Yawning indigenous gap yet to be closed by targets

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd’s Closing the Gap initiative has failed to achieve its aims of reducing Aboriginal disadvantage.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt in Canberra on Tuesday. Picture: AAP

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt says Kevin Rudd’s Closing the Gap initiative failed to achieve its aims of reducing Aboriginal disadvantage, as he paves the way for a new strategy that will be more accessible and have stronger input from local communities.

Ahead of the final Closing the Gap report to be handed down to parliament under the framework established by Mr Rudd, Mr Wyatt said the initiative “excluded indigenous people sitting at the table of negotiation on the targets and the outcomes”.

“We failed to close the gap,” Mr Wyatt told The Australian.

“The target wasn’t met so you could say the combined efforts and strategies that were put into place were likely to have been ­designed without community ­involvement. We have got to go back and reconsider how we put into place programs and whether the reach … covered every community.”

Mr Wyatt said improving the living standards of indigenous Australians through Closing the Gap was more important to him than establishing a voice to government or securing constitutional recognition.

A new structure for Closing the Gap is expected to be reached by April, with local and regional groups to help hit new targets with the process overseen by indigenous body Coalition of Peaks.

New long-term targets will be set but there is likely to be more flexibility around short-term goals.

Since Mr Rudd launched the initiative in 2008, with the support of state and territory governments, early childhood education target levels and year 12 attainment are the only targets on track to be met.

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Scott Morrison will lament successive governments’ failure to meet the Closing the Gap targets, despite extra investment and bipartisan support.

“Until recently Closing the Gap was never a partnership with indigenous people: we believed we knew better. We don’t,” Mr Morrison will say, according to an extract from the speech.

“We must see the gap from the viewpoint of indigenous Australians before we can hope to close it, and make a real difference. That is the change we are now making together with indigenous Australians through this process.

“But I still see shortcomings in how we are doing this, in this kind of reporting, and the process as a whole. The targets don’t celebrate the strengths, achievements and aspirations of indigenous people.

“They don’t tell you what’s happening on the ground, or stirring under it. They don’t tell you how realistic or achievable these targets were in the first place. They reinforce the language of failing and falling short and they mask the real progress that has been made.”

Closing the Gap ambitions have failed in targets for school attendance, child mortality, employment, life expectancy and literacy and numeracy targets.

The child mortality rate was twice the rate of non-indigenous children at 141 per 100,000.

A quarter of indigenous students in years 5, 7 and 9 remain below the minimum standards in reading, while up to 17 per cent were below the national standards in numeracy.

School attendance rates for indigenous students were 82 per cent compared to 92 per cent for non-indigenous students.

The latest statistics, taken from 2018, also show the indigenous employment rate at 49 per cent compared to 75 per cent for other Australians.

Life expectancy for indigenous Australians was 71.6 for men and 75.6 for women, a respective gap of 8.6 and 7.8 years.

Mr Wyatt also walked away from a commitment to hold a referendum on indigenous recognition in the constitution by mid next year after a backlash from his Coalition colleagues.

Mr Wyatt said the commitment, made in The Australian last month, was “aspirational”.

“All ministers provide a timeline of aspiration, but we also are bound by a process in which we work very closely with our colleagues and we are all bound by both the partyroom and cabinet processes,” Mr Wyatt said.

In the Coalition partyroom on Tuesday, Liberal MPs James McGrath, Dean Smith and Amanda Stoker raised concerns the referendum deadline was announced without consultation with MPs or a model to take to a vote.