The annual Closing the Gap Day is intended, at least in principle, to mark steady progress toward eliminating the entrenched disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
The framework underpinning it — formalised in 2020 under the Morrison Government and signed by all jurisdictions — was designed to deliver measurable change across health, justice, education and economic outcomes by 2031.
Six years on, that promise is increasingly difficult to defend, with independent Senator Lidia Thorpe describing the Agreement as an "ineffective distraction" that fails to confront the most "fundamental injustices First Peoples face".
The latest data lends weight to that assessment: only four targets are on track, five are improving but falling short, and two have stagnated. Most concerning is the regression across four critical indicators — suicide, incarceration, early childhood development, and out-of-home care.
This isn't just a policy failure. It is a deeper structural problem in how governments engage with, and care about, the Agreement. Across jurisdictions, Closing the Gap risks being reduced to nothing more than a box-ticking exercise that is then immediately ignored.
How else can you explain why in Western Australia Aboriginal men are jailed at a rate higher than that of African men in the apartheid-era South Africa? Or how, despite the horrors of a system that led to the death of 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd, the state government decided — against expert advice — to keep the unfit Unit 18 open for three more years. No ifs, no buts.
Over in Queensland, First Nations children are 27 times more likely to be incarcerated than their non-Indigenous peers, whilst in the Northern Territory, more than one per cent of the adult population is imprisoned — around 90 per cent of them Indigenous — many on remand.
Unsurprisingly, both governments have intimated that Closing the Gap targets can't get in the way of political expediency. National Indigenous Times has previously heard rumours — heavily denied by the state government — that Queensland would look to pull out of the agreement. But why would they when there is no consequence for what they are doing now?
Victoria is considered the most progressive state in the country, with the most leftist Labor government. Yet, despite its rightly-lauded Treaty commitments, the state has the highest number of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care.
Law changes allowing 14-year-olds to receive life sentences, introduced last year with the full support of the PM, further complicate claims of leadership in this space. The resignation of the Aboriginal child commissioner, without formal acknowledgment from the Victorian Government, reflects the tensions between policy in the face of 'tough on crime' media attacks and moves to close the gap.
Conversations about states being financially punished for breaching the Agreement come and go.
Despite the efforts of Minister Malarndirri McCarthy — who has flagged financial penalties for the NT in particular for their egregious policies around law and order — the PM has seemingly given carte blanche to states to run their own policies regarding justice, saying so as recently as last month.
"The primary responsibility for law enforcement and detention rests with State and Territory governments," he told Parliament in February, "and they have every right to put the safety of their communities first."
This position persists despite legal advice indicating the Commonwealth has the authority to intervene in key areas, including setting a national minimum age of criminal responsibility.
Political caution is the PM's game — he has stated he wants Labor to be the "natural party of government". In the Indigenous space, this has been compounded by the fallout from the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum.
Advocates argue that this restraint is no longer tenable. In reality, it never should be. Last year saw the most deaths in custody since records were formally taken. Saying it is a state issue and then never following up is simply a dereliction of duty.
Nerita Waight, acting chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, says the Commonwealth must take "decisive action".
"There are levers to pull in terms of the funding agreements with state and territories," she said last week, "that will drive real policy change and improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, especially our children."
She noted closing the gap targets aren't quaint suggestions — they are people's lives. Ignoring them shouldn't be the option the federal government continues to allow them to be.
"Governments should be doing everything in their power to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and achieve real equity," Ms Waight said.
The federal government can rightly point to progress in areas such as employment, food security, economic participation, and land and sea rights, along with stronger engagement with First Nations communities compared to previous administrations. These are all laudable and should be rightly celebrated. The work from Labor's First Nations caucus has made this happen.
But if Labor eventually leaves office with the gap having widened in as important metrics as suicide, incarceration and children removed from their families, they will have failed.
No amount of photo ops in remote communities by the PM will change that.
