Australia Yearbook - 2001

318 Year Book Australia 2001
Housing in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities
This article uses information from the 1999
Community Housing and Infrastructure Needs
Survey (CHINS), conducted by the ABS on
behalf of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission (ATSIC). 1 It describes the
housing circumstances of people living in
discrete Indigenous communities located in
remote parts of Australia.
A discrete Indigenous community is defined as a
geographic location, bounded by physical
boundaries, and inhabited or intended to be
inhabited predominantly by Indigenous people.
The remoteness of a community was measured
using the Accessibility/Remoteness Index of
Australia (ARIA), and represents a generic
measure of the relative degree of remoteness of
all parts of non-metropolitan Australia. 2 This
produces an index, based on road distance to
service centres, which has been grouped into
five categories, from highly accessible to very
remote. In this article ‘remote’ has been defined
as a combination of the ARIA categories remote
and very remote, and the five ARIA categories
have been reduced to four (see map 8.20 and its
key below).
8.20 ACCESSIBLE AND REMOTE AREAS OF AUSTRALIA
DARWIN
BRISBANE
PERTH
SYDNEY
ADELAIDE
CANBERRA
ARIA Score
5.80 or more (remote/very remote)
3.51 to 5.80 (moderately accessible)
1.84 to 3.51 (accessible)
Less than 1.84 (highly accessible)
MELBOURNE
HOBART
Source: Australian Social Trends, 2000 (4102.0).