While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Labor is “delivering record funding in health, education and housing” to First Nations communities, Pat Turner AM from the Coalition of Peaks has admitted that only 5 out of 19 Closing the Gap targets are “on track”.
Labor tabled its Commonwealth’s 2024 Closing the Gap Annual Report and 2025 Implementation Plan on February 10, announcing it is “building on investments” to close the gap between First Nations people and the rest of the population.
Albanese talked up delivering “record funding in health, education and housing, as well as $842 million to fund essential services in remote communities”.
He failed to mention that of this $205 million has been earmarked for more policing of remote Northern Territory communities.
Malarndirri McCarthy, Minister for Indigenous Australians talked up “creating jobs with decent conditions in remote Australia, addressing housing overcrowding, supporting healthy children and safe families, and community-driven responses to address the causes of crime”.
But the proportion of First Nations babies born at a healthy weight and the increase in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander control of land and sea country are two improvements.
“We’ve got far too many children in out-of-home care,” Turner told the media.
“More than 80% of the children who are in juvenile detention are on remand. They are on remand. They have not been charged with an offence yet.”
“We see a significant correlation between children in out-of-home care and children who then progress into the juvenile justice system. I wouldn’t say justice, but into the juvenile detention centres.”
Gunditjmara woman and independent Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe said the Closing the Gap partnership is “collapsing” and that governments are not interested in engaging to achieve targets.
“This time last year, the Productivity Commission delivered a damning assessment of Closing the Gap and called for an overhaul of how First Nations policy is developed and implemented,” she said.
Data from the commission, released in January, showed a rise in the number and rate of Indigenous children jailed.
On an average day, 65% of children imprisoned are First Nations children. Indigenous children between the ages of 10-13 are imprisoned 45.5 times more than their non-Indigenous cohort.
Overall, state and territory governments imprison First Nations children at almost 27 times the rate of non-Indigenous children.
The cost of imprisoning children has risen to more than $1 billion annually, according to the Productivity Commission.
“Things have gotten worse,” Thorpe said, describing it as “a year of betrayal, delay and deflection”.
The gaps are being intentionally widened, with government attacks on First Peoples “growing by the day”.
She cited “shamefully high rates of unsentenced First Nations children in prison” and pointed to Victoria and New South Wales Labor which have introduced policies to “hold more children on remand”.
“Labor Premiers Jacinta Allan and Chris Minns have both taken steps to make it more difficult for people to receive bail. In Queensland it is now harder to get bail as a child than as an adult,” Thorpe said.
“We are also seeing moves in the NT to dismantle the child placement principle, which is in place to keep our children connected to family, culture and kin.”
Thorpe said $205 million of the $842 federal funding package, announced by the PM in late January, will actually go to a policing program in remote communities.
“This will just funnel more of our people into the court and prison system at a time where courts are crumbling, as many people are unable to access legal assistance or even an interpreter.”
Thorpe said Labor can hold the states and territories to account, as it does with the Sex Discrimination Act. It has the constitutional power to “enforce standards” and it needs to “bring this country into line with our international human rights obligations”.