Census maps richest, poorest areas in Australia

CANBERRA, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Coastal suburbs in the east and north of Sydney are the most affluent in Australia, while the 10 most disadvantaged areas are all located in Queensland and the Northern Territory (NT), according to the latest Australian census data which identifies the "richest" and "poorest" areas of the country.

Cherbourg, in Queensland, was nominated as the most disadvantaged Local Government Area (LGA), while Ku-ring-gai on Sydney's upper north shore was the wealthiest, according to a 2016 Census of Population and Housing released on Tuesday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

With a population of just 1,269, Cherbourg is located in an Aboriginal Shire approximately 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane. It is one of seven Queensland LGAs on the top 10 "most disadvantaged" list; the other three are situated in the NT.

Most of the towns listed were small, rural and remote. West Daly and Central Desert (Northern Territory) were the only two with a population of more than 3,000. Belyuen, with a population of just 164, was the third NT town on the list.

The list has been compiled from the ABS' Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas, which ranks areas in Australia according to relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage.

Ku-ring-gai on Sydney's upper north shore was identified as Australia's wealthiest LGA. Home to more than 118,000 residents on Census night in August 2016, the area was also found to be linguistically diverse, with Asian languages spoken in more than 18 percent of households, more than four times the national average.

Another Sydney LGA, Mosman, which includes the affluent suburbs of Balmoral, Beauty Point and Clifton Gardens, was also ranked among the richest.

The ABS data showed the 10 most advantaged LGAs in Australia were all located around the northern and eastern areas of Sydney Harbour and in coastal Perth, such as Cottesloe and Peppermint Grove.

It also signalled that people of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin are more likely to inhabit the less advantaged areas, with 48 percent living in the bottom fifth of the most disadvantaged LGAs, compared to 18 percent of non-Indigenous people.

Overall, only 5.4 percent of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people lived in "advantaged" areas, compared with 22 percent of non-Indigenous people. Enditem