fact, governments will lose money on it.
It has already become a highly known fact that there is a $460 million shortfall in Indigenous health spending.
So while Australia acknowledges that Aboriginal Australians are no longer classified as a part of the Australian wildlife, the circumstances in which they live are still no better.
It certainly is an awful truth that the whole nation must face.
SEE ALSO: Body Count: The Awful Truth
SEE ALSO: Statistics in Perspective
SEE ALSO: Editorial Opinion
Related Links
http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11552
http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11553
http://www.nit.com.au/opinion/story.aspx?id=11551
 
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