Renowned economist Helen Hughes brings her many years of development experience to bear on an analysis of the reasons for the appalling standard of living in Australia’s remote Aboriginal communities, and she argues passionately for a radical and wide-ranging reform program to improve Aboriginal lives. Her powerful case is augmented by her anger arising from personal experience among the people of these remote communities.

Hughes presents the case that the well-intentioned but separatist policies of the last thirty years have failed Australian Aborigines, as they have other Indigenous communities worldwide. In particular, she contends that a lack of resources that other Australians take for granted has led to endemic welfare dependency, drug abuse, and violence. She maintains that indigenous people have the same needs, and respond to the same economic and social incentives, as all people everywhere and that separate programs for Aboriginals are not only "reverse racism" but entrench discriminatory practices.

The bulk of the book is an unflinching depiction and analysis of conditions in remote Aboriginal communities, covering: substance abuse, violence, and the law; how common land is (badly) administered; land and property rights; joblessness and incomes; education; health; and housing. Hughes also highlights isolated success stories and discusses why these programs are working where others have failed. She concludes with a blueprint for reform that, with political will, she asserts would take the "Aboriginal problem" out of the "too-hard basket" and create a decent future for current and future generations of Aboriginals.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Introduction
CHAPTER 2: Historical background
CHAPTER 3: Demographic trends
CHAPTER 4: Security and the law
CHAPTER 5: Land rights and land councils
CHAPTER 6: Property rights and communal enterprises
CHAPTER 7: Joblessness, welfare dependence and income distribution
CHAPTER 8: Education
CHAPTER 9: Health and life expectancy
CHAPTER 10: Housing
CHAPTER 11: Local government
CHAPTER 12: Hyperbole or reality?
CHAPTER 13: A progress report card
CHAPTER 14: Communities helping themselves
CHAPTER 15: Way ahead for the "homelands"
References
Endnotes
Index

"Sometimes new eyes are best and Helen Hughes, a development economist of international distinction, turns her unsentimental gaze on remote Australia with startling effect. She makes mincemeat of the incongruities in existing arrangements and chronicles the tragedy of good intentions that has produced today’s pattern of corruption and maladministration. But the most intriguing aspect of her slender book is its tone. Hughes is angry. She still has the capacity for outrage that has long since leached from the grief-stricken groves of academe, where the puzzling failure of remote Australia to thrive is regarded as one of those depressingly inevitable consequences of colonial history."

-- Nicholas Rothwell, The Weekend Australian Review, June 30-July 1, 2007