Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to start by acknowledging that this is Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. It always was and always will be. I honour their elders past and present and their future leaders.

I rise to speak on the ministerial statement on Closing the Gap, but, before I turn to that report, I want to acknowledge the hurt being felt across First Nations communities affected by the attempted bombing of the Invasion Day rally in Boorloo/Perth and the ongoing escalation of racist violence and hate speech towards First Nations people. The delay in recognising and reporting the Boorloo attack as a terror incident is indicative of the ongoing failure of governments at all levels to take violence against First Nations people seriously. How can we hope to close the gap while such obvious racism persists across our nation? The Human Rights Commission's National Anti-Racism Framework is gathering dust across government desks. The Prime Minister should show leadership and fund its full implementation as a matter of urgency.

This year, just like last year, the Closing the gap report shows only four of 19 targets are on track. The gap is not, in fact, closing. The 2026 report is sobering reading, but, sadly it's not surprising reading. What should be shocking has become routine. That cannot continue. Labor must show more ambition and courage if they're going to get serious about closing the gap and getting real outcomes on First Nations health, housing, education, culture, safety and justice. Every day that passes without meaningful structural change is a conscious decision by this government not to improve the lives of First Nations people.

The Productivity Commission's review of the Closing the Gap agreement found that all governments are falling well short of their commitments. They have collectively failed to understand the nature and the scale of action needed to close the gap. Collective failures are why First Nations people are twice as likely to go without adequate housing. Housing is a crisis across Australia, but it's one that's felt even more acutely by First Nations communities. One in eight Indigenous households are in housing stress, facing unaffordable rents, severe overcrowding and unsafe housing. Collective failures are why more First Nations people are incarcerated and dying by suicide than in the last report. In New South Wales alone, 2025 had the highest recorded number of deaths in custody in 40 years, and yet the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody are still not implemented.

The Commonwealth government should be using every lever available to it to end this disproportionate incarceration and the preventable deaths of First Nations people. It should intervene on issues like raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility and end the overpolicing and draconian laws that put First Nations kids behind bars at alarming rates. In the other place, the Closing the Gap statement was made on the 18th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations. For First Peoples, that anniversary is a time for remembrance of the trauma they endured and the power of survival. For this parliament, that anniversary should be a time of reflection on that legacy of injustice and how we must all do better.

Yet collective failures mean more First Nations kids are in out-of-home care now than when the Closing the Gap agreement was signed. That number is even higher if you include children on permanent care orders outside of their families. One in seven Aboriginal children will have an out-of-home care placement by the time they are 13. This is unacceptable. The injustice is not just in the disproportionate numbers of children in out-of-home care but in how those kids are treated. Too many are exploited or neglected in care—or abused. Too few have comprehensive exit plans that set them up for success beyond care. We need to invest in community led services and kinship care, support for families to stay together and recovery for children leaving care.

Domestic, family and sexual violence against First Nations women and children remain shockingly high. First Nations women are still more likely to be killed by a current or former partner, more likely to be hospitalised by that violence and less likely to be able to access support to leave violent relationships and are too often ignored or blamed when they report violence. 'Our Ways—Strong Ways—Our Voices', which is the standalone, community led plan to end violence, is an important step. It recognises that community led, culturally safe solutions are the most effective, but it should not have taken so long for the government to listen to First Nations women in the first place. Advocates have been calling for a standalone plan for years. Now the government must ensure that Aboriginal community controlled organisations have the funding needed to make that plan work.

Two of the only Closing the Gap targets that are on track relate to land and sea management, and yet we are still a long way from actually recognising First Nations communities' rights to manage their country. After Rio Tinto shamefully blew up 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge, this parliament set out on a pathway to do better in the Away forward report. It called for comprehensive new national cultural heritage laws co-designed with First Nations people. Despite this clear pathway, Australia has yet to ratify the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, new cultural heritage laws are yet to be delivered and new environmental laws were reformed without clear standards for engaging with First Nations communities.

Australia is unceded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land, and traditional owners must be able to decide what happens on country. They must be able to withhold consent to the destruction of their cultural heritage and to determine how their land is managed. If this government is truly committed to managing land, sea and cultural heritage in partnership with First Nations people, it must fully implement the Juukan Gorge recommendations and ensure that new cultural heritage laws and consultation standards are consistent with the principles of self-determination and with free, prior and informed consent.

Closing the Gap is an important commitment to addressing inequality, but it is ultimately a deficit model that fails to address the underlying history of dispossession and the systemic discrimination that goes to the heart of why there is a gap. If we have any hope of closing the gap by 2031, we need to get real about the impacts of systemic racism, intergenerational trauma and chronic underinvestment in Aboriginal led responses. Truth-telling and treaties with First Nations people offer a path to do that.

First Nations people deserve much bolder action on truth and treaty from this government, and yet the government has walked back its early commitment to truth-telling and it's stripped funding from the makarrata commission. The Yoorrook Justice Commission's truth-telling work established a treaty pathway in Victoria, and that provides a model that the Commonwealth could follow. The Walk for Truth campaign will conclude in Canberra in May, and I urge the government to be ready to take action by then.

Closing the gap is about accountability, but no-one's being held accountable for this ongoing failure. This year's report shows once again that not enough is being done. First Nations communities are still not being prioritised, and this government needs to take responsibility for turning that around. Communities have the solutions. Labor needs to show the political will to listen to First Nations people; implement structural reform towards truth, treaty and justice; and make real and lasting progress to actually close the gap.