referendum has been the benefits of counting all Indigenous Australians flowing from the removal of counting "aboriginal natives" ("full-blood") in the official population statistics. Without official statistics as to their number, age structure or distribution, it was not possible for government agencies to establish soundly-based policies for serving Indigenous Australians, especially in the area of health. The availability of demographic data following the 1971 census (and onwards) relating to Indigenous Australians enabled the determination and monitoring of key health indicators such as infant mortality rates and life expectancy. Indigenous Australians life expectancy, especially for males, was significantly lower than the average population. Infant mortality rates in the early 1970s were among the highest in the world. Substantial improvements had occurred by the early 1990s but Indigenous Australians health indicators still lag behind those of the total population, especially for those living in remote areas. The Close the Gap campaign highlighted these deficits, and the federal government developed its Closing the Gap strategy to address these and other issues. Negative application of "race power" When John Howard's Coalition government came to power in 1996, it intervened in the Hindmarsh Island bridge controversy in South Australia with legislation that introduced an exception to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984, to allow the bridge to proceed. The Ngarrindjeri challenged the new legislation in the High Court on the basis that it was discriminatory to declare that the Heritage Protection Act applied to sites everywhere but Hindmarsh Island, and that such discrimination – essentially on the basis of race – had been disallowed since the Commonwealth was granted the power to make laws with respect to the "Aboriginal race" as a result of the 1967 Referendum. The High Court decided, by a majority, that the amended s.51(xxvi) of the Constitution still did not restrict the Commonwealth parliament to making laws solely for the benefit of any particular "race", but still empowered the parliament to make laws that were to the detriment of any race. This decision effectively meant that those people who had believed that they were casting a vote against negative discrimination towards Indigenous people in 1967 had, in fact, allowed the Commonwealth to participate in the discrimination against Indigenous people which had been practised by the States. See also Council for Aboriginal Rights History of Australia Politics of Australia Referendums in Australia Voting rights of Aboriginal and Torres