COVID-19 shows we can close the indigenous gap

Fiona Stanley has declared the success in limiting the COVID-19 outbreak in indigenous communities shows Closing the Gap can be achieved.

Telethon Kids Institute founding director and leading epidemiologist Fiona Stanley. Picture: Sean Middleton

Influential epidemiologist Fiona Stanley has declared the success in limiting the COVID-19 outbreak in indigenous communities shows Closing the Gap can be achieved if the policy settings are right.

Professor Stanley, a former Australian of the Year and founding director of the Telethon Kids Institute, said plans to give more power to Aboriginal groups in the new Closing the Gap targets was a step in the right direction.

“If you give Aboriginal people control and support them in that control — so true partnerships where they lead — then you get effective outcomes,” Professor Stanley said.

“If you want evidence for Aboriginal control, look at the pandemic. We anticipated that there would be a very large number of Aboriginal cases, hospitalisations, intensive care and death.”

Professor Stanley said it was “unbelievable” there had only been 60 indigenous cases of COVID-19, declaring it “a gap going the other way”.

“Fifteen per cent hospitalisations, no intensive care, no deaths. None in remote communities all in the urban centres. Now put that in your pipe and smoke it,” she said.

“The reason was the Aboriginal communities and the health leaders swung into action even before (the government) did.”

The Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland all limited travel to remote communities in March.

The Morrison government provided $10 million to assist the Northern Territory Land Councils in its response to the crisis, while up to $23m will be given to secure essential social services in remote communities.

The new Closing the Gap targets will include a justice target to reduce the jail rates of indigenous adults by 15 per cent by 2031.

The number of indigenous people in the prison system has increased from 19 per cent in 2000 to nearly 30 per cent in March this year, according to ABS figures. There are now 12,900 indigenous people in prisons, out of a total prison population of 44,159.

Labor MP Andrew Leigh will on Tuesday deliver a lecture to the University of Melbourne, claiming the jail rates of indigenous Australians was understated.

He said the rise of the rates had not been properly adjusted for the increase of people willing to identify as an indigenous Australians.

Dr Leigh said about a quarter of indigenous Australians born in the 1970s had spent time in jail.