Two important points emerge from this census-based work. First, starting in 1970 through to 2001 inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient was very high by international standards, illustrating just how high the levels of inequality are that underlie the average figures presented in Table 1.1. Whiteford & van Seventer (2000) show that national Gini coefficients for the period 1975 to 1996 remained close to 0.68.