[Marguerite]

I just want to speak from an Australian perspective and a similar issue people seem to have here.

People seem to get very aggrivated about the so called 'special benefits' indigenous Australians get from the government. This is pretty ridiculous as there is no real 'special benefit' you get from the government for being Aboriginal, it is the same welfare payments you would get if you were white... the only real difference is education payments but I'll get to that in a minute.

People say things like 'If you're Aboriginal you get free healthcare!' or 'If you're Aboriginal they pay you to go to school'! This is beyond ridiculous as we have free healthcare anyway and all get paid for going to school, if we are eligable.

To explain that last point, I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in Australia we have this thing called 'Youth Allowence'. If your parents earn under a certain amount (I think it's $50,000?) the government gives you welfare payments to continue studying. When I was under 18 it was $200 a fortnight but now I am 18 it is $250. If I moved away from home it would be $380 a fortnight. If you're over 25 and still studying you get a similar thing called Austudy, and if you're Aboriginal you get a different payment called Abstudy which is basically the same thing (I think the difference is that it doesn't depend on your families income, you get it no matter what your socio-economic situation is).

I've even heard that if you're Aboriginal the government gives you free cars.

But the one thing people seem to get really worked up about is University admission. As I've been applying this year, I have noticed that there are a hell of a lot of scholarships aimed at helping indigenous students get into school. There are special considerations (as an indigenous student it's likely that you'd probably get away with having a lower ATAR score than a non-indigenous student). People seem to think this is completely unfair. But nobody asks WHY these things are in place.

It's not because the government wants to screw over white people. The fact is that simply being born white means your much more likely to get into university than any indigenous person, so complaining that you are at a disadvantage because your not Aboriginal (or a Torres Straight Islander) is pretty ridiculous. The scholarship programme for indigenous students isn't there to give them an advantage over non-indigenous students, it's there to level the playing field.

Here's a few statistics for you:

The median weekly income for indigenous Australians is just over half that of non indigenous Australians.

The total indigenous population in the wider community is 2.3%, but make up 24% of the prison population.

Non-indigenous Australians live, on average, 17 years longer than indigenous Australians.

More importantly, when it comes to this issue, only 24% of indigenous Australian have completed year 12. This number goes down the further away from urban areas... only 14% of Aboriginals in remote communities had completed year 12 (these numbers exclude people currently at school).

(these are statistics from the 2006 census).


So saying that considering if someone is indigenous in university application is 'unfair' or 'discriminatory' is pretty ignorant of the reality of the situation. This may have absolutely nothing to do with what you're talking about because I have no idea of the circumstances of the policy the people are protesting in your article. However I do think there are probably similarities in some areas... I don't think it's wrong to offer these kinds of scholarships and consider ethnicity when accepting students to university if it means leveling the playing field and giving everyone an equal opportunity. I think that last thing is probably what people get angry about because they think it's doing the opposite- putting white middle class students at a disadvantage. I don't agree, I think it's just an attempt to make things a little fairer. People who complain that because they're white they at some sort of major disadvantage... it just makes me roll my eyes. And I say this as someone who is white.