Racism has recently been recognised in a number of key reports as a threat to public health in Australia. A range of health problems including high blood pressure and heart disease, depression, anxiety, low birth rate and premature birth can all be caused directly by people's personal experiences of racism.

There is an Indigenous health crisis in Australia, and there is something you can do about it because of all the causes of ill health in Indigenous Australians, everyone can do something about racism. Start by signing the pledge. Then take a look at the rest of the campaign: racism makes me sick.

Prior to the federal election last November, ANTaR promised that we would seek meetings with both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, to urge them to adopt a cross-party approach to the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Thank you for helping us to do this by making a donation and signing the Seven Steps for Justice pledge.

So ... how is the new government going?

On 21 June last year the then-Prime Minister, John Howard and Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough announced the Federal Government was seizing control of 60 remote Aboriginal communities in an attempt to overcome child abuse in the Northern Territory.

So dramatic was the Federal Government's intervention, that it prompted the Weekend Australian's Nicholas Rothwell to say that it ranks with the referendum of 1967, or the passage of land rights in the NT, as a turning point in Australian history.

In late June, we published an open letter to Morris Iemma and encouraged people to sign it online. While we are no longer asking people to add their name to the open letter publicly, we still encourage you to send this letter to Morris Iemma. Please let us know when you have sent it so we can keep track of the impact our collective action is having.

Morris Iemma MP
Premier of NSW
Parliament House
Macquarie St
Sydney NSW 2000

June 28, 2007

Dear Premier,

Funding Breaking the Silence could mean NSW leads in responding to the tragedy of child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities.

Open letter to The Hon. Mal Brough MP
Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Minister Brough

The undersigned organisations write this joint and open letter in order to convey our views on action required to stop the abuse of children in Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, and our concerns about aspects of the Australian Government’s response to this problem as outlined in your statement of 21 June 2007.

The New South Wales Government recently refused to fund a major new program to tackle child abuse in Aboriginal communities.

The program was developed in response to Breaking the Silence, a 300 page report on child abuse in Aboriginal communities commissioned by the Attorney General and written by a task force headed by Aboriginal leader, Marcia Ella-Duncan.

The report found that child abuse in Aboriginal communities had reached "epidemic proportions", with child sexual assault up to four times the rate of the general population.

The Government response makes sense, but the plans need to be funded. The NSW Government has refused to provide the funds because these are Aboriginal children at risk and so they don't think that enough voters will care.

Help us prove them wrong - take action today!

Indigenous Australians die 17 years earlier than non-Indigenous Australians and Indigenous infant mortality is three times that of non-Indigenous Australians. It is a national disgrace that Indigenous Australians do not have the same access to health services that other Australians enjoy.

We call on Australian governments to take action to achieve health equality for Indigenous Australians within 25 years through:

• increasing annual Indigenous health funding by $450 million to enable equal access to health services
• increasing Indigenous control and participation in the delivery of health services
• addressing critical social issues such as housing, education and self-determination which contribute to the Indigenous health crisis

Sign the Pledge.

Nowhere is justice for Aboriginal people in shorter supply than in the area of health.

For example, an Indigenous baby born today will live a life that is, on average, seventeen years shorter than a non-Aboriginal child’s. That child’s father has a 45% chance of dying before he’s 45 years old.

So bad is this situation that an average person in the developing countries of Nigeria and Bangladesh can expect to live ten years longer than an Indigenous person in the ‘developed world’ country of Australia.

Say Yes to Health Equality for Indigenous Australians (PDF 117k).

ANTaR is helping Indigenous Queensland workers fight for justice through its Stolen Wages campaign. Thousands of Aboriginal workers across several generations lost an estimated $500 million because of the Queensland Governments' negligence, through diverting withheld wages and other entitlements.