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UN official shocked at Indigenous housing conditions

Reporter: Nick Lucchinelli

8 August 2006 - ELEANOR HALL: A UN official who has been inspecting Australia's Indigenous communities says the housing situation there is amongst the worst he's seen in the world.

The UN Special Rapporteur, Milloon Kothari, is halfway through a special visit to Australia, as Nick Lucchinelli reports from Darwin.

NICK LUCCHINELLI: It's taken Milloon Kothari only eight days visiting Indigenous communities across the eastern seaboard and the Top End to condemn their standard.

MILLOON KOTHARI: These are some of the worst conditions I've seen around the world. And I think something urgently needs to be done about that.

NICK LUCCHINELLI: The United Nations Special Rapporteur is shocked at the slum-like conditions and believes they foster disease and disadvantage.

MILLOON KOTHARI: Lack of adequate shelter, lack of access to civic services, lack of access to sanitation, general neglect that I see when it comes to Indigenous people.

NICK LUCCHINELLI: At a conference in Darwin yesterday, Mr Kothari heard of the link between illnesses such as Rheumatic fever and overcrowded homes.

Sharon Payne from the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency also spoke on the link between poor housing and crime.

AHRON PAYNE: It's very hard to have security when you don't even have walls, without alone a door to lock.

NICK LUCCHINELLI: The Special Rapporteur will now make his way through Alice Springs, Adelaide and Bendigo, considering whether the Australian Government is meeting UN obligations on the right to adequate housing.

Milloon Kothari says there is evidence of Government action to address Indigenous disadvantage. But he's concerned about the thrust of housing policy and the politics behind it.

MILLOON KOTHARI: Layers of bureaucracy can also become an obstacle, and I think there has to be some rethinking about having national bodies. Again I'm still trying to understand what happened to ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission), for example, why it was disbanded, but you think you really need to have bodies where people feel that they have a direct voice and who will be able to look after their needs and their human rights.

NICK LUCCHINELLI: And he says Government subsidies and tax breaks aren't pitched at people suffering from housing crisis.

MILLOON KOTHARI: The kind of subsidies that are going into home ownership for the wealthy or the kind of tax breaks, I mean surely there is… even a small percentage of if it was redirected, not necessarily to giving direct subsidies to the poor but you could even have schemes where housing finance is available according to the incomes that people have.

NICK LUCCHINELLI: Recent headline grabbing stories about Indigenous affairs have been largely negative tales of sexual violence and a lack of law and order.

Sharon Payne hopes the Special Rapporteur's visit will shift the discussion back to housing and health.

SHARON PAYNE: In the '50s and '60s we had an incredible problem in Australia with cholera and the Government commitment was to clean that up. They didn't make it a condition that people sent their kids to school or that they didn't commit crime, they got in fixed it up and we've just about eradicated it from this country.

We really want the same kind of commitment from the Government for Indigenous people. Don't make it conditional on these other sort of peripheral matters, but actually get in there and fix it up.

ELEANOR HALL: Sharon Payne from the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency ending that report from Nick Lucchinelli.

Source:ABC

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