Though one might at times “have to reprove your fellow citizen,” the reading from the Book of Leviticus tells us not to bear “hatred for your brother or sister in your heart.” Instead, we are instructed to “love your neighbor as yourself.” A recent poll shows the white majority in Australia is losing sympathy for the plight of their neighbors, the Aborigines.

Days after the prime minister urged the country's indigenous people to take more control of their lives, the Australian Reconciliation Barometer survey, gauging relations between Aborigines and their mostly white counterparts, showed a drop in the number of people who considered the relationship important. In addition, white Australians increasingly blame Aborigines for their own problems.

Aborigines suffer disproportionately high rates of disease, imprisonment, unemployment, and alcohol and substance abuse and die on average 11 years earlier than other Australians.

While in the gospel Jesus encourages us to strive to “be perfect” in our relations with one another, the survey found that those who saw relations between Aborigines and other Australians to be poor outnumbered those who thought them good. Less than half thought things were improving.

More than eight out of 10 respondents among non-Aborigines said a lack of personal responsibility was to blame for the problems experienced by indigenous people. By contrast, most of the Aborigines surveyed said lack of respect and inadequate living conditions, poor access to health care and education, government failures, and discrimination all played a bigger role in their plight.

Australia's first inhabitants with cultures stretching back tens of thousands of years, Aborigines have gone from numbering about one million at the time of the white settlement to only 470,000, less than 2 percent of the Australian population. In 2008 the Australian government offered an apology to Aborigines for wrongs suffered since white settlement began in 1788.

An article by Agence France Presse