White Australia has long held onto the paradigm that the Aborigines lived a primitive lifestyle before being saved by British colonisation—if only they would choose to assimilate into our civilised structures. While this was more recently emphasised by the comment from our Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs that pre-British Australia was unsettled, there is no lack of examples of modern leaders offering empty promises on Indigenous issues.

When we teach children about Aboriginal history and culture, the narrative is generally framed around didgeridoos and Dreamtime mythology which, while important, creates an image of cavemenesque primitives through the omission of the discussion of science.

The Aboriginal people were quite advanced astronomers. Wurdi Youang, a stone arrangement that may predate Stonehenge, maps the positions of the Sun during the equinoxes and solstices and, while Galileo was posing theories of tides being caused by the Earth’s rotation and revolution, the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land had created an association with the moon. While they may not have understood exactly how tides worked, the combination of evidence-based learning and detailed astronomy are in marked contrast to traditional understanding of the people.

When the first settlers colonised Australia, they encountered a land that had been modified to encourage the growth of ground-level plants, such as bush onions and potatoes, both for direct consumption and to promote grazing of marsupials. In fact, once the Aborigines had been moved on from land they had farmed for thousands of years, European “agricultural experts” were unable to maintain conditions suitable for sustaining animal life.

Rather than scientists and agricultural professionals, Indigenous Australians are typically represented as lazy drunks. Interestingly a study by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that Indigenous Australian’s are more likely than non-Indigenous people to abstain from alcohol. The report goes on to say that “the rates of chronic risky/high risk drinking were similar for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians”.

Despite the evidence, alcoholism is often used as reason not to hire Indigenous workers and having a Prime Minister that frames these people as lazy and unwilling to help themselves severely hinders the cause. Of course, it would be irresponsible to suggest that roadblocks to greater employment can by neatly summarised as racism. Issues such as poorer health and lower levels of education have often been sighted however these problems can only be sorted by providing an authentic investment of resources. In the same way that it is easier to cut foreign aid than show true economic courage, Indigenous issues are not politically attractive and it is simpler to leverage voter ignorance than start an investment that may not mature for a decade or more.

If our leaders really want to tackle this issue, they can start by changing perceptions in their own back yard. Maybe the Coalition could appoint an Indigenous woman to the front-bench and tackle two issues for the price of one.