Closing the Gap is stalled, drifting

With the distracting voice referendum out of the way it is time to get on with the real work on closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life outcomes. Responding to the budget, the Coalition of Peaks, representing more than 80 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community organisations, reminds us of the Productivity Commission’s February report that found governments are failing to meet their commitments under the 2020 National Agreement on Closing the Gap. This is because officials make policy for, but not with, Aboriginal community-controlled organisations that know the services and ways to deliver them their communities need.

The federal budget illustrates the issue. Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney announced a range of programs, some of which commit relatively small amounts of money to deep and long-term community problems, which may not make a lasting difference but certainly will give government ministers and MPs something to point to. But Ms Burney’s announcement focuses on much-needed big-ticket spending, “practical measures” that “will accelerate progress to close the gap”. There is $4bn to build up to 270 houses each year across 10 years in the Northern Territory and nearly $775m for remote jobs and economic development. “These practical measures will accelerate progress to close the gap,” the budget announcement states.

Or won’t, if their delivery is like the seemingly endless array of failed initiatives down the decades that ignored the circumstances and cultures of Indigenous Australians. As the Productivity Commission warned in its Closing the Gap report, “there has been no systematic approach to determining what strategies need to be implemented to disrupt business-as-usual of governments. What is needed is a paradigm shift”. The way to do it is set out in the Closing the Gap agreement adopted by all Australian governments. Its prime directive is for formal partnerships between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ chosen representative, with agreed joint decision-making roles and responsibilities. The Closing the Gap agreement set out specific priorities: Indigenous people’s interaction with police and courts, housing, mental health, early childhood care and the use of Indigenous language. They are all areas for action that can be undertaken effectively only at community level, for and by Indigenous Australians working with, not responding to, government. But the Coalition of Peaks tells Paige Taylor in The Weekend Australian that Closing the Gap stalled during the voice campaign and there is no apparent intent in the budget to get it going. There needs to be. There is a world of difference between the ideological abstraction of the voice to parliament and the practical intent of Closing the Gap to give Indigenous people immediate representation. The gap will not – cannot – be closed without programs designed for and by organisations that are part of Indigenous communities and that know what programs will work with cultures. This means an integrated approach where housing is connected to family structures and childcare, where jobs programs are related to people’s sense of place.

Accomplishing this is immensely difficult; bureaucracies love power and hate change, and for generations governments have failed to deliver services across portfolios and in different cultural contexts. Yet the basis of Closing the Gap is that it must be done. It is time to put the voice to parliament behind us all and get on with it.