Examining Social Inequality and Disparities in Australia

This essay examines social inequality in Australia, focusing on the disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous populations. It highlights issues such as lack of education leading to employment gaps, shorter life expectancies, and lower mortality rates among indigenous Australians. The essay discusses the concentration of wealth, spatial inequality in access to resources like drinking water, healthcare, and education, and the decline in educational quality. Unemployment rates and differences in public versus private sector wages are also explored. Furthermore, the essay addresses racism, social barriers faced by indigenous Australians, and the government's approach to these inequalities. The conclusion emphasizes the government's role in providing equal resources and services to all Australians, regardless of their background. The essay references key academic sources to support its arguments.

Running Head: SOCIAL WORK
SOCIAL WORK

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Australia has always been on the news because of their social inequality between the
indigenous and the non-indigenous people living in the country. Some of the important points
that came out on this particular matter are lack of education among the people is resulting in lack
of employment, shorter life expectancy and even lower mortality rate. The highest earning group
of the country lives in almost close proximity with the lower 20% of the country’s population.
The highest 20% of the rich class almost has two third of the wealth of Australia (Randolph &
Tice, 2017). This is primarily because of the tremendous amount of wealth that has been stored
by the native Australian where as people from the other countries are finding it very difficult to
even get a decent job.
Australia has been also an example of spatial inequality where the wealth and services are
not equally distributed among all the communities equally. There are areas in Australia where
they are lacking basic drinking water, health care facilities and even education. Though the
government is spending much more on education and infrastructures the quality of education has
been constantly deteriorating. The average result of the students has also gone down a lot
resulting in the decline in the educational condition of the country. All this lead to an extreme
unemployment state in the country and about 9.3% is presently unemployed (Renzaho, Polonsky,
Mellor & Cyril 2016). On average, it is seen that one male out of five in their prime age doesn't
have a job. The differences in the public and the private sector of work are quite remarkable. The
public sector offers higher wages to their employees as compared to the private sector. Even the
job security in the public sector is there but it is nearly impossible for the immigrants to get work
in the public sector and most of them are somewhat forced to work for the private sectors getting
considerably low wages.
The indigenous Australian's have to face a great deal of racism and social barriers for
centuries. The lack of social acceptance of the people coming from other parts of the world has
resulted in limited access to health care and this result is proved by the fact of almost 20 years
gap in life expectancy between the aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islanders (Mithen, Aitken,
Ziersch & Kavanagh 2015). The behaviour of the government is also rational towards the native
states and there are many instances that show out the difference. One of the infamous cases was
when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders received funds from the government. It was
criticized tremendously and they were blamed that they were getting undue advantage from the

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government while there are other states living below the poverty line in Australia. Basically, it
totally lies in the government of Australia to fight with the inequalities and try to provide the
same amount of resources and services to all the people of Australia irrespective of their race,
gender or state from where they belong.

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References
Mithen, J., Aitken, Z., Ziersch, A., & Kavanagh, A. M. (2015). Inequalities in social capital and
health between people with and without disabilities. Social Science & Medicine, 126, 26-
35.
Randolph, B., & Tice, A. (2017). Relocating disadvantage in five Australian cities: socio-spatial
polarisation under neo-liberalism. Urban policy and research, 35(2), 103-121.
Renzaho, A., Polonsky, M., Mellor, D., & Cyril, S. (2016). Addressing migration-related social
and health inequalities in Australia: call for research funding priorities to recognise the
needs of migrant populations. Australian Health Review, 40(1), 3-10.