Life expectancy is not uniform across populations within Australia. An issue of particular public interest is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a much lower life expectancy than the general Australian population. Indigenous Australians born in the period 1996-2001 are estimated to have a life expectancy at birth of 59.4 years for males, and 64.8 years for females. This is approximately 16-17 years less than the overall Australian population born over the same period (ABS 2007 cat. no. 3302.0). The Australian Government has identified narrowing this differential in life expectancy as a priority in health policy.
Although these figures are only an estimate, Australia appears to compare poorly with other countries for Indigenous life expectancy at birth. For example, Registered Indians (Aboriginal people) in Canada have an estimated life expectancy of about 6-8 years below that of the non-Aboriginal population (Tjemka, M. 2002. Statistics Canada, cat. no. 82-003). In New Zealand, Maori life expectancy is 8-9 years below that of the non-Maori population (www.stats.govt.nz). Although comparing these very different populations is perhaps over-simplifying the situation, it does illustrate that the Australian Indigenous life expectancy gap between non-Indigenous persons is approximately twice as large as in comparable developed nations.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to accurately assess the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous persons. This is due to the fact that the population counts of Indigenous persons in Australia both over time and between jurisdictions is inaccurate, and that Indigenous persons are often undercounted when recording deaths. As a result, the Australian Indigenous life expectancy above is derived from an experimental calculation, and should be used only as an approximation. The ABS hopes to produce updated figures for the years 2001-2006 in late 2008. (ABS 2007 cat. no. 3302.0).