Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I have stood so many times in this chamber to speak on Closing the Gap, and it's always the same. I could almost copy and paste my previous speeches because we have seen no real progress at all. Each year we go through the same sad ritual: targets are not on track, some of the most crucial are going backwards, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Indigenous Australians make vague statements about partnership and hope, and then they move on. We've known for years that incarceration rates are rising, child removals are rising, suicide rates remain devastating. We all know this. With no real progress, Closing the Gap has now just become a sad reporting exercise on the racist state violence that continues to occur against First Peoples.

The problem is not a lack of information; the problem is a lack of political will for change. The problem is a racist colonial government across this country that continues to harm us.

Closing the Gap is the latest in a long line of failures. In the 1980s, Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke stood at Barunga and promised a treaty. That promise was never delivered. Under Paul Keating, we saw a shift toward recognition of truth: the Redfern speech, the acknowledgement that dispossession and violence were not accidents of history but foundations of this nation. That period was imperfect, but it was at least grounded in the language of our rights. It was something that didn't last.

John Howard's era of practical reconciliation came next. Treaty was off the table. Power shifting was dismissed. The focus changed to a top-down approach. It was service delivery with a government-knows-best approach. This culminated in the horrific, racist NT intervention. Questions of sovereignty, justice and shifting power were completely scrapped. Does this sound familiar?

When Kevin Rudd formalised Closing the Gap in 2008, it carried elements of accountability, but it also inherited the top-down logic of Howard, and over time the framework has shrunk into a set of targets detached from the deeper structural causes of the harm perpetrated against First Peoples since invasion. By 2018, most targets were not on track and many were going backwards. In 2020, the new national agreement promised a reset. There would supposedly be genuine partnership with Aboriginal organisations, shared decision-making, community control and structural reform. Some hoped that would mark a return to something closer to the rights based approach that had once seemed possible. Instead, today we find ourselves back at the same dead end.

Today, Closing the Gap functions not as a vehicle for justice but as political cover for this Labor government. It is something they point to when asked what they are doing about the harm First Peoples face. It provides a language of progress without requiring any redistribution of power. And signatories to the agreement, governments across this country, are now actively betraying their supposed commitments.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the criminalisation, the jailing of our people, including our children. The Productivity Commission's latest data shows more than $7 billion spent annually on prisons—a record. Jailing children costs more than $1 billion a year and is rising. The national prison population is at an 80-year high under this Labor government. Across states and territories, new prisons are being built and expanded. The tightening of bail laws has seen remand numbers soaring. Aboriginal women are the fastest-growing prison population in the country and the most incarcerated in the world—under Labor. We've just recorded the most black deaths in custody in a year since records began in 1978—under Labor. This is the result of deliberate choices by governments that have supposedly committed to bringing down incarceration of First Peoples under the Closing the Gap framework. This is the system working as colonial governments around this country want it to.

We are told there is limited funding for housing, for community controlled legal services, for culturally safe mental health care, and for early intervention and prevention. Yet there is always funding—billions—for more prison beds. If Closing the Gap were truly about reducing incarceration, investment would flow into keeping families together, into bail support, into justice reinvestment, into programs that communities have been calling for over decades. Instead, governments are expanding prisons and calling it progress while a pittance is offered to supporting people.

This is a political choice, which brings me to the Prime Minister's recent comments. He has cautioned against talk of failure, suggesting that describing Closing the Gap as failing dismisses the aspirations and achievements of First Peoples. Let me be clear: criticising this framework is not criticising our people; it is criticising governments who are actively harming our people. It is criticising the Albanese government. They are failing. For the Prime Minister to imply otherwise is an attempt to shift responsibility away from himself and onto those who bear the consequences of policy.

Our communities are not tightening bail laws. We are not funding and arming police or allocating billions to prisons. We are not stealing children or shrugging when our people die in custody. The Prime Minister's reframing criticism of Closing the Gap as criticism of Aboriginal people is a deflection. It's about creating hesitation among allies and Labor voters, who can see that the framework is not delivering but feel unsure about whether they are permitted to say so. To those people, I give you permission: say it; call them out. They're gammin. Labor are fake allies. Stand with First Peoples by calling this approach what it is: an utter failure. If you are serious about justice, you must call out this Labor government's failure to act. History tells us that progress in this country has never come from silence. Nothing we have ever achieved has been gifted by government. Everything has been won through the resilience and power of our ancestors and elders—in spite of governments, not because of them.

Albanese committed to implementing the Uluru statement in full, but after the Voice failed he lost interest. Like so many before him, he has decided there is nothing for him to gain politically from pursuing justice for First Peoples. It is never about us; it's just about votes. The trajectory is clear: bandaid programs and short-term grants while prisons expand and deaths in custody rise. This is the same logic as Howard's 'practical reconciliation', not the rights based approach Labor claims. Where there is progress, it is because of our people, not governments. The federal Labor government will hand all responsibility to the states and territories. It is an absolute cop-out. They have the power to pull the states into line. They're choosing not to use it. That failure sits squarely with Albanese. We will not be silenced. Criticism of Closing the Gap is not criticism of our people; it is about holding this government to account and demanding they do their job. So do it.