Sharryn Jackson (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister inform the House how the government is seeking to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. Here in this parliament today we have had an opportunity to recognise the stolen generations and to deliver an apology on behalf of the parliament. As I indicated—and I believe the Leader of the Opposition did as well—this, however, is but a first step. The second step is much harder, much more difficult, and it goes to the question of what we now do in closing the gap, bridging the gap, between Indigenous Australia and non-Indigenous Australia. We need to make real progress in each of these areas, whether it is education, whether it is health outcomes or whether it is overall life expectancy. The commitment we have in each of these areas in closing the gap is clear-cut.

As I argued earlier today, unless we have clear-cut targets in each of these areas, we will not meet them. There will be no central organising principle for our policies. So, when it comes to life expectancy for Aboriginal people, we should set ourselves a target of, within a generation, reducing that atrocious gap of 17 years which now exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. On top of that, we should also have as our objective halving the current attainments when it comes to literacy and numeracy against the current level of nonattainment on the part of young Aboriginal children out there in the schools and communities and, in some cases, not attending schools as well. The appalling statistic when it comes to infant mortality for Indigenous children under the age of five is, again, to halve that within a 10-year period.

These are policy objectives. The hard bit now is implementing programs on the ground which will give effect to them. What I suggested earlier today was to let us take just one of those areas, which is how we deal with young children. The objective that we have set for ourselves by way of policy is to make sure that every Indigenous child at four years of age in the next five years is properly accommodated in early childhood education. We must make that the first step forward in ensuring that little ones are put on the path to better educational attainment and that, subsequent to that, with each of those young children, little children out there in remote communities, we then provide each step along the way the next year of educational opportunity for them, and then further to provide through that a platform for the delivery of effective primary healthcare programs for those young children. If we are serious about the policy objectives that we have set, we must begin with little children, and that is the resolve of the government which I have the privilege of leading in this place.

The final point that I would mention in response to the honourable member’s question is this: as I indicated in my remarks earlier today, I look forward to the possibility of establishing a joint policy commission with the opposition on this. This is something new in the public administration of Australia. We have never done this before. The object here is to take this one area of the public policy debate of Australia and just see what we can do to transcend the partisan divide. What I would like to do before the end of this week is to sit down with the Leader of the Opposition to work out how such a commission might work involving him and me as its joint chairs, with this core term of reference: to develop a housing strategy which will deal with the housing needs of Indigenous communities in remote areas across Australia. If we prevail on that, let us add to it a further item, a further term of reference—that is, to work on the overall project of effecting constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people. If we can get that right between us in this parliament, we would have made a strong step forward not only when it comes to the interests and wellbeing of Indigenous people in Australia but also in doing something new in how we go about the public administration of the Commonwealth in areas which should transcend the partisan divide.