Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Labor is “delivering record funding in health, education and housing” to First Nations communities, but Pat Turner, Member of the Order of Australia and Lead Convenor of the Coalition of Peaks, admits that only 5 out of 19 Closing the Gap targets are “on track”.
As Labor tabled its Commonwealth Closing the Gap 2024 Annual Report and 2025 Implementation Plan on February 10, it said it is “building on investments” to close the gap.
Albanese talked up delivering “record funding in health, education and housing, as well as $842 million to fund essential services in remote communities”.
Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy 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”.
The proportion of First Nations babies born at a healthy weight and the rise in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander control of land and sea country are some overdue improvements.
“We’ve got far too many children in out-of-home care,” Turner told media.
Turner emphasised that more than 80% of children who are in juvenile detention 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.”
Lidia Thorpe, Gunditjmara woman and independent Victorian Senator, said the Closing the Gap partnership is “collapsing”.
“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,” Thorpe 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. 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, the commission said.
Thorpe said it has been “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 criticised Victoria and New South Wales Labor for introducing policies to “hold more children on remand”.
“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 pointed out that, of the $842 million federal funding package announced by the PM, $205 million will 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 has the constitutional power to hold the states and territories to account, as it does with the Sex Discrimination Act.
It has the power to “enforce standards” and it needs to “bring this country into line with our international human rights obligations”.