Closing the Gap: Productivity Commission report reveals Territory of Indigenous despair

The NT has recorded the worst results of any Australian jurisdiction in the latest Closing the Gap report, overseeing a litany of increases in disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous over the past four years.

The Productivity Commission report reveals the NT is failing more than it is succeeding in Closing the Gap.

The Northern Territory has recorded the worst results of any Australian jurisdiction in the latest Closing the Gap report, overseeing a litany of increases in disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the top end over the past four years.

The NT has recorded worsening results against eight out of 17 targets, some that are counted as two targets because they have two parts to them.

The Territory now has a widened gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women, increasing numbers of underweight Indigenous newborns, a regression in early childhood education, early childhood development milestones, youth employment, education and training, jobs for adults aged 25-64, adult incarceration and youth incarceration.

The Productivity Commission report reveals the NT is failing more than it is succeeding in Closing the Gap.

The agreement was signed in 2020. The only other state or territory to go backwards on more than two Closing the Gap targets in the latest report is Queensland, which recorded worsening results against three targets: adult incarceration, youth incarceration and the proportion of children in out-of-home care.

The NT is on track to meet seven Closing the Gap targets by 2031 when the agreement comes to an end, according to the PC report.

It found that in the NT, life expectancy for Indigenous men is on the rise in line with ambitions, year 12 completion is on track, the number of Indigenous youth entering training, work or further study is rising in line with projections in the Closing the Gap agreement, overcrowding is reducing, the proportion of Indigenous care children in care is falling and the amount of land and sea under the management or control of traditional owners is rising. Five targets in the NT were not assessed by the Productivity Commission.

In the annual report released on Wednesday night, NSW recorded the most success against the agreed targets and is on track to meet 11 of them.

The agreement is a second attempt at the decade-long Closing the Gap initiative that began when Kevin Rudd was prime minister. That agreement had seven targets, and by the end of the decade only two were met.

The new agreement is a promise by all levels of government to share decision making with Aboriginal communities to get better results.

The agreement also compels governments to use Aboriginal community-controlled organ­isations such as Aboriginal medical services to do work in communities that would otherwise have been done by contractors or government departments.

When the PC published a withering assessment of the lack of progress on Closing the Gap in February, it claimed bureaucracies were compiling laundry lists of things they had always done as proof they had changed their methods.

The highly critical report and 15 of its 16 its recommendations have recently been accepted by the states at a joint council meeting on Closing the Gap.

Nationally, Australia is not on track for a significant or sustained reduction in Indigenous suicide.

While young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and those aged 25 to 40 years are participating in the economy more, they are more likely to go to jail and more likely than in previous years to die by suicide.

“In 2022, suicide was the leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15 to 39,” the PC says in its most recent report.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 35 to 44 have the highest rate of death by suicide”