The failure to close the gap shows the system is in fact working exactly as intended, according to community legal services across the country.
The system is a "well-oiled machine" removing children to "eradicate First Nations people," according to a submission to the Senate Select Committee on Measuring Outcomes for First Nations Communities from the First Nations Justice Network of Community Legal Centres Australia.
"The Stolen Generations never ended. The Stolen Generations – systematic removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from culture, and denial of self-determination – continue to this day, just driven by a slightly different legislative framework," the submission states.
"It is this truth that underpins the worsening outcomes for First Nations communities."
The newly established national network of Indigenous workers from community legal services across the country has argued that the government is not meeting its obligation under the Closing the Gap agreement to improve accountability and to respond to the needs of Indigenous people.
Unlike most submissions, this presents the voices of First Nations workers and advocates in the sector as a gift; a forthright, truth-telling document which doubles as a call to action for governments across the country. Approximately 30 frontline First Nations community legal workers contributed to the submission, many of them First Nations women working on the frontline of domestic and family violence response.
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Yankunytjatjara Woman and Aboriginal Community Worker, Lisa Warner, said too often, information "gifted" to governments from First Nations people in submissions is dissected "like a frog".
"It's so deadly that we create pieces like this, but then they shimmy back up to government, and all they do is say, 'we don't actually have to do that because it's just recommendations," she said.
"This is not negotiable. It's a call to action. You cannot dilute the cultural context around such important work, we are telling you now that these are the actions that must happen."
It comes as data from March found whilst there was progress in some key areas across states and territories regarding Closing the Gap, suicide rates, child removal, and early childhood development are all worsening since the baseline year of 2018/19.
With laws being introduced across the country which experts say will on exacerbate the already increasing number of Indigenous children in prison, Gamilaroi woman and solicitor at the National Justice Project, Karina Hawtrey, said many of the children she has dealt with "come out of prison more harmed than when they went in".
"They have been kept in cells for up to 23 hours a day," she said, "denied access to schooling, time outside, interaction with other young people, psychologists and First Nations support workers, and they have been diagnosed with serious mental health conditions including PTSD."
23,956 First Nations children were in at least one out-of-home care (OOHC) placement in 2023-24—over 43 per cent of all children Australia-wide. Nationally, Indigenous children aged 0-17 were placed at least once in OOHC in the last financial year at a rate of 60.6 per 1,000, 10.4 times higher than non-Indigenous children and a slight increase from 12 months previous.
"We're still the cattle they're making money off. We're being used as part of a bigger system," says Serrina Kenny, a Yuin, Wiradjuri and Dunghutti Woman and Solicitor.
"A majority of the criminal and child protection systems are because of our people; criminalising our people and removing our kids keeps people in jobs. Why can't we create jobs in other areas that would be more supportive rather than dealing with things at the end?"
A report in February from the Healing Foundation, Are you waiting for us to die?, found nearly thirty years on, only five of the 83 Bringing Them Home recommendations have been implemented.
Christie Drummond is a Dunghutti woman and Family Violence and Care and Protection Advocate working in the disability space. She argues there's "no cure better than prevention".
"It feels like the government is saying 'let's create problems, and then we fix them with removal' rather than preventing these problems to start with."
The Senate Select Committee was meant to finalise their report by the end of May. With the election, this was pushed back, with an interim report only making one recommendation: to re-establish the committee after the election.
It was not supported by the Coalition members of the committee.
The submission to the committee doesn't offer recommendations, or even open the door for negotiations, on a subject that has been rehashed countless times, bastardised by governments, and ignored by many in the media, unless it is to cite a culture war.
Instead, it gifts cultural knowledge and expertise, and a call to action, arguing: "We urge governments to listen deeply."
"We know the solutions, and so do governments," the submission states. "We are seeing regression on these Closing the Gap targets not because we don't yet know the solutions, but because governments choose to pursue policies and practices that we and they know will worsen these problems."
For Ms Warner, she says she is "conscious" of how many times Mob has "done this".
"We're talking about Closing the Gap – but whose gap is it? It's not my gap. It's not our gap as Aboriginal people," she says.
"It's a systemic gap and it's the government's responsibility to start owning their wrongs, misinterpretations and perceptions around how mob should be doing our business."
