Indigenous leaders at Garma urge PM to make NT accountable
In a blistering speech, the Yothu Yindi Foundation boss called for ‘crunching systemic change’ to address a crisis that ‘is getting worse not better’.
Anthony Albanese’s Aboriginal hosts at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land have greeted him with a blistering speech urging him to intervene in the Northern Territory’s long mishandling of Indigenous affairs policy and spending.
In front of an audience of about 1000 at Gulkula on Saturday, Yothu Yindi Foundation chief executive Denise Bowden thanked Mr Albanese for coming to Garma each year – he has been there while in opposition and government – but told Mr Albanese, his frontbenchers and all elected representatives in the audience: “Don’t be fooled into thinking your attendance is enough”.
Mr Albanese flew to Gove airport then made the 30-minutes road trip to the Garma festival of Indigenous culture in order to announce an economic partnership with Indigenous leaders and organisations. It aims to help Indigenous communities lift themselves out of welfare and into private enterprise.
However, Ms Bowden spoke first and read out appalling statistics on the health of Indigenous people in the NT, including that children in Maningrida suffered the world’s highest rate of rheumatic heart disease, a silent killer.
She said 1.24 per cent of Indigenous people in the NT were in prison on any given day. This was the second highest incarceration rate in the world behind El Salvador.
Ms Bowden and the Yolngu council of leaders called Dilak have long called for the Commonwealth to end the Howard-era practise of untied GST grants to the NT, saying successive territory governments have received extra on account of severe Indigenous disadvantage, then spent it on whatever they wanted. This has included a burgeoning public service and a waterfront development in Darwin.
On Saturday Ms Bowden urged Mr Albanese to intervene.
“I am about to repeat every Yolngu leader that has ever had the chance to speak into the ear of government,” she said. “The status quo is not acceptable. “The established system of government and administration, no matter how hard it says it tries, is not closing the gap. That much we can all agree on.
“There are good intentions and what is described as ‘hard work’ but without crunching systemic change, there will be no betterment.
“For decades Yothu Yindi Foundation has argued that the Closing the Gap statistics reflect a fundamental failure in the structure of the Australian federal system, starting with the way the Commonwealth works and running down to the states and territories.
“Our people suffer because of these failures of governance that are imposed upon us.
“Reform the way money is paid via the GST formulas. Reform the way the states and territories spend money … Bite the bullet and join with us to fix this blight on the nation, Prime Minister.”
The latest Closing the Gap data shows results worsened in the NT in eight out of the 15 categories for which there was new data for the 2023-24 financial year. The results capture the final 12 months of the Territory Labor government.
Youth advocates say that, since then, juvenile detention numbers have spiked as a direct result of the Finocchiaro government’s decision to make it much harder for children to get bail once charged with an offence.
Ms Bowden believes the crisis threatens the very existence of the Yolngu clans’ culture.
“When a man dies young, when a woman dies of rheumatic heart disease, when a child is incarcerated, such profound and terrible harm is done to
that individual and the society around them,” Ms Bowden said.
“These acts eat into and erode the fabric of the world that is on display here at Garma.
“It’s a destructive tide that keeps breaking in on Aboriginal people.
“And if we do not stem this tide of history, it will do its work and wash away the ancient knowledge and the ceremonies and traditions that keep the world in balance and give us hope.”
Ms Bowden is among leaders who believe successive NT governments have come to see Indigenous disadvantage as a commodity. The Northern Territory will receive around $4.5 billion in GST in 2025‑26, $248 million more than in 2024‑25. The increase is partly because of the NT’s “assessed needs”.
“This is a crisis that was decades in the making and is getting worse not better,” she said.
“We know that this problem is related to systemic failures right throughout the systems of government and that only when those structural issues are solved will the dysfunction that leads to incarceration improve. We know individuals must also take responsibility, but these are very confronting statistics, and they must give us all pause for thought.”
Ms Bowden made her remarks directly to Mr Albanese on Saturday after Uluru Dialogue co-chairs Megan Davis and Pat Anderson publicly denounced Closing the Gap – a bipartisan policy – as an unmitigated failure.
Professor Davis and Ms Anderson accused Labor of using the nation’s most important celebration of Indigenous culture, Garma, to repeat their talking points about the Closing the Gap process but said their people would not “lap it up”.
On Saturday, Mr Albanese acknowledged the latest Closing the Gap data showing progress against four targets compared with five a year ago. His measured remarks appeared to be a direction to the states, NT, their bureaucracies as well as to Indigenous service providers to focus on outcomes.
“Creating a process matters – but it is not the same thing as making progress,” he said.
“Delivery is the standard by which all of us must measure ourselves across every level of government, in the public service and in organisations and services entrusted by community.”
As he went into a meeting with Yolngu leaders on Saturday and again as he left Gulkula for the airport, Mr Albanese did not answer questions from journalists including about Ms Bowden’s speech. He said he had come to talk to First Nations leaders.
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