Communities and First Nations leaders have felt an absence of national leadership in the Indigenous affairs space, one of the architects of the Uluru Statement from the Heart says.
Delivering the 2026 Mokak Oration on the third anniversary of the Voice referendum defeat, Professor Megan Davis argued that Indigenous affairs policies across the country are "fragmented, incoherent and segmented".
"I am not the first person to remark that the policy settings across the federation today are or feel, arguably the worst in a generation," she said.
"The observation that closing the gap has become everyone's priority and no-one's responsibility comes to mind in news coverage in recent weeks about child welfare and child protection and hunger and food sovereignty.
"For weeks the crisis has involved buck-passing and accountability avoidance across levels of government."
The Cobble Cobble woman cited reporting in The Australian about the child protection crisis in the Pilbara, arguing they had to reach out to the media to "have their voices heard, to garner attention, to put pressure on for help and resources".
"Again, everyone's priority and no-one's responsibility," she added.
Indigenous leaders have argued there has been stagnation in Indigenous affairs under the federal government since the referendum, with a focus on economic independence seen as overtaking calls for treaty and truth-telling.
"When our people marched across the Harbour Bridge in the year 2000, we were calling for Treaty," Senator Lidia Thorpe told National Indigenous Times this week. "Labor have shown they do not work in the interests of First Peoples; they do not care about justice for us."
Professor Davis argued Labor's economic policies have "raised eyebrows" in communities, but claimed the government wouldn't know this as they have "doubled down on the very dynamics the Voice sought to disrupt".
"Not only do grassroots communities know that elite capture locks them out of decisions made in their name, but the privileging of wealth creation as a flagship policy when their jarjums are being churned into youth detention and child protection is repugnant," she said.
"I do not wish to be simplistic and understate the importance of economic self-determination, but it highlights how the government's flagship policy trickle-down theory of economic empowerment and wealth creation matters little when little kids are starving and have no food."
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Closing the Gap data has continued to stagnate or go backwards in several key metrics, with the number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care rising, while First Nations children as young as 10 are more than 11 times as likely to be in youth detention as non-Indigenous children.
Legal and human rights groups have called on the government to intervene in state justice matters, arguing it has the constitutional authority to do so. However, the federal government has given mixed reasons for why it can't, including concerns about accusations of hypocrisy and arguments that the issues remain the responsibility of state and territory governments.
Professor Davis argued "most communities and First Nations leaders have felt the absence of the federal government's leadership".
"No wonder it sees itself as being able to announce bespoke policy for the Haves when it regards the states and territories and peaks as carrying the can for the Have Nots," she said.
"This is not an Albanese problem or an Albanese government problem; it is the problem of how our federalism has developed and how the states and territories' carriage of Indigenous Affairs has amplified the fault lines and the shackles, as Ken Wyatt puts it, since colonisation."
She reasoned that the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart remained the "blueprint" for how things needed to operate.
"Whatever way states and territories may be implementing it in this era," Professor Davis added, "we can't change the reality that without a federal voice, the gap will not close.
And without a federal voice, so that people can be assured that the people who are giving advice to government are chosen from their own communities, Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people will never be able to achieve the right to self-determination."
