Closing the Gap: The critical targets going backwards

Of the 17 critical targets identified as part of Closing the Gap only four are being met, while nine are still not on track and the final four have gone backwards. FULL LIST

Of the 17 critical targets identified as part of Closing the Gap only four are being met, while the rates of Indigenous suicide, children in out-of-home care and adults in jail are going backwards.

Important improvements in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander preschool enrolments, employment rates, youth detention and land rights are being overshadowed by successive governments’ failures across other key measures.

Four targets are worse than before the Closing the Gap initiative was reformed under a national agreement in 2020, while nine — including life expectancy, birth weights, youth employment and housing overcrowding — are not on track to meet their goals by 2031.

One aim is to end the gap in life expectancy within one generation, but an Indigenous man today will live on average nine fewer years, while a woman will live eight years less, than their fellow Australians.

Another target is to have 55 per cent of Indigenous children deemed developmentally on track in early childhood, however as of 2021 that rate is only 34.3 per cent — a decline of 0.9 per cent since 2018.

Suicide deaths among Indigenous Australians increased from 25.1 per 100,000 people in 2018 to on average 27.1 as of 2021. This is about twice the rate of suicide among non-Indigenous people.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney. Picture: David Swift

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney acknowledged the failures to shift the dial on Closing the Gap targets despite renewed efforts to better consult and work with local communities.

“The reality is that approaches and ways of working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have not improved sufficiently since the introduction of the national agreement,” she said.

“There needs to be a greater focus on local solutions and listening to the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, particularly in identifying solutions that work at the grassroots level.”

Ms Burney said she believed the Albanese Government’s investment in key targets, including $150 million for water infrastructure, $111.7m to accelerate the building of remote housing and $38.4m to boost on-country education for students would have a positive impact on the targets.

Productivity Commissioner Michael Brennan has labelled successive governments’ inability to significantly improve targets to date a “failure,” saying both Labor and the Coalition have “not lived up to” the transformation promised by reforms agreed to in 2020.

After more than a decade of unmet targets, the priority reforms announced by the Morrison Government included sharing decisions with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives and better supporting community organisations to deliver and expand services.

In response to the Productivity Commission’s scathing review of the Closing the Gap progress released last month, Coalition of Peaks lead convener Patricia Turner said governments needed to do “much more” as results so far had been “patchy and not as intended”.

“We know the full implementation of the priority reforms is an ambitious, far-reaching agenda for governments, but that is what is needed if we are to make the changes to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so desperately needed,” she said.

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Originally published as Closing the Gap: The critical targets going backwards