Aboriginal elder 'frustrated with white system' after court rejects his bid to access age pension three years early

Indigenous Australians have shorter life expectancies and encounter "unacceptable differences in health", the Federal Court says, but that does not entitle them to receive the age pension earlier than others.

His lawyers relied on Australian Bureau of Statistics figures that showed if Indigenous males reached the age of 65, they lived on average for a further 15.8 years. In contrast, 65-year-old non-Indigenous males had an average life expectancy of an extra 19 years. Today, a full bench of the Federal Court ruled the current system did not breach the Racial Discrimination Act.

"Based on the statistics, a randomly selected Aboriginal man will probably qualify for the pension for a shorter period than a randomly selected non-Aboriginal man of the same age.Elder says pension rules 'not a system of the land' Uncle Dennis's legal bid was backed by the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Human Rights Law Centre .

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