Qld has highest homeless rate in Australia

The figures show more than 26,000 people were living on the streets in Qld in 2006.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show Queensland has the highest homeless population in Australia.

The figures show more than 26,000 people were living on the streets in Queensland in 2006.

Mission Australia spokesman Tony Stevenson says thousands more are homeless now.

The ABS report shows 105,000 Australians were homeless on Census night in 2006.

He says rapid urban sprawl has reduced the amount of affordable housing across the state.

Caravan parks were one source of affordable housing for many people and that is now not available.

Mr Stevenson says increasing rent prices in mining towns like Mackay and Mount Isa are also forcing people out of their homes.

"There are lots of rural and regional towns that have now become absolutely unaffordable to people who have traditionally lived in those communities," he said.

The report shows the Queensland's homeless population rose by 2,000 in five years and that more than half of Australia's homeless are under 24 years of age.

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Indigenous population hits 500,000

Population mark: An ANU expert says the Indigenous population is back to 1788 levels.

New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics say Australia's Indigenous population has reached 500,000, or 2.5 per cent of the total population.

John Taylor from the Australian National University says the increasing population is partly due to a high Indigenous birth rate.

But he also says the Indigenous population is increasing because more people are willing to identify themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.

"The lower end of estimates of population of the continent in 1788 was half a million. So you could look at this, in a way, as saying we've arrived back at the beginning, so to speak," he said.

Last Aboriginal massacre remembered 80 years on

A bloody part of central Australia's history will be remembered today as a plaque is unveiled to commemorate the last recorded massacre of Aboriginal people.

The violence was sparked 80 years ago, when a dingo trapper was killed by a Warlpiri man, 350 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs, sparking a series of reprisal killings.

It is believed Fred Brooks was killed by the Warlpiri man for stealing his wife and not paying him his rations.

Thirty people were killed in the 1928 Coniston massacre across six sites north-west of Alice Springs, although unofficial numbers claim a much higher toll.

Descendants from both sides of the conflict are expected at Baxter's Well, east of Willowra, for a remembrance ceremony.

Jeannie Herbert, a Warlpiri interpreter who has researched the massacre, says people still talk about the 1928 massacre as if it happened yesterday.

"It is really, really painful to remember. Many of our people were killed and nobody has really listened to them," she said.

She says the unveiling of the plaque is an important time to remember the dead.

"We'd all like to go there to that commemoration area, we'd like to go there," she said.

"My family's at Willowra from my grandfather and grandmother's people.

"We really want to help our people, to educate them and maybe to remember the Coniston massacre."

Indigenous prisoner numbers on the rise: report


Indigenous people make up 28 per cent of the prison population.

A new report reveals a rise in the number of Indigenous people being jailed since the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody 20 years ago.

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies says in 1989, Indigenous people made up 14 per cent of the prison population.

That figure has now risen to about 28 per cent, although the number of deaths in custody has fallen. [What was it anyway? And fallen by how much do you say? Problem with the ink?]

The Institute's Steve Larkin says researchers are now trying to pin-point the reasons for the rising rate of imprisonment.

"When people don't have good health, when people are living in poverty, when people don't have access to a good education, don't have good employment outcomes, there seems to be a strong correlation between those sorts of factors and high rates of incarceration and offending," he said.

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The amount first home buyers borrowed to make their housing purchase doubled in the 10 years to 2005-06, new statistics show.

The average loan per household rose to $213,000, according to the latest Australian Social Trends.

During the same period, the average value of first-buyer homes rose to $310,000.

But the proportion of first home buyers purchasing new houses fell to 14 per cent, from 23 per cent.

More popular were townhouses and apartments which made up 27 per cent of purchases, up from 15 per cent.

Over the past decade, a slightly higher proportion of Australian households rented their homes (28.5 per cent), up 1.5 per cent.

And perhaps not surprisingly, they moved around a lot more than owner occupiers.

More than a third of all renters had changed address in the past year, three times the rate of their occupiers.

But the profile of renters varied substantially with age, with the average age of renters being 37 years, 15 years younger than the median age for owner occupied households.

And the decision to rent rather than own mattered a lot if the household had a sole parent.

Sixty per cent of lone parent households with dependent children were renting, almost three times the rate of couples with dependent children. The ABS says this reflected relatively lower incomes for single parent families.

Nearly 30 per cent of households were renting their homes and the biggest renting age group was 35- to 44-year-olds.

The majority of renters were young adults and low-income families.

Australia's growing ... except for NSW

Australia is growing steadily, its cities are growing faster than country regions, but NSW continues to lose its population faster than any other state.

Australians also like to volunteer their services, with one in five adults undertaking a voluntary task each fortnight, and they're more likely to volunteer if they're healthy.

And they're more likely to have visited a naturopath, acupuncurist or chiropractor over the past few decades.

While the number of alternative health practitioners had almost doubled since 1996 top 8600, visits have increased by 50 per cent to around three quarters of a million in the same period. Almost a quarter of a million people had visited an alternative health practitioner in a sample two- week period.

Welcome to Australian Social Trends, the annual snapshot of national life produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The survey is drawn from a mass of data - some of it already published but much unpublished - taken from the five-yearly ABS census and aimed at looking at contemporary social issues and areas which concern public policy makers.

Over the past decade, the nation swelled by 2.5 million people to 21 million by June 2007, with the greatest increase in population - 315,700 - happening in the past year. It's expected to reach 28 million by the middle of the century.

Public transport is becoming a more familiar way for adults to get to work, but it's still a minority of citizens who use buses, trains and trams. Nineteen per cent of city-based workers now use public transport daily, compared to 16 per cent a decade ago.

And internet access at home has ballooned over the past decade, with just under two thirds (64 per cent) of households with access, up from 16 per cent in 1998.

"Some government services, such as E-tax, child support and a range of Medicare functions, are now available online," according to the ABS.

"News services, internet shopping, and personal communications such as email, instant messaging and social networking sites are also increasingly a feature of people's daily lives."

While it's predominantly a younger age group which uses the internet at home, there have been significant increases in people aged over 55 using the internet.

In 2004, around 40 per cent of people aged between 55 and 64 used the internet, but within two years the takeup rate had lifted to 55 per cent.

Poor at higher risk of death: study

New research shows that lower socioeconomic status is a major factor in the long-term survival of people who have spent time in hospital with a critical illness.

The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, analysed 15,000 patients who had been admitted to intensive care units in Western Australia.

Doctor Kwok Ho from Royal Perth Hospital says the report found being poor was the single biggest factor in determining whether patients would survive after their release from hospital.

He says lower socioeconomic status was more of a detrimental influence on the outcome than many other factors, including age.

He said one explanation could be because that group could not afford to get specialist medical care.

But he says other lifestyle factors such as smoking or possible drug use might also be to blame, and more should be done to improve the long-term outcomes of patients.

Every 2nd family nuclear in NSW

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) says the proportion of people living in a nuclear family has dropped to less than half of the New South Wales population.

The number of couples with dependant children has dropped to 48 per cent of 1.9 million families in NSW.

The statistical snapshot of NSW shows couples without children have risen to 37 per cent.

Lone person households are now more than a quarter of all homes. The ABS says that trend is partly fuelled by an ageing population.

Fourteen per cent of the general population are now over 65 years of age. In stark contrast, people over the age of 65 make up just 3 per cent of the Indigenous population.

The Bureau of Statistics says just under one in three Australians now live in NSW, even though the birth rate continues to decline.

Migration is the single biggest contributor to the state's population rising to 6.89 million.

But people in NSW have to pay the country's highest housing costs and the state's economic growth is slower than that of the national economy.

The state recorded a growth rate of 1.8 per cent between 2006 and 2007.

Unemployment has dropped substantially between 1988 and 2008, while household income has risen by 17 per cent in the last five years.