Stephen Hagan addresses UN conference

USQ academic and 2006 NAIDOC Indigenous Person of the Year Stephen Hagan has addressed a United Nations (UN) conference on Urban Indigenous Peoples and Migration in Santiago, Chile.

As Australia's sole representative, Mr Hagan was one of 26 expert guests who presented papers to UN and government officials.

'I was invited to go to Chile by UN Habitat to give a paper on the affects of urban migration on Indigenous people in Australia,' Mr Hagan said.

'It looked at why Indigenous people were moving in large numbers to cities from rural and remote areas.'

With urban migration causing major problems worldwide, Mr Hagan said that Indigenous Australians were facing similar issues.

'When Indigenous people abroad move from rural lands to the city a lot of the time there is no housing and they congregate in slum areas that have no electricity or running water.

'In Australia this also happens and I talked about the impact that the decline of the rural sector is having.

'When they move to the city, many of them are ill-equipped for the stresses of maintaining a family in an urban environment and are also restricted to labouring work due to their limited education history and often find themselves in the unemployment line at Centrelink.'

While there are no simple solutions, Mr Hagan called on the government to address the problem and help ease the suffering of homeless Indigenous people in city areas.

'The government needs to have better data and the best way to do that is by making changes to the census to include a component for expert Indigenous workers to quantify the number of homeless Indigenous people living in the cities,' he said.

'If the government can get that information then Indigenous leaders can ask for more funding for housing, employment and other essential services.'

Although Mr Hagan has spoken at conferences around the world, this was his first time in front of the UN.

'As an academic I am much wiser for the experience and I know first hand of the processes of the UN. It was a significant step for me.'

Following the success of Mr Hagan's trip to Chile, he has been approached by other UN delegates to speak at future conferences.

Media Contact: Josh Ada, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 1628