Just two of seven Closing the Gap targets set in 2008 – early childhood education and year 12 attainment – were achieved by 2019 when the old scheme came to an end. Ambitions had failed in targets for school attendance, child mortality, employment, life expectancy and literacy and numeracy.
The new agreement signed by all governments and a coalition of Indigenous organisations was ambitious on several fronts. As the numbers of Indigenous children in care continued to climb, the Closing the Gap agreement had states and territories committing to dramatically turn this around by 2031. The task should not be underestimated. In Western Australia, for example, the numbers of Indigenous children in care had been climbing every year for 24 years. Not only that, the rate of growth was accelerating.
Yet WA promised, in the middle of an austerity drive by then premier Mark McGowan, that it would do the often-expensive work required to help troubled Aboriginal parents do what was needed to hang on to their children.
Australia was committed to reduce the rate of Indigenous children in care by 30 per cent within 10 years.
The most prominent figures in the design of the new agreement were then Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt and Gudanji-Arrernte woman Pat Turner. Turner is a formidable personality who was determined Closing the Gap would work if governments and bureaucracies were committed to change. She is an accomplished administrator who has seen from the inside how bureaucracies fail Indigenous people.
Shared decision-making – another term for sharing power with Aboriginal communities – was one of four central tenants of the agreement.
“Self-determination has been a policy of the commonwealth since 1971 but we have never been given agency to exercise it to the fullest extent,” Turner said in July 2020, when everyone signed on to this new way of doing things. “(That is) because there’s been so much government neglect of programs and the way they’ve implemented programs, and their lack of accountability for the poor outcomes that leaves us in the desperate situation we’re in today.”
Turner and Wyatt understood the importance of building into the agreement a set of reporting requirements for the states to demonstrate work they had done and their progress. The Productivity Commission report released on Wednesday reveals some have just not taken it seriously. They are alleged to have simply renamed what they were doing before and called it new.
Indigenous advocate aims to be Senate voice of change
Megan Krakouer is an Indigenous advocate with a formidable reputation. Police commissioners and premiers make time for her. She now wants to be in the parliament with the decision-makers.
Sacked for exposing ‘improper practices’
A former chief executive of the imploding Aboriginal corporation claims he was sacked after repeatedly warning that it was not appropriate for its Aboriginal directors to be actively involved in the corporation’s commercial arm.
There was scepticism but also great hope when Scott Morrison agreed to give Closing the Gap another go. There had, after all, been a decade of failure under the scheme launched by Kevin Rudd.