Summary
Scope
This report presents information about the health and welfare of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. The information comes mainly from national surveys and censuses and from administrative collections of various State and Territory agencies. The intention is to present a broad picture at the national level and to supplement this where information on variation by region and by State or Territory is available.
Available data
The available data are limited by incomplete identification of Indigenous people in national administrative data collections. For example, reliable information on life expectancy and death is currently available only for Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. Queensland has only recently included Indigenous identification in its birth and death collections, and the quality of identification of Indigenous people in death collections remains a problem in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. The availability of reliable hospital statistics is also limited, although less is known about the quality of identification in these collections. Some data are not routinely collected at a national level, or are not available at all.