Australia has always hosted a significant Aboriginal population. To this effect, they enacted a policy called Closing the Gap, which seeks to lessen inequality between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians by closing the gap between their standards of living. However, the policy is being criticized for its mixed results and apparent general ineffectiveness.
BBC reports that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given his first response to the annual Closing the Gap report. In it, he admits that the government effort is somewhat lacking, as quite a few of their projected key goals are not on track. The Closing the Gap policy seeks to improve the living conditions of the Aboriginal population by measures like increasing the number of indigenous students finishing high school, halving the gaps in employment between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and generally trying to improve the Aboriginal living standards. Unfortunately, the policy is currently failing to meet all of the projected goals. He states that the government needs to make a concentrated effort to make more headway with the policy.
Indigenous leaders have been calling out for more interactions and stronger government presence in their communities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda has stated that he feels as if the government is not making much effort to communicate with Indigenous communities. He feels that the government should focus on establishing communication so as to ensure that the policies and measures instated would have a greater impact. "Building relationships with communities takes time, [but] it seems the government would prefer to spend $1m developing a program that doesn't work than $1m building a relationship," he claims in a public statement. He claims that health services pose as one of the bigger problems for Indigenous folk, due to language barriers, cultural differences, and inaccessibility.
A full overview of the Closing the Gap report was provided by The Guardian. Only two of the target goals are on track for its 2018 projected timeline. The measures to halve child and infancy mortality rates have improved, as well as the rates of aborigine young adults attaining at least 12 years of education. Hoewver, Indegious literacy and numeracy rates remain almost the same since 2008. The movements for accessible education for early childhood in remote villages show very limited improvement as well, and the average lifespans for the Indigenous people has increased slowly over the years.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has also responded to the Closing the Gap report. ABC News Australia reports that Scullion acknowledged the huge divide between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal citizens of Australia in an opinion piece on February 10. "There is no point pretending things are better than they are. The report will show we have a long road ahead if we are to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage," he wrote.
In the piece, Scullion also defends the government's decision to focus on its efforts to bring more children to school, and that there will be services to address issues like domestic violence and incarceration rates once the funding is released on July. This has been met with criticism however.
The head of the Northern Land Council, Joe Morrison, is accusing Mr Scullion and the government of trying to take back control of the land to access resources. Morrison accuses that they're attacking the Land Rights Act with their actions, and that the covernments in the Northern Territory "spent millions and millions of public funds on bloody-minded legal challenges to almost every land claim."
The Closing the Gap report is urging the government to focus on the health services for the Aboriginal population. It also urges to give focus on disability support and calls for national inquiry into racism and measures against institutional racism in the health care system.
