“The government needs to pursue the National Agreement[on closing the Gap] with the same vigour and commitment that they gave to the Voice. The Voice is easier to talk about than Closing the Gap. We need to do both.”
The Productivity Commission’s annual data snapshot on Closing the Gap showed that 96.7 per cent of Aboriginal children were enrolled in early childhood education in 2021,significantly higher than the target. However,only 34.3 per cent were developmentally ready for school,compared to 56.2 per cent of non-Aboriginal children.
This was a decline of 35.2 per cent from the baseline year of 2018. Although many states showed an improvement in indigenous children developmentally ready for school,NSW,Western Australia and the Northern Territory pulled down the national average.
The Productivity Commission is monitoring the progress of Closing the Gap under the National Agreement,which is designed to accelerate improvement in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by including them as genuine partners in designing policies that affect them.
“The four priority reforms are about changing the way governments work with our people and that’s where they’re dragging.”
Pat Turner
Turner is the lead convener of the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations,which is working with Australian governments to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians under a national agreement signed in 2020.