Australia is on track to meet its ‘Closing the Gap’ employment target, but more than a decade late.
The targets relating to Year 12 attainment, preschool enrolment, and childhood mortality are on track to be closed, according to the 2018 Closing the Gap report.
AAP/Marianna Massey
Care needs to be taken in interpreting progress on closing the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and ascribing it to actual policy change.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull leaving during the Closing the Gap breakfast last week.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The failed and continually failing political leadership on respect, relationships and reconciliation sets back the quality of current and future education for all Australians.
While death rates from heart and kidney disease have dropped among Indigenous people, death rates from cancer are on the rise.
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Politicians make sweeping statements on how to close the gap. But here’s advice from people working directly with Indigenous communities who have evidence for what actually works.
The government will hail this year’s outcome as the most promising result since 2011.
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The tenth Closing the Gap report shows only three of the seven targets are on track to be met.
The average year nine Indigenous student in a very remote area scores about the same in NAPLAN reading as the average year three non-Indigenous city student, and significantly lower in writing.
Aap/Tracey Nearmy
Using equivalent year levels provides us with a clearer picture of the gap for Indigenous students, who can be up to an equivalent of 7.7 years behind their non-Indigenous counterparts in writing.
The ‘Closing the Gap’ initiative has existed since 2006, but the statistics show the gap is growing.
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To Close the Gap, Indigenous Australians are the experts. Indigenous organisations are more likely to achieve outcomes because they understand local issues and have ‘skin in the game’.
Indigenous schoolchildren dance during a launch of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan in Brisbane.
AAP
The latest census data reveals valuable insights into Closing the Gap targets. While there’s some improvement in school attendance rates, all other indicators suggest a radical rethink is required.
Census figures show remote Indigenous communities are falling behind.
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Benjamin Cowie, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity; James Ward, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, and Steven Tong, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity
Hepatitis B rates in Indigenous communities are ten times higher than the rest of Australia. Eliminating the infection from Indigenous Australia can make a significant contribution to closing the gap.
Some of the notable additions to the PBS include drugs to treat eye and HIV infections, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis, and cancer.
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The report focus on the government’s own policies fails to acknowledge genuine differences of opinion on key issues such as constitutional recognition and income management.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the eve of the release of the Close the Gap report.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Waves of policies from successive Coalition and Labor governments have followed a paternalistic lead. This has created further impediments to thousands of Indigenous peoples who are doing plenty.
Malcolm Turnbull, George Brandis and former Northern Territory chief justice Brian Martin (centre) face the media in Parliament House on Thursday.
Andrew Taylor/AAP
The high rate of both youth and adult indigenous incarceration is a national disgrace.
Birth registration is required for many activities throughout a person’s life yet in some states up to 20% of Aboriginal children aren’t registered.
Marianna Massey/AAP
Around 20% of Aboriginal births in Western Australia between 1996 and 2012 weren’t registered, new research shows. This has many social and health ramifications for their future.
The Coalition has fundamentally altered the architecture of Indigenous policymaking and delivery since 2013.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Serious policy focus on Indigenous affairs has been notably absent during the early weeks of the long election campaign.
In Ali Curung, 400km north of Alice Springs, the things that work for the community, including a local broadcasting and computer centre, are a response to local strengths and needs.
AAP/Dan Peled
In some Indigenous communities, the ratio of programs to people served is possibly the highest in the world. Somehow, for many, Closing the Gap remains an elusive goal. A rethink is needed.
Director Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, CI ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies (SOPHIS), School of Social Sciences (SOSS), Faculty of Arts, Monash University