Indigenous leaders want benefits probe
18.12.2000



By: Tony Koch



MILLIONS of dollars in taxpayers' funds are said to be paid annually to hundreds of people who fraudulently claim they are of Aboriginal descent.
The claim was made yesterday by ATSIC deputy chairman Ray Robinson, who called for an inquiry aimed at identifying the people involved.
Mr Robinson said he estimated that up to 15 percent of all people who claimed Aboriginality were not of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander blood.
His call for an inquiry was joined by Democrats senator Aden Ridgeway. ``There needs to be a tightening of the acceptable definition of Aboriginality; and secondly, there is obviously a need for an inquiry to clean it up,'' Senator Ridgeway said.
``No inquiry should look at the amount of blood a person has to identify Aboriginality, because there are dangers in producing a caste system. It has to be looked at on the bases of self-identification as well as community identification and acceptance.''
Mr Robinson said that for many years people had complained about others who fraudulently claimed they were indigenous Australians.
``In recent years people have claimed Aboriginality because it suited them. There has to be a way in each community for Aboriginal people to establish who people really are and where they come from,'' he said.
``Perhaps we need an Aboriginal roll; but that would be like the Australia card.''
The Australian Bureau of Statistics predicted in its latest report that the nation's indigenous population would grow at an annual rate of 5.3 percent, reaching 649,000 in 2006.
The ABS report says the growth in indigenous population in recent decades cannot be explained by natural increase alone.
``Much of the unexplained growth can be attributed to an increasing prevalence of persons to be identified as indigenous on Census forms,'' the report states.
Last week The Courier-Mail revealed that more than 100 Queenslanders of Sri Lankan descent had received millions of dollars in concessional loans by falsely claiming to be Aborigines.
Aborigines in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay have complained that scores of descendants of the Appo family were not entitled to concessions received in the past 30 years.
Family members who claimed Aboriginality received Abstudy grants, home loans at 2 percent to 8 percent, business establishment loans, legal assistance and preference for university positions and jobs.
The Townsville District Court found last month that Allan Appo had failed to proved he was an Aboriginal person when he was charged with taking and keeping undersized and female mud crabs.
He had claimed he could do so because he was an Aboriginal person and could fish without restriction.
Challenges to various members of the Appo family have ended up in courtrooms over the past decade, and although one branch of the family is acknowledged as Aboriginal through marriages, others clearly are not.
Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Herron said he would be looking into the issue as a matter of urgency, and if an independent inquiry was warranted, he would consult ATSIC and order one.