The changing relationship of Indigenous Australians to the social security system can be characterised as a transition from enforced exclusion up to the 1960s, to progressive inclusion over the last 30 years (Altman & Sanders 1995). That process of inclusion has been paralleled by growing levels of dependence on income support payments. Fisk (1985) estimated that social security payments constituted 47 per cent of all Aboriginal personal income in 1976 and 54 per cent in 1981, compared to a national rate estimated at 14 per cent for the whole of Australia. In 1974, the Australian Commission of Inquiry into Poverty reported an Indigenous poverty rate of 48 per cent (Brown, Hirschfeld & Smith 1974; Henderson 1975). There have been good economic reasons why Indigenous Australians actively asserted their right to take up income support payments from the 1970s onwards.

Some 30 years later, data about the progressive uptake of social security income by Indigenous Australians suggest that, in relative terms at least, welfare dependence has not greatly increased. In the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Survey (NATSIS) conducted in 1994, 55 per cent of respondents stated they received some form of social security payment as their main source of income. Amongst the wider Australian population, 13 per cent of households received their primary income from social security payments (Altman & Hunter 1998). This comparative rate is almost identical to Fisk’s earlier estimates for the late 1970s and early 1980s (Fisk 1985).

However, a combination of factors indicate that while the relative state of Indigenous welfare dependence has not changed significantly over thirty years, there has been an absolute increase in the number of people reliant on income support payments. These factors include a 33 per cent increase in the Indigenous population between 1991 and 1996; the resulting dramatic increase in the Indigenous working-age population and the number of households; the youthful Indigenous demographic profile; and the continued failure of mainstream employment opportunities to keep pace with Indigenous population growth (see Daly & Smith 1999; Ross 1999; Taylor & Hunter 1998; Tesfaghiorghis & Gray 1991). In light of these factors, it seems likely that Indigenous dependence on social security income support will continue, if not increase, in both absolute and relative terms, unless drastic action is taken (see Taylor & Hunter, Ch. 11, this volume).