Is encouraging indigenous home ownership the answer to poverty?
Provisions in today’s Budget are expected to result in cheap home loans for Indigenous Australians. The Australian has reported that under the home ownership scheme, $54 million will be used to offer interest rates as low as 4.5 per cent to those people willing to buy homes on communal land. Otherwise known as individual land tenure, the so-called “community homes” are part of the Federal Government’s long-term aim to break the cycle of poverty in remote Aboriginal communities. However some commentators, including Associate Professor Craig Jones, the Director of James Cook University’s Native Title Studies Centre, see it is as a band-aid solution with little benefit to Australia’s Indigenous people. Andrew Hewett, Executive Director of Oxfam Australia also remains concerned about what impact the new policy will have.