WHAT IS THE ‘GAP’?

WHAT’S INVOLVED IN CLOSING THE GAP?

On 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in his speech – Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples -

“The truth is: a business as usual approach towards Indigenous Australians is not working. Most old approaches are not working. We need a new beginning. A new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure. A new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional Indigenous communities across the country but instead allows flexible, tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership.”

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At the COAG meeting (Prime Minister and State Premiers) in October 2008, WA Premier Colin Barnett said:

“I just simply made the point to which I think everyone agreed, that ‘closing the gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia was Australia’s greatest social issue to be confronted in this century. And it was something that should rise above party politics and was something that should rise above the interests of Federal versus State governments and even local governments.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s response was to affirm this position:

“Colin Barnett triggered some thinking on my part on how you take that part of closing the gap into a much broader national agenda and that is States, Territory and private community agenda marching to the beat of the same drum.”

Read about the Blank Page Summit on Suicide in PM Kevin Rudd’s Closing the Gap Report (February 2010)

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On 2 October 2008, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to six ambitious targets for closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians across urban, rural and remote areas:

• to close the gap in life expectancy within a generation;
• to halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade;
• to ensure all Indigenous four years olds in remote communities have access to early childhood education within five years;
• to halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for Indigenous children within a decade;
• to halve the gap for Indigenous students in year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment rates by 2020; and
• to halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade.

CLOSING THE GAP
PRIME MINISTERIAL STATEMENT
11 FEBRUARY 2010

“Mr Speaker, two years ago I made a formal Apology in this Parliament to the Indigenous peoples of Australia, and particularly to the Stolen Generations, on behalf of the Government, the Parliament and the people of Australia.

On that day in 2008, I also pledged to lead a new, national effort to close the gap in life expectancy and life opportunities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

On that day, we achieved for the first time a bi-partisan commitment to closing the gap:

• together, we acknowledged the failure of successive governments to deliver to many Indigenous communities;
• together, we demonstrated that closing the gap is a national priority that should be above partisan politics, and
• together, we recognised that closing the gap would take not a parliamentary term, but a generation.

When we came to Government the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy at birth was estimated at 17 years.

Indigenous children in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory were 3.6 times more likely to die before they reached the age of five than non-Indigenous children.

Almost one in 10 dwellings in remote and very remote Indigenous communities were in need of major repair or replacement.

In 2006, only 47.4 per cent of Indigenous young people had attained Year 12 or equivalent.

And the employment gap between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians aged 15 to 64 stood at around 21 percentage points in 2008.

In other areas, such as literacy and numeracy, comparable national data did not exist, though a large gap in achievement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students was evident.

These failures presents us with a substantial challenge.

But in facing this challenge, I believe there has never before been the commitment to change that there is today.

We have seen a growing movement to take responsibility for change – among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

If we are to make a break from the failures of the past, we must all play our part.

Governments, first, must take responsibility for addressing their past failures in Indigenous affairs.

Second, Indigenous Australians must take greater responsibility for change – change begins in the lives of individuals and families, spreading across local communities.

Third, Australians across all walks of life must take responsibility for re-setting relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.”

Hon Kevin Rudd, MP
Prime Minister of Australia

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