ABS (2004c) draws on the 2002 GSS to construct comparisons between the tenure profiles of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people aged 18 years and over. The findings are reproduced in Table 7.11, although I have left out the figures combining remote and non-remote Indigenous people on purpose. These seem to me to combine two such disparate groups (in terms of their housing tenure characteristics) that they actually obscure, rather than clarify, the situation. Perhaps more importantly, the non-indigenous estimates only refer to non-remote areas—that is, where the GSS was conducted.

Table 7.11 usefully reminds us that, whatever the differences between the housing characteristics of Indigenous people in remote and non-remote areas, the differences between Indigenous people in non-remote areas and non-Indigenous people are just as great. Only 12.4 per cent of Indigenous people aged 18 years or over in non-remote areas live in houses that are owned by an occupant, compared to 38.5 per cent of non-Indigenous people. And the percentages for living in houses that are being bought are 21.0 and 34.6 respectively. Conversely, Indigenous people in non-remote areas rely far more heavily than do non-Indigenous people on both government rental (24.4 per cent compared to 3.8 per cent) and other—mainly private—rental (29.8 per cent compared to 19.9 per cent). Meanwhile, the housing tenure characteristics of Indigenous people in remote areas are so different from those of non-Indigenous people as to not really bare comparison at all.

Source: ABS (2004c: Table 4)

Table 7.12 is again taken from ABS (2004c) and gives changes in the housing tenure characteristics of Indigenous adults from the 1994 NATSISS to the 2002 NATSISS. The biggest change is an 11.2 per cent drop in Indigenous people in government rental, from 33.3 to 22.1 per cent. This seems a surprisingly large drop, which needs further investigation. It probably reflects a quickly growing Aboriginal population at a time when the public housing stock is only growing very slowly or, relative to total housing stock, is perhaps in decline. However, it may also reflect some specific developments in Indigenous housing policy in particular States and Territories, where under recent inter-governmental agreements it is possible that some Indigenous-specific public rental housing is being reclassified as community rental, or at least new investment in Indigenous-specific housing is moving in this direction. This seems to me something that will be worthwhile looking into when the 2006 Census becomes available and we have a much larger set of data spanning 10 years and three time points which distinguishes between government, community and private rental. However, it can be noted in passing, in a preliminary fashion, that when measured by dwelling numbers, the proportion of Indigenous households in public housing does appear to have been dropping since 1986 (Sanders 1996: 108).

The other major changes over time evident in Table 7.12 are a 6 per cent increase in people in dwellings that are being bought, a 5.6 per cent increase in people in community rental dwellings and 4.6 per cent increase in people in other, mainly private, rental dwellings. I think all these changes in tenure percentages should be treated with some caution, not least because they could partly be explained by a significant drop in the proportion of people for whom no housing tenure information was obtained from the 1994 NATSISS (7.6%) compared to the 2002 NATSISS (3.8%). These ‘not stated’ figures are not given in ABS (2004c), but are calculated in the last line of Table 7.12 by simply subtracting from 100 the percentage sum of the tenures given. Again, I would argue that the 2006 Census should give us some greater ability to look more reliably at tenure changes among Indigenous people and households, at least back to 1996.

a. The difference between 1994 and 2002 is statistically significant at the 5% level.

Source: ABS (2004c: Table 6)