Has Australian Law Adequately Protect the Health of Indigenous People?

Has Australian law adequately protect the health of indigenous people?

Contemporary issue

The issue appeared in The Australian newspaper in January 2007 which discussed about the indigenous health. There is no exact statistics that really measure aborigines’ health as only about 72% of them were included in the surveys. The issue is able to make us think on actions that could be made in order to protect the health rights of the indigenous Australian. It seems to be impossible for the responsible authorities to address this problem effectively when there is lack of efficiency in gathering data.

(Source: Article by Milanda Rout in The Australian 27/01/10)

Historical background

The term Indigenous can be referred as ‘Native to a particular region or environment but occurring naturally in other places as well’ (TheFreeDictionary 2009, ¶.1). In Australia, they were resided for almost 350 to 700 centuries ago. They usually can be found in isolated parts in Australia (History of the Aborigines n.d.). As Britain want to colonise Australia as a country in 1788, the indigenous community were chased by British (Bailey 2008). As the consequences, they lost their native title and many of them suffered from serious diseases as the Britain seized their habitat land (Bailey 2008; History of the Aborigines n.d.). By 1900, there was a small group of indigenous people in central and Northern Australia. Today, they live in some parts of rural area in Australia and try to keep their traditions alive (History of the Aborigines n.d).

Legislation

As issues concerning the welfare of indigenous people were very rarely discussed, the founding fathers paid a little attention towards it in the 1890s (Bailey 2008). The rights of indigenou...

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...ll as overseas, the provisions of facilities are able to meet the need of the community better. Besides, it also allows the nation’s resources to be allocated efficiently which satisfy the role of a federation.

Recommendation and conclusion

Australia can follow the examples from other countries that can achieve some major improvements in indigenous care such as New Zealand, United State and Canada and specifies the area that need to be targeted such as investment in environmental health and workforce strategy (Fredhollows 2003). Although enormous critics are still going around concerning the rights of the Aborigines, Australian government has done their best to improve the indigenous health and ensure their rights are not neglected and it has been proved that the Australian law has adequately protected the health rights of the Aborigines.

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