Thursday's Closing the Gap report offers 'no grounds for confidence' amid a failure to address key issues with time winding down on the current agreement, the Uluru Statement architects say.

Anthony Albanese delivered this year's report in Parliament on Thursday, outlining just four of 19 targets are on track, with as many going backwards.

As reported by National Indigenous Times, several key measures continue to stall or deteriorate — including incarceration, out-of-home care (OOHC) and suicide rates — prompting the Prime Minister to acknowledge the scale of work still required.

The timeline on many reforms set out in the National Agreement, signed in 2020, expires in five years, or 2031.

"Promises, resets and rebrands" with "little to show for it" date back far longer than the 18 years since initial Closing the Gap strategy in 2008, Uluru Dialogue co-chairs Pat Anderson and Professor Megan Davis said in a joint statement on Thursday.

This extends to 30 years since former prime minister John Howard flagged "practical reconciliation," the pair said.

The co-chairs slammed a part of the Prime Minister's delivery of the report. While acknowledging there is work to be done, Mr Albanese said: "We must also guard against talk of failure", suggesting the use of the term dismisses "aspirations and achievements of Indigenous Australians". He added the use of the term is akin to giving up - something not being contemplated by the federal government.

Aunty Pat and Professor Davis said: "It is a profound irony for governments to caution ordinary people against naming failure when that failure belongs to policymakers, not the governed."

People who have been "economically marginalised and politically disempowered" shouldn't be "admonished for describing what they live each day", they added.

Aunty Pat and Professor Davis were also critical of economic measures within this year's report and going forward, saying policies which tend to benefit "a small, well-connected elite" are not the means to deliver broad benefit for First Nations people.

In Parliament, Mr Albanese made the case economic empowerment underpins the Closing the Gap strategy and self-determination "flows from financial security " and from "having a stake in the economy".

"The Prime Minister's 'pull yourself up by the bootstraps' address will offer little solace to communities burdened by suffocating bureaucratic control. It may, however, reassure the Coalition that Howard's ideological DNA continues to shape Indigenous policy three decades on, despite decades of demonstrable failure," Aunty Pat and Professor Davis said in their response.

"'Economic empowerment' is not a new policy. It is the latest repackaging of targeted economic policies that have circulated through Indigenous affairs for decades under shifting slogans.

"The language has evolved to meet the contemporary milieu of financialised, high-inequality capitalism, but the architecture remains state-controlled and inattentive to the real constraints on wealth creation: no Voice, no agency, poor health, insecure land tenure, limited property rights, regulatory uncertainty, procurement barriers and infrastructure deficits."

Aunty Pat and Professor Davis, as major figures in the 'Yes' case for the Voice to Parliament - a proposal laid out in the Uluru Statement - have consistently pointed to its capacity to drive positive change, had it succeeded, in the years since its defeat in the 2023 referendum.

On Thursday, they addressed the argument responsibility for Closing the Gap "devolved back to the states and territories".

This transfer of responsibility "retreated from the leadership mandate Australians conferred upon (the Commonwealth) in the 1967 referendum", they said.

"Labor has accepted that retreat. It has stood by while states and territories continue to fail, particularly in youth detention and child removals. The consequences are not abstract. They are borne daily by our communities and families," Aunty Pat and Professor Davis added.

Earlier this week, Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe pushed for greater accountability on the state and territories, financial penalties to be built into the Closing the Gap agreement.

The suggestion was followed by Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy's signalling of potential levers to apply greater pressure on the jurisdictions to improve their performance towards reaching targets.

"Today's glossy brochure, heralding what amounts to zero structural change, offers cold comfort to communities struggling to survive, to pay rent, to read and write, to put food on the table, to keep the lights on and to stay safe. In some Northern Territory communities, even reliable electricity remains absent. That is a national disgrace", Aunty Pat and Professor Davis said on Thursday.

"With five years remaining under the current framework, today's report provides Australians with no grounds for confidence that the gap is closing in any meaningful sense."

Additional reporting by Dechlan Brennan