New directions in Indigenous service population estimation

Accurate assessments of the number of people who access goods or services in a particular location are crucial to the equitable allocation of resources and the delivery of services. In particular, Indigenous Australians are an important subpopulation for whom such estimates would be useful, given the high levels of Indigenous temporary mobility. The authors review previous estimates of service populations relevant to Indigenous Australians and find that there is no currently accepted method for quantification.The paper argues that any attempt to develop a single measure of service populations for all services at a place is likely to meet only limited success. Instead, service populations should be estimated on a service-by-service basis. It then gives a hypothetical example of how the Indigenous service populations of hospitals might be estimated using existing administrative data and a geographical approach. It concludes by arguing that access to key datasets remains the most important barrier to the estimation of Indigenous service populations.Authored by Francis Markham, Jess Bath, John Taylor and Bruce Doran

Equity, discrimination and remote policy: Investigating the centralization of remote service delivery in the Northern Territory

Two hypotheses have been advanced to explain the spatial patterning of service accessibility. The bureaucratic hypothesis holds that spatial inequalities are unpatterned and result from the application of decisions rules, while the competing political hypothesis suggests that politically-motivated decision making results in discriminatory outcomes. We use the example of the centralization of service provision in remote Indigenous communities in Australia's Northern Territory to show that these hypotheses may in fact be complementary. In recent years, government rhetoric about Australia's remote Indigenous communities has moved to focus on economic viability instead of social justice. One policy realization of this rhetoric has been the designation of ‘growth towns’ and ‘priority communities’ to act as service hubs for surrounding communities. The introduction of such hubs was examined and substantial inequality in access to service hubs was found. Inequality and overall system efficiency could be reduced with by optimizing the selection of hubs but the imposition of any hub-and-spoke mode in the study area was associated with racially-patterned patterned inequality of access. We conclude that when policy contexts are politically motivated, the application of racially-blind decision rules may result in raciallydiscriminatory spatial inequalities

An investigation of the spatial patterning of gambling-related harm and the total consumption theory of gambling

Gambling is an important public health issue in Australia. According to recent estimates, gambling-related harm is the third largest contributor to the burden of disability in the state of Victoria, measured in terms of disability-adjusted life years. The gambling product most associated with gambling-related harm in Australia is the electronic gaming machine (EGM), which accounts for over half of all Australian gambling expenditure. Around 30 per cent of weekly EGM gamblers experience moderate or severe adverse impacts from their gambling. This thesis consists of six studies on the spatial distribution of the impacts of electronic gaming machines (EGMs) and the relationship between EGM losses and problem gambling. All have been published or were accepted for publication in peer-reviewed academic journals at the time of submission. Jointly, these studies developed theoretical and methodological tools to advance the production of small area estimates of gambling-related harm, as well as beginning the exploration of its consequences. The six studies in this thesis can be grouped into three inter-linked themes that contribute to this aim in different ways. Two studies are concerned with developing the applied and methodological tools for investigating the spatial distribution of problem gambling. The first of these studies presents a calibrated Huff model of the spatial behaviour of gamblers. The second of these uses the Huff model to refine spatial microsimulation derived small area estimates of the prevalence of problem gambling. Together, they provide a toolkit for estimating the local impacts of EGMs. Three studies provide the theoretical underpinning of the thesis by investigating the relationship between gambling losses and problem gambling at the scales of the individual, the EGM venue and state or territory. In order to develop the methods for investigating the spatial distribution of problem gambling, a sustained engagement was required with Total Consumption Theory in the context of gambling. These studies find a consistent relationship between EGM losses and the risk of harm at all spatial scales. At the scale of the individual, there is no evidence to support a J-shaped dose-response relationship, meaning that risk of gambling problems increases monotonically with money lost. A final study estimates the spatio-temporal correlation between EGM accessibility and a single gambling-related harm, domestic violence. Whereas research in the earlier phases of this project sought to estimate the distribution of ‘problem gambling’ as an outcome measure, phase four seeks to measure the relationship between EGM accessibility and specific gambling-related harms directly. In this instance, the spatial association between EGMs and police-recorded domestic violence incidents is investigated in Victorian postcodes over a ten-year period. A significant spatio-temporal association between these two variables is found, providing evidence of a link between EGM gambling and violence. This study concludes that future research might usefully explore the spatio-temporal co-occurrence of EGM gambling and specific gambling-related harms to better understand the social and health impacts of EGM gambling. The research developed in this thesis has contributed toward bringing knowledge of the geography of the impacts of EGMs closer to that of cognate public health issues. While Total Consumption Theory was developed in the context of gambling to underpin the production of local area estimates that incorporate gambling consumption as a risk factor, the findings in this section have broader implications for gambling regulation. More broadly, the approaches developed in this thesis and the research findings have the potential to contribute to improving the regulation of EGMs and thereby reduce the incidence of gambling-related harms

“Big Gambling”: the rise of the global industry-state gambling complex

Globa1 commercial gambling has grown to be an industry of remarkable size and power. Over the past decade, gambling losses have risen from approximately $250 billion USD in 2003 to$450 billion in 2013 (The Economist, 2014). No longer gambling is low-key and small-scale, the differentiated expression of local cultures {Binde, 2005). It is a global economic project, one central to the liberalisation of markets associated with the emergence of the international consumer society (Reith, 2013)

Submission to the Senate Select Committee Inquiry into the Future of Work and Workers

We are pleased to provide some input to the deliberations of the Senate Select Committee on the Future of Work and Workers that is examining the impact of technological and other change on the future of work and workers in Australia. We do so coming from academic backgrounds in economic anthropology and economic geography, respectively; we have both lived and worked in remote Australia, mainly with Indigenous people; and we were and are strong advocates for the now defunct Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme and for the urgent need to consider Basic Income (BI) options in situations where there is no or very limited mainstream labour market opportunities

Income, Poverty and Inequality

This paper uses data from the 2006, 2011 and 2016 censuses to analyse the distribution of income within the Indigenous population, and between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. Particular attention is given to geographic variation in Indigenous income, poverty and inequality. The findings of this paper show a growing divergence between the incomes of Indigenous people in urban areas and remote areas. Although Indigenous incomes are growing steadily in urban areas, where median disposable equivalised household income rose by $57 per week in real terms between 2011 and 2016, median disposable equivalised household income in very remote areas fell by$12 per week over the same period. Indigenous cash poverty rates in very remote areas rose from 46.9% in 2011 to 53.4% in 2016. During this period, poverty rates in urban areas continued to fall, reaching 24.4% in 2016. Finally, changes in the difference in the incomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians followed a similar pattern, with income gaps shrinking in urban areas while growing rapidly in very remote areas. Although the increased incomes in urban and regional areas � where the majority of the Indigenous population lives � should be welcomed, this paper highlights a great divergence in the material circumstances of the Indigenous population across Australia. Urgent policy action is required to ameliorate the growing prevalence of poverty among Indigenous people in very remote AustraliaFunding for this project was provided by the Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Indigenous identification change between 2011 and 2016: evidence from the Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset

Growth in the Indigenous population between the 2011 and 2016 Censuses was much faster than would be predicted by our best estimates of fertility and mortality. Part of this faster than projected growth came from a larger number of people who identified as Indigenous in 2016 but not in 2011, compared to those who identified as Indigenous in 2011 but not 2016. That is, there was a net increase in the population due to identification change. In this paper, we use a new dataset – the Australian Census Longitudinal Database – to analyse the characteristics of this identification change, as well as the implications for our understanding of changes in socioeconomic outcomes

Indigenous Population change in the 2016 Census

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the changing size and spatial distribution of the Indigenous population of Australia, comparing the results of the 2011 and 2016 censuses. The paper summarises five key aspects of the intercensal change: - the growth in the estimated population of Indigenous Australians - the changing geographic distribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - the growth in the number of census records with indeterminate Indigenous status - the spatial mismatch between demographic projections from the 2011 Census and 2016 Census counts - the potential for identification change to confound changes in socioeconomic outcomes. We show that the Indigenous population grew rapidly between 2011 and 2016, reaching around 3.3% of the total population estimate, or 798 381 people. This was most likely due to a combination of natural increase and changing patterns of identification. Both aspects of growth were concentrated in more urban parts of the country, especially coastal New South Wales and southeast Queensland. We suggest that care needs to be taken when interpreting Indigenous population change between 2011 and 2016, because of both unexplained population growth and a substantial increase in the number of census records with no answer to the Indigenous status question. In particular, we suggest that identification change may lead to an apparent convergence in the outcomes between the observed Indigenous and observed non-Indigenous populations through time, without there necessarily being any improvement in the life circumstances of individual Indigenous Australians.Funding for this project was provided by the Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Commentary on Dowling et al. (2016): Is it time to stop conducting problem gambling prevalence studies?

The dual-frame survey conducted by Dowling and colleagues should cause gambling researchers to re-evaluate the scientific value of routinely conducting problem gambling prevalence studies. A better use of resources would support research designed to reduce the incidence of gambling-related harm rather than perpetuate its ongoing mismeasurement.F.M. is supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award