Scathing report into Closing the Gap agreement finds governments are failing First Nations Australians

Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with All Australian governments made a commitment in 2020 – to work to overcome entrenched inequalities faced by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.But new evidence suggests governments are largely failing to deliver on these commitments.A damning report released this week by the Productivity Commission has found that despite some good pockets of policy making, governments are largely failing to progress on their goals.The Closing the Gap Report instead finds that the government’s actions towards achieving their stated outcome have been both weak and inconsistent, lacking in any systematic approach, and as a whole making little valuable contribution to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.Yamatji-Noongar woman and Greens Senator, Dorinda Cox says that while the report is an excruciating read, it is a perfect example of truth telling. “What we see in this report is the attitudes, the institutional violence and racism that exists. And I’m going to quote here ‘actually exacerbates the problem doesn’t remedy the problem of discrimination and disadvantage in indigenous communities. These types of attitudes of not closing the gap. (Of) not every minister, not every head of department in this building, and in this country, taking responsibility to close the gap, is why we see these attitudes perpetuate that for us. This is a good opportunity to do truth and treaty, it is an opportunity for this nation to move forward, and we have that opportunity and we should start that now. “The Closing the Gap agreement outlines four priority reforms, which stand as its central pillars.The first reform priority is the establishment of formal partnerships and shared decision-making, which the report has found is rarely achieved in practice.The report says that while successive governments have demonstrated a willingness to relinquish some control over decision making, the assumption remains that ‘the government knows best’.Nationals Leader David Littleproud says that shared decision making must come from a local perspective.“You can’t say that someone that doesn’t live in that community can give you the best solutions. That’s about taking the people that work here in Canberra, out of Canberra, and sitting them around campfires and town halls with Indigenous elders designing that local program, because the solution in Cunnamulla is not the same issues that we’ve got in Roma, or is it is in Camooweal as it is in Carnarvon in Western Australia. And so that’s the problem we’ve had is we continue to try and do this at big levels sent people here, bureaucrats generalize and then nationalize programs that don’t work. They’ve got to be local programs and we’ve seen it where it does work and that’s what the common sense solution that we think should happen about empowering local elders because they’re the ones that know best.” The second priority reform commits to building the community controlled sector, which involves delivering more services and funding to Aboriginal community-controlled organisations.However, after hearing from a number of ACCO’s, the review finds that these organisations are often treated simply as passive recipients of government funding, rather than as the critical community services that they are.The report has found that the government often imposes generic, pre-existing models of service and program design when delivering to Aboriginal communities, rather than working with Aboriginal communities to deliver individualised services.Gunditjmara woman and C-E-O of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, Jill Gallagher, told the ABC that community led organisations have been saying this for years.“Well basically, Aboriginal community controlled organizations, we need to be at that table a lot sooner than what we are. And we need to have control and empowerment to actually make decisions. Because at a local level, we know our communities, we know the issues, and we know the solutions.”Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie says the government needs to do more to understand the differences between communities.“I’ll tell you what, how about they get around those communities, like I have done over the last 10 years. They actually might learn something, go in there with a clear head and have a look. No ideology, no nothing, and work it out because it’s actually, I think that what they’re doing is that they’re making it so difficult. Keep it simple stupid. That’s all the Indigenous want you to do and every community that you go to is slightly different to the one you went beforehand.”The third reform priority in the Closing the Gap Agreement commits to transforming government organisations.Yet the recent report says that there has been a stark absence of government policies with any clear vision or strategy on delivering the transformations promised.It finds that while individual level actions have been taken, such as cultural capability training and strategies to increase the employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the public sector, meaningful system wide changes are yet to be made.The report says that without external perspectives involved in the development of such strategies, issues like institutional racism, unconscious bias and cultural safety are still at play in government structures.Queensland MP Bob Katter says the current systems in place are working against the well-being of First Nations people in the country.“If the rest of the world finds out about it, we are going to be the South Africa of this century. And the rest will find out about it. And I hate to say it, but that’s what we deserve. I mean, there’s the figures, you know that their life expectancy is, depending on which set of figures you want to look at 56, I think 54 is the more accurate figure, their life expectancy 54. They can’t get a job because you got to get a blue card. They can’t open a business because they can’t get a title deed. So what are you doing to them? What are you doing to them on a daily basis? Why do you hate them?”The fourth and final priority reform commits to the shared access to data and information at a regional level.This commitment requires governments to implement large scale changes to data systems and practices, enabling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to participate in decision making to use such data to inform programs and services in their communities.The report finds that not only is the government making very little progress on enacting these changes but that the existing data is failing to capture the values, diversity and social structures of local communities.It says that the inadequacy and unavailability of such data leads to a perpetuation of deficit narratives, which places blame on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for the inequalities they face and leads to ill-conceived policy solutions.CEO of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, Denise Bowden, spoke to SBS about what she thinks needs to be done.“Obviously, a mechanism that triggers the action part of implementing these Closing the Gap targets, so that we don’t continue to constantly talk about it, [so] we’re not spending our resources on collection of data and statistics, that we already know the picture and how it’s been painted and this is not news.”Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the government is working to find solutions to the issues.“We need to do more and the government acknowledges that, we’re doing work particularly at the moment on across a range of issues. We’re talking about how do you build housing in remote Australia? How do you increase the use of justice reinvestment? How do you create employment through Indigenous Rangers programs? How do you convert the CDP? What effectively is a Work for the Dole program into real jobs with real skills creating real opportunity for First Nations people? How do you improve health outcomes for Indigenous Australians?”But many Indigenous leaders, including Denise Bowden, say the solutions to these questions are not a secret and that both state and federal governments are responsible for listening.

“Seems to me, the pieces that are missing are listening to Indigenous community saying the same thing, and I mean this is again not news, our submission talks about reforming the GST model. We’ve provided them solutions, have a listen to what we’re saying because we actually do have some amazing pieces of work and we’ve actually done a lot of work on the ground here in Northeast Arnhem Land. Both the Commonwealth and State governments all have a part to play in this, this is not a finger pointing exercise.”