New cash call to ‘close the gap’

Cash-strapped governments will need to increase funding for indigenous programs to meet the ambitious new targets under the Closing the Gap agreement.

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt. Picture: AFP

Cash-strapped state and federal governments will need to increase funding for indigenous programs to meet the ambitious new targets under the Closing the Gap agreement.

Pat Turner, the convener of the coalition of 50 peak indigenous organisations that co-designed the Closing the Gap agreement, said the historic deal was destined for failure unless the intentions were matched with new cash.

Aboriginal leaders and indigenous affairs ministers endorsed a new national agreement on Closing the Gap on Friday, with the deal to be signed off by national cabinet as early as this month.

“As far as the Coalition of Peaks is concerned, we’ve made it very clear from the outset that every government, and especially the commonwealth, which needs to take a lead, needs to put new money on the table,” Ms Turner told the ABC.

“The more money we get, the more ability we have to bring parity much earlier, and ensure that our people live a decent quality of life.”

A report by the Productivity Commission estimated state and federal governments spent $33.4 billion on services for indigenous Australians in the 2016 financial year, up from $27bn (in 2016 dollars) in 2009.

The direct government expenditure per Aboriginal Australian was $44,886 in 2016, compared with $22,356 on non-indigenous Australians.

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt told The Weekend Australian the target to lower the incarceration rate of indigenous adults by at least 15 per cent by 2031 would be retained — despite the draft report predicting this would lead to a parity on incarceration rates by only 2093.

Mr Wyatt has walked away from the 2093 parity prediction, declaring 73-years was too long to achieve equality. But he said there were no plans to amend the medium-term target that the prediction is based on.

“The 15 per cent (target) remains,” Mr Wyatt said.

Indigenous people made up almost 3 per cent of the population at the 2016 census

The draft document has 16 targets to reach over the next decade. These include: closing the life-expectancy gap; increasing the proportion of 25-34-year-olds’ tertiary qualification to 70 per cent; increasing the proportion of indigenous youths (15-24) who are in employment or training to 67 per cent; and increasing the proportion of indigenous people aged 25-64 who are employed to 62 per cent.

It also aims to have 88 per cent of indigenous Australians in appropriate-sized housing and a 15 per cent increase in the land mass that is subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s legal rights.

There is also a goal for the “sustained increase in number and strength” of indigenous languages that are spoken.

Under the agreement, indigenous groups will be given more direct money and say in how the programs are administered under a “shared-decision making” arrangement.

The agreement is the culmination of two years of work to rewrite the Closing the Gap targets introduced by the Rudd government in 2008. After 11 annual reports, just two of the seven Closing the Gap targets set in 2008 — early childhood education and Year 12 attainment — were achieved.