Establishing trends in atsic regional council populations using census data: A cautionary note

This paper points out that limitations in official census data for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders draw into question the validity of trend analysis based on time series data for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) regional council areas. Accordingly, the meaningful application of projection techniques to estimate future population profiles using existing census data is severely restricted. Among the difficulties encountered in reconstructing council area populations are census boundary changes over time, changes in enumeration techniques and coverage, the problems posed by self-identification and associated population growth, and, in some cases, the difficulty of matching ATSIC regional council boundaries with census geography. Following discussion of these problems, detailed figures showing changes in the size of the Aboriginal and Islander populations and labour force in each council area are presented using 1976 as the base year. As expected, geographic patterns of population and labour-force change are difficult to discern and exact reasons for comparative growth or decline are impossible to determine. The paper concludes that reverse projections for regional council areas using 1991 Census data would provide a more reliable basis for establishing demographic trends. Although not entirely adequate, these reconstructions for ATSIC regional councils are the only estimates of these populations that have been undertaken to date.