All reasonable Australians will agree that Aborigines should enjoy equivalent health care and life expectancy with that of other Australians wherever possible. If Kevin Rudd's administration is firmly commited to that, why do they need to sign declarations and guarantees? Those documents are political stunts that could easily backfire.

I seem to recall a previous Labour Prime Minister's guarantee that no Australian child would live in poverty by 1990. That guarantee was foolish because the manifold causes of poverty were never within the power of a federal government to eradicate. They amount mainly to failings and shortcomings within the people themselves. Simply throwing money at those people didn't help because it so often went on booze, smokes and gambling while children went bare-footed and hungry. Furthermore, the Labour party's insistance on lavishing those people with sympathy in order to secure their votes guaranteed that they would resist change, believing instead that increasing amounts of easy money flung their way was an entitlement. Hence, rather than freeing children from poverty, Bob Hawke succeeded only at sentencing far more children to it.

Likewise, it is doubtful whether Aborigines living the lives they do in remote communities can enjoy equivalent health benefits with the rest of Australians simply because their current lifestyles don't appear to allow for it. Dramatic changes need to occur within the people themselves. Do the government's new declarations mandate those changes? Obviously not.

I certainly hope to see dramatic improvement in the living standards, health standards and life expectancies of Aborigines. I agree with the spending of large amounts of money to help them, but I am mindful of the fact that vast amounts of money have already been spent, yet they remain in a dismal state. That suggests that there are roadblocks that cannot be removed by money alone. As with childhood poverty, those roadblocks may not be within the power of a federal government to remove.