Closing the Gap is a matter of family pride

For Libby Cook-Black, Closing the Gap isn’t some random set of numbers in an annual report.

Nathan Bassani, Lowanna Moran, Bernard Kelly and Libby Cook-Black at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday. Picture: Kym Smith

For Libby Cook-Black, Closing the Gap isn’t some random set of numbers in an annual report. The strategy to tackle indigenous disadvantage ushered in a decade ago under Kevin Rudd is, quite literally, part of the family.

“This is my sisters and my brothers it’s talking about; Kevin Rudd was talking about a thing that’s real to me,” the young Torres Strait Islander from Cairns said.

Ms Cook-Black is lucky and ­admits it. She went through an elite schooling system, thanks to the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation established the same year as the former prime minister’s Stolen Generations apology.

A high achiever — she’s a member of the national Jillaroos rugby league team and halfway through a law degree at Queensland University of Technology, while also expecting her first child — Ms Cook-Black nonetheless knows that, at 23, she’s in a vastly better position than her parents or grandparents were at the same age.

Like fellow AIEF alumni Bernard Kelly, Nathan Bassani and Lowanna Moran, Ms Cook-Black represents an undeniable fact of Closing the Gap success: at higher levels of educational attainment, there is almost no employment gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

The quartet travelled to Canberra yesterday to hear Mr Rudd deliver a 10th anniversary apology address at the National Press Club.

While there, they reflected on how the AIEF — one of several such programs that aim to give disadvantaged indigenous students an elite education, often creating a knock-on effect for their families and communities — had utterly changed their lives.

“I never forget where I’ve come from, but we’ve been given an ­opportunity we could never have otherwise had,” said Mr Bassani, a fully qualified diesel fitter who, at 23, already has a mortgage on a four-bedroom Rockhampton home (“and three cars and two dogs”).

The AIEF scheme began with one scholarship at a Sydney boarding school, and has since expanded to support more than 500 indigenous girls and boys each year from 261 communities at 34 schools across the country, with a retention and Year 12 completion rate of 94 per cent.

Importantly, it doesn’t stop at high school graduation; all four alumni were adamant the “family” nature of their network was critical. “AIEF provides ongoing holistic support — you get asked to events as alumni, and it’s empowering to be with other successful indigenous people,” Ms Moran said.