SYDNEY: Aborigine Maisie Austin sits in the dirt under a tree hearing the grievances of aboriginal elders who have invited her to their "country" as she campaigns in the Northern Territory outback for Saturday's Australian elections.

Mainstream poll issues like economic management, national security and the Iraq war don't rate high in remote black settlements. The big issues in these shanties are poor health, overcrowded housing, substance abuse and domestic violence.

Australia's 400,000 Aborigines are the nation's most disadvantaged group, with a life expectancy 20 years less than white Australians. Black Senator Aden Ridge way was elected in 1998 to become only the second Aborigine to sit in the national parliament.

At this election around 16 indigenous candidates are standing, including Ridge way, hoping to give black Australia a greater political voice to end decades of inequality.

"Indigenous people realize they can have a say and it's time to stand and be counted," said Austin as she campaigned for the seat of Lingiari, Australia's biggest black electorate, covering 1.35 million sq km in the Northern Territory.

Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government and opposition Labour, running neck-and-neck in opinion polls, both promised to end the cycle of black despair when they launched their indigenous policies in Darwin, the Territory's capital.

Child mortality among Aborigines is 2.5 times higher than the rest of the population, only 38 per cent of aboriginal children complete school, unemployment is three times that faced by white workers and Aborigines make up 20 per cent of the jail population despite being only 2 per cent of the 20 million population.

BLACK DISTRUST: Black Australia distrusts Howard's 8-year-old government, charging it with dismantling racial reconciliation, especially with the axing in April of the country's main black body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).

Howard said the "experiment" in black-elected representation had failed, bringing little improvement in living standards despite ATSIC's expenditure of billions of dollars. Howard has also angered Aborigines by refusing to offer a government apology for past injustices since white settlers first landed in 1788. -Reuters