Budget reveals much the same for Indigenous Australians, Coalition says

Dechlan Brennan Published March 27, 2025 at 10.45am (AWST)

politics

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (right) has been appointed by Peter Dutton to lead a new ‘government efficiency’ platform before the election. She says an audit for Indigenous organisations is needed. (Image: Jono Searle/AAP)

The Coalition has slammed the funding clarity for First Nations people in the federal budget, arguing the Voice referendum distracted the government from implementing "practical actions to improve lives".

In Tuesday's budget, the government announced they will provide $506.4 million over five years from the last financial year under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, with money partially being allocated from the National Indigenous Australians Agency's (NIAA) Indigenous Advancement Strategy, as well as the Department of Health and Aged Care.

The funding is alongside the previously announced Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment, valued at $842.6 million, in a partnership with the NT Government and Aboriginal Peak Organisations NT and the $4 billion, 10-year commitment to remote housing in the NT which the government says will see up to 270 homes built in remote communities each year.

In a joint statement on Thursday, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Health Services, Kerrynne Liddle, said of the $506.4 million in funding, "Labor has allocated only $57.6 million in new money for those initiatives".

"The Minister needs to explain where the extra $448.8 million is going to come from to pay for these new measures," Senator Nampijinpa Price said.

The budget also revealed a transition between the much-maligned Liberal-era Community Development Program (CDP) and Labor's new remote employment service, with funding to the tune of $137.3 million, as well as CDP funding for a further four months.

Senator Nampijinpa Price said this amounted to a broken election promise with the new program not up and running over the course of parliamentary term.

The new program has featured large community consultation with the government earmarking 3000 jobs over three years across remote Australia as the target for its new $707 million Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program (RJED).

The remote employment service has come after community consultation and two years of trials, focusing on job creation approaches that support local priorities and enterprise development in the regions covered by the CDP, the government said last year.

They said trials have seen almost 17,500 CDP participants and their community's benefit from a raft of opportunities, including paid work experience, training incentives, mentoring and establishment of new community enterprises.

Senator Liddle asked, considering Closing the Gap showed most metrics were continuing to lag, why does the government continue to "invest significant new money into Closing the Gap initiatives at the same time it is failing to make progress in key areas to actually Close the Gap".

"It cannot just blame the states and territories but should also look at those who manage the decisions that inform the initiatives," she said.

"The Government must also come clean about which Indigenous programs it will cut in order to fund its new measures."

The opposition has vowed to audit all Indigenous organisations if they win the election, arguing money on Indigenous affairs is not being present efficiently. I

n January, Senator Nampijinpa Price was given a new, "government efficiency" portfolio, which is touted as a solution to help crack down on "wasteful spending".

Citing an extra 100 staff at the NIAA in the budget, despite over a 10 million net reduction in resourcing over five years, the Warlpiri/Celtic Senator said there were "many things in this budget that just don't add up when it comes to Indigenous affairs".

Whilst the opposition hasn't outlined any major policy announcement in Indigenous affairs other than the plan for an audit and royal commission into sexual abuse in remote communities, Senator Nampijinpa Price said only a coalition government would "practical improvement in the lives of marginalised Indigenous Australians".

"It is marginalised Indigenous Australians who will fall even further behind as a result of these unanswered questions and inconsistencies in Labor's Budget," she said.

"That is exactly why the Coalition will undertake an audit of spending in Indigenous affairs, to ensure money is going where it actually makes a difference to the most marginalised members of our communities."