Only five of the 19 Closing the Gap targets are on track, the latest data from the Productivity Commission shows, with incarceration and out-of-home care rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continuing to rise.
The latest Annual Data Compilation Report (ADCR) released Wednesday night revealed a further five targets show improvement but are not on track to be met, while progress towards four targets is worsening.
The targets that are going backwards include Indigenous adults in incarceration, Indigenous children in out of home care, and First Nations people dying by suicide. Tragically, the most recent data shows suicide was the leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15–39 in 2022.
Furthermore, only 34.3 per cent of First Nations children commencing school were developmentally on track in 2021.
Newly appointed Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, responded to the figures, noting the need for a wholesale approach from all sides of the political aisle.
"These figures are deeply troubling, but I am determined to work in partnership with First Nations Australians, the Coalition of Peaks and State and Territory governments to bring about positive change," Minister McCarthy said.
"I will be reaching out to my colleagues across the parliament to seek a bipartisan approach to Indigenous affairs."
SNAICC - National Voice for our Children chief executive Catherine Liddle said: "I usually try and find a glimpse of light in these grim reports, but it's difficult to find a positive slant on what this data tells us about the lives and experiences of our children and families."
Indigenous incarceration rates are often viewed as one of the main targets for closing the gap, and the latest data shows a concerning rise.
Nationally, 2,265.8 per 100,000 First Nations adults were incarcerated in 2023, an increase of 114.7 per 100,00 people since the year before.
Worse still, despite the Closing the Gap target aiming to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander incarceration rate by at least 15 per cent from the 2019 figure, there has been a 5.7 per cent rise in the rate.
Only South Australia and NSW showed any reduction in the rates from 2022 to 2023, with the rest of the states showing significant increases.
In regards to out of home care (OOHC), First Nations children are removed from their families at a rate of 57.2 per 1,000 — 12.1 times that of non-Indigenous children.
Only NSW, ACT and the NT saw a decrease in the rate from 2022, with Victoria - the worst performing state - removing more than one-in-ten Indigenous children from their families, at a rate of 102.9 per 1,000 children — 22.5 times the rate of non-Indigenous child removals.
Referring to the national rates of child removal, Ms Liddle said: "The cost of this lack of action is directly felt by our children, who continue to be removed from their families at unprecedented rates, who continue to be vastly over-represented in the youth justice system."
"If we keep going on this trajectory, we are never going reverse the trajectory of our children entering out-of-home care and continuing on a path to youth detention and adult incarceration," she said.
"To be absolutely clear, these are not the failings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or culture. These are fairly and squarely the failures of the systems that impact us the most being built without us, to work against us."
In youth detention, the rate for Indigenous children and young people increased from 28.5 to 29.8 per 10,000 young people but was down from 32.1 per 10,000 young people in 2018-19.
In the five years to 2022-2023, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people in detention on a given day in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia has reduced, while rates of overrepresentation in the NT, the ACT and Queensland have worsened over the same period.
Alarmingly, Indigenous suicide rates across the country continued to rise, with the latest data showing a rate 29.9 per 100,000 people.
This is an increase from the last numbers two years ago, as well as the 2018 rate of 25.1 per 100,000 people.
Targets being met
Five of the Closing the Gap targets were on track to be met.
These include the proportion of Indigenous children enrolled in Year Before Fulltime Schooling, babies born at a healthy birthweight, and an increase in Australia's land mass subject to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's legal rights or interests.
Ms Liddle, in her role as Coalition of Peaks co-convenor, said there were numerous examples of where community control was Closing the Gap.
"There are some fantastic community-controlled childcare and kindergarten programs, for example, that are ensuring our children are growing up not just healthy and educated, but strong in culture too. We know that when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are connected to their culture the Closing the Gap measures are better met," she said.
Productivity Commissioner Selwyn Button said of the data: "Holding governments accountable for change includes having the data to measure change – and there is still much we do not know. Giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the resources and authority to generate and control their own data in line with Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles will be a vital part of addressing these gaps."
