Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay my respects to elders past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were the first lawmakers in this land, but for too long, their successors—the lawmakers in this place and in state and territory parliaments—have often let Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders down. That much is clear from the Closing the gap: Prime Minister's report 2016.

I will start by recalling the origin of this report. It had its origin in the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments—the COAG—on 20 December 2007. At that meeting, first ministers of this nation agreed to close the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians by embracing six key targets: closing the life expectancy gap within a generation; halving the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade; ensuring all Indigenous four-years-olds in remote communities have access to early childhood education within five years; halving the gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade; halving the gap for Indigenous people aged 20 to 24 in year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment rates by 2020; and halving the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade.

In February 2008 the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, restated his government's commitment to closing the gap, during his apology to the stolen generations. The following February, again at the initiative of Prime Minister Rudd, the first 'closing the gap' report was delivered to the national parliament.

Ahead of today's debate, I went back and had a look at that first report to remind myself what that report said and how it said it. I was struck by how candid it was—how free it was from the self-justification, the blame shifting and spin that characterises so much of government self-reporting. The report said this:

In remote areas, successive governments have failed to properly coordinate their efforts and to fund them adequately, resulting in acute and visible need. In urban and regional areas, services provided for all Australians have not been accessed by or effectively delivered to Indigenous people. Blurred responsibilities have allowed Commonwealth, state and territory governments to avoid accountability for their failures.

It is a sentence worth repeating:

Blurred responsibilities have allowed Commonwealth, state and territory governments to avoid accountability for their failures.

It also said governments must be accountable for improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians and noted the COAG Reform Council would monitor progress. That was the first report, and today we are discussing the eighth, and I do have to say that there are some aspects of this report that trouble me—they trouble me greatly.

I am, of course, as we all are, concerned about the lack of progress towards many of the Closing the Gap Targets. I will turn to some of these in a moment.

I am also troubled by changes to the report itself, because its tone, its language and maybe even its purpose appear to have shifted. Nowhere in this year's report do we find reference to failure, even where governments' failure to make progress towards agreed and measurable targets is manifest. Instead, the Prime Minister exhorts us to focus on 'encouraging progress'. We learn he is heartened by 'positive gains'. In his foreword, the Prime Minister tells us how proud he is of jobs generated by the government's Indigenous Advancement Strategy—devoid of acknowledgement that the target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is not on track.

The report notes that 'overall progress has been varied and that meeting many of the Closing the Gap targets remains a significant challenge'. But instead of acknowledging the Commonwealth's critical responsibility for failing to make progress on targets, the report reiterates the roles of the states and territories, saying:

State and territory governments will continue to have a critical role in making progress against the targets.

I again seek to recall the words in the first Closing the Gap report, which remind us that blurred responsibilities have allowed Commonwealth, state and territory governments to avoid accountability for their failures. The Closing the Gap report must be an honest reckoning of progress made towards eliminating the disadvantage of our First Peoples. Where progress is not being made on critical targets, the Closing the Gap report should not gild the lily. It should not shift the blame, offer excuses or promote programs that yield little more than anecdotes for inclusion in a Prime Minister's foreword.

Poor progress should make government uncomfortable. It should make all of us uncomfortable. The very least we owe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is some honesty on the progress we are making in key areas of life expectancy, infant and child mortality, early childhood education, literacy and numeracy skills, school completion rates, and employment outcomes. This is not a partisan point I am making. Notwithstanding my manifest and many differences with the former Prime Minister, I would say that last year's Closing the Gap report presented by then Prime Minister Abbott was in many ways a more honest document than the one we are debating today. In that report Prime Minister Abbott told parliament that, despite good intentions and considerable investment by successive governments, progress in meeting targets had been far too slow. Twelve months ago, Mr Abbott expressed disappointment that most Closing the Gap targets were not on track. The table in last year's report that illustrated progress against the targets appears to have been omitted from this year's report. This year, progress against targets is buried in the text of the report, and more often than not justified or excused lest any reader seek to hold anyone to account.

Closing the gap in life expectancy was the first target on the COAG target list agreed in 2007. It lies at the very heart of the Closing the Gap project. The 2016 report confirms we are not on track to close the life expectancy gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other Australians by 2031. That is a national shame. The gap and the failure to make progress towards a generational target set more than two decades hence shames all of us. For reasons I have already stated, I am not surprised to find that, contrary to previous years, life expectancy is no longer the first target subject to reporting this year. The target to halve the gap in employment by 2018 is also not on track. In the 2016 report this fact is accompanied by the statement:

… although no progress has been made against the target since 2008, Indigenous employment rates are considerably higher now than they were in the early 1990s.

The report includes an Indigenous unemployment table incorporating statistics from 1994—13 years before the COAG goals were set. It seems as if whoever was drafting this report was wanting to make a qualification, even if the qualification, frankly, was irrelevant or related to a time long past.

In relation to the failure to make progress towards the employment target, the government continues to make excuses, asking the reader to ignore the impact of the decision to axe the Community Development Employment Program, or CDEP, in 2015, and telling us:

To get a more accurate sense of the employment gap, it is better to focus on the non-CDEP employment rate and how this has changed over time. While this rate fell between 2008 and 2012-13, the decline was not statistically significant.

The 2016 report shows little progress towards the goal of closing the gap in school attendance by 2018. It reports mixed progress on the target to halve the gap in reading and numeracy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by 2018, achieving national minimum standards on track in just four of eight areas.

The report notes that COAG has renewed the target of ensuring access to early childhood education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander four-year-olds. It notes that the previous target related to access for four-year-olds in remote communities 'expired unmet' in 2013, but does not say why. And nowhere in the report are the consequences of the coalition's decision to cut half a billion dollars from Indigenous services and programs in its first budget explained; nor the decision to make additional cuts worth tens of millions from indexation pauses, including $17.8 million, confirmed by PM&C in an estimates hearing today; or the decision to sack hundreds of Indigenous public servants; or the decision to axe the COAG Reform Council. There is a lot left unexplained. It does show some welcome progress. It is a good thing that the target of halving the gap in child mortality by 2018 is on track and the target of halving the gap in year 12 attainment is also on track. These are good outcomes. One addition that should be made, which the Leader of the Opposition has spoken about, is the target that tackles the increasing incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Mr Shorten has spoken about in the other place.

Successes and failures on the path to closing the gap should be reported objectively. Success should be celebrated. Failure should be addressed, and it must not be explained away with irrelevant data or hollow words. Closing the gap matters too much for that.