Anmatjere through the Census: Profiling an arid zone region
Anmatjere through the Census: Profiling an arid zone region Report
DKCRC Working Paper
- Author(s): Sanders, W
- Published: 2009
- Publisher: Desert Knowledge CRC
- Volume: 64
Abstract: Anmatjere is a non-urban, arid zone region of the Northern Territory which sits astride the Stuart Highway, about 200 kilometres north of Alice Springs and 300 kilometres south of Tennant Creek. For the past four years, my colleague Sarah Holcombe and I have undertaken research with the local government in the area, the Anmatjere Community Government Council (ACGC) (Sanders 2008a). The aim of this paper is to use Census data, publicly available through the website of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), to provide a simple statistical profile of the Anmatjere region. The paper also draws on general knowledge gleaned from working in the area over the last four years and from other work observing the Census collection (Martin et al. 2002, Morphy 2007). However, the basic research question that guides the paper is simply this: can publicly available Census statistics in 2008 provide a useful characterisation of a relatively small and remote arid zone region such as Anmatjere? The paper is in some sense then, simply an exercise in seeing how far available ABS statistics can take us in profiling an arid zone region. The paper begins by identifying some data relating to the individual Census Collection Districts (CDs) that make up the Anmatjere region. It then focuses primarily on the group of CDs that have made up the ACGC local government area in recent years, drawing primarily from the 2006 Census but also looking back to the 2001 and 1996 Censuses. The paper looks at comparisons between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in the ACGC area in 2006 and also pays some minor attention to one rather different CD in the Anmatjere region which has been outside the ACGC local government area. This distinction between CDs that have been inside and outside the ACGC local government area is now, however, becoming part of history; as from July 2008 as a result of local government restructuring in the Northern Territory, all these CDs have now become part of the Anmatjere ward of the new Central Desert Shire. While Census profiles of Anmatjere may, as a consequence of this local government restructuring, look somewhat different in the future, it is I think still useful to understand those of the recent past. These past Census profiles tell us quite a lot about the demography and socioeconomic geography of the Anmatjere region, and also something about the local government reform process that is currently underway. This reform process, the paper will argue, is currently pushing into the local government system some non- Aboriginal interests, such as those of pastoralists, horticulturalists and roadhouse owners, who hold title to most of the Anmatjere region’s land area but are only a small proportion of its population.
- Urls: http://www.nintione.com.au/resource/DKCRC-Working-paper-64_Anmatjere-Profile.pdf
- Publisher Location: Alice Springs
- Keywords: demography