Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ)
Every year, the Productivity Commission reports on the progress state and federal governments are making towards closing the gap in the gross inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous lives.
Every year, these governments fail. For many indicators, the gap actually gets worse.
This year is no exception. The new data show just four of the 19 targets are being met or are on track to be so. Of the nine targets that aren’t on track, four are worsening, including adult imprisonment, suicide and children in out of home care.
With such a poor track record of failing to improve the lives of Indigenous people, it’s well past time for a different approach.
Indigenous people across the country face a range of social policy challenges, many of which are often politicised. In this three-part series, experts examine issues with child protection, violence and reconciliation and look at evidence-based policy approaches that would help improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Years of poor policy
Attempts to close the gap started in 2008 when the Rudd government apologised for the Stolen Generations: past government policies running over a century that stole First Nations children from their families.
Kevin Rudd, and then later Julia Gillard, continued measures from the Northern Territory Emergency Response, often called the NT intervention. Starting under John Howard, this draconian regime witheld Indigenous rights, overrode self-determination, and implemented punitive and coercive policies in the name of improving education, health and development.
Ironically, Gillard called this “Stronger Futures”.
Legacies of these policies are still in force in the Northern Territory today. These include punitive welfare and compulsory income management, and the mess caused from NT legislation that amalgamated small community-based councils into super shires.
Ian Waldie/Getty
Almost 20 years on, governments still aren’t meeting most of the Closing the Gap targets. A few years back there was a refresh of the framework, but even after this, governments continuously fall disastrously short.
Restricted in life and death
Many have discussed the reasons for this failure over the years. There’s the denial and the undermining of self-determination , including the withholding of proper resourcing for Aboriginal-controlled organisations.
First Nations people are also often subject to deficit framing: a way of speaking that focuses heavily on deficiencies, failures and problems.
Others have argued Closing the Gap has poorly designed goals and equally poor policy implementation.
But it’s also about what this gap represents: the aggregate accumulation of disadvantage heaped on Indigenous people from colonisation, and the aggregate accumulation of advantage enjoyed by largely non-Indigenous people.
Put another way, the gap measures the outcomes of colonisation. This means stolen land, stolen wages and stolen children. It’s also colonial-induced trauma, policy-generated poverty, generations of racist laws and mass incarceration.
Take the ghastly measure of life expectancy, where, on average, non-Indigenous people get to live almost an extra decade longer than Indigenous people.
The gap says something about not just when people die, but also about how people are restricted in their living.
First Nations people are subjected to institutional racism, denial of their sovereignty and connection to Country and language, policy neglect and state violence (both slow and immediate). They experience intergenerational trauma from colonisation and structural marginalisation stemming from decades of aforementioned racist policies.
It all culminates in Indigenous deaths far earlier than non-Indigenous people.
This is due to things such as better schooling, safer health care, better access to employment, limited police and government punitive interventions, the absence of colonial trauma passed down through generations, and an overall freedom to make choices.
Reparations are overdue
These Closing The Gap targets are emblematic of the continued colonisation that keeps the gap in place. Instead, we are well overdue for discussion of reparations and reparative justice.
There is a lot to say about reparative justice, but essentially its about transforming the colonial relationship.
It means repaying what was taken through the repayment of debts, real land rights, treaties that honour sovereignty and self-determination, and the return of skeletal remains of Ancestors – so communities can build back what has been taken.
Reparations are also an accounting of violence, suffering, death and trauma. They highlight the underbelly of our modern life built on expropriation and dispossession. This is essential work if closing the gap is to be taken seriously.
In Australia, “reparation” is a word that jolts non-Indigenous people into discomfort.
But when the conservative politicians, media and lobby groups said the Mabo High Court decision would take our backyards, they were proved wrong. The scare campaigns are now blips in the dustbin of history.
Evidence-based justice
What research actually shows is how First Nations people have provided for their communities amid oppression. Repaying debts through reparative justice will only strengthen this work.
For example, Professor Eddie Cubillo’s research on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services shows the tenacity and skill of First Nations communities to set up these invaluable services on the smell of an oily rag.
Today these services are credited with diverting Indigenous people away from the justice system and helping reduce Indigenous incarceration.
A similar story is shown through many other Aboriginal-controlled organisations, including the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation.
Again, born in struggle and sustained through sheer First Nations excellence, the network of more than 550 Aboriginal-controlled providers is a central plank in First Nations healthcare. They provide community-led and culturally safe services. Research shows they are more effective than other health services at improving Indigenous health.
What the government needs to do is move past racialised and paternalistic policies which control how Indigenous people use money. This has been happening for a long time, from stealing wages to ongoing compulsory income management.
Reparations, after all, go beyond mere compensation. The focus is on transforming the colonial relationship through healing and justice for a better future for all.
This research is drawn from Stolen Ground: Reparative justice for colonisation in Australia, forthcoming through Bloomsbury Academic.
Elise Klein is a member of the Research Committee of the Australia Institute. She has previously been contracted by the Central Land Council to examine the government’s remote employment policy.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/29/closing-the-gap-is-failing-yet-again-is-it-time-we-do-away-with-it-altogether/