Dire Closing the Gap results can be reversed, but bureaucracies are holding Indigenous people back

This year’s Closing the Gap reports show massive backslides on key areas affecting Indigenous children. Picture: AAP

It is patchy, and already has taken four years, but a detailed picture of Indigenous disadvantage is taking shape.

The Productivity Commission’s latest annual data compilation report shows how Indigenous Australians in remote locations are being left behind. In the Northern Territory, the gap between Indigenous people and other Australians is widening in eight measurable ways. That’s twice the national figure, which is already acknowledged as not good enough.

These are dire results after four years of what was supposed to be a concerted and united effort by all governments to abandon what was not working and take a different approach in Indigenous affairs.

The fact the Productivity Commission has caught governments out doing business as usual should sting in the NT election campaign but there’s every chance it will not.

Voters have grown accustomed to poor practice and lacklustre results in Indigenous affairs. It’s not the scandal it should be, given people’s lives are at stake and given how much it costs to pay for this failure.

What really stings is that there is a better way. For years, successive governments have seen the good results that follow when decision-makers work hand in hand with Indigenous communities.

In the very remote Aboriginal community of Borroloola in the Northern Territory, women run their own early childhood program with the Moriarty Foundation.

They have put themselves through training and study to become qualified childhood educators.

The result has been a stunning turnaround. While Indigenous children nationally are less and less ready for preschool, according to the nationally accepted measures, the children of Borroloola are increasingly on track when they start preschool.

More and more are set up for success thanks to a program that the community wanted. The government did not tell them what to do. Instead, they listened and gave support. Successive governments have known about these examples and some have talked about rolling them out or up-scaling them.

It is not easy to do. Bureaucracies are huge beasts and they are used to doing what they’ve always done.

Another challenge for governments with an eye on the next election is that programs like the Borraloola early childhood program take years to bear fruit.

What the success will be is never guaranteed.

There are many more snappy things to announce during a campaign, like law and order measures that deal decisively with some of the worst consequences of policy neglect.