Monday, October 17, 2011

Broome Council elections return majority Aboriginal council

My thanks to Lynne for this one.

As I have often remarked, it is quite hard keeping in touch across this vast land. Here I just wanted to record that the latest council elections at Broome saw the election of a majority of Aboriginal councillors for the first time.

For the benefit of international readers who won't understand the significance of this result, Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population represents a tiny (from memory, about 2.6%) and declining proportion of the Australian population. However, the relative distribution of that population is skewed so that the indigenous proportion is higher in particular places.

To my knowledge, this is the first time that those of indigenous ancestry have formed the majority of councillors in any major Australian centre. I think that that's of historical significance. 

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