The purpose of this book is to provide a survey of the available information on the economic status of Aborigines in Australia. It is true that a few economists (and in particular H. C. Coombs) have studied facets of the economic life of Aborigines in different parts of the country. And it is also true that historians and political scientists (such as G. Blainey and C. D. Rowley, to mention only two names) have vividly described the prehistory, history and contemporary history of the Aboriginal people, and in doing so have touched upon past and present economic issues. But in general there is a lack in the literature of an overall economic view of Australia's Aboriginal population. The closest attempt to a survey is a work which is now more than ten years old (Aborigines in the Economy (1966) eds. I. G. Sharp and C. M. Tatz) but in which only one of the twenty-four chapters (comprising conference papers) appears to have been written by a person described as a practising professional economist.

Economists in general have indeed seemed to shun the study of Aborigines in the Australian economy. For example, a widely-used text book in Australia (P. A. Samuelson, K. Hancock and R. Wallace (1970), Economics, 2nd Australian edn) dismisses the issue with these words (pp. 124–5): The position of the Aboriginals is undoubtedly worse that that of the American Negroes, but their numbers are smaller and the problem of Aboriginal poverty has to date been regarded as a problem more of social welfare than of economic policy'.