BI-PARTISAN COMMITMENT & RECOGNITION NEEDED TO CLOSE THE GAP

The National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (Congress) welcomed the Parliament’s bi-partisan support for closing the life expectancy gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples but said there is much work still to do.

Congress Co-Chair, Jody Broun said parliamentary addresses by the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader also laid the ground work to achieve Constitutional recognition.

Politics rarely allows for candid assessments of the state of our current situation but the delivery of the Prime Ministers annual Closing the Gap speech and report, along with the Opposition’s commitments remains a critical time for assessment, said Ms Broun.

We acknowledge the Prime Minister’s comments on the positive progress on three of the 6 targets:
· Halving under 5s infant mortality by 2018 is on track
· Ensuring access to early childhood education for 4 year olds in remote communities by 2013
· General progress on halving the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievement for children by 2018.

Ms Broun said Congress and the other partners in Closing the Gap would continue to focus on seeing progress towards all of the six targets across health, education and employment. Congress also called for the Close the Gap funding to be continued beyond 2013 when the current agreement finishes, saying this year’s report proved that longer term effort and better data collection are needed. Congress also identified that it would engage with the Government on including justice outcomes in future commitments.

In terms of our justice systems, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are now worse off than we were twenty years ago.

We are massively over-represented in the justice system which is both a cause and effect of the poor state of health, education and employment of so many of our families and communities.

“For example, young Aboriginal people are twenty-eight times more likely than non-Aboriginal juveniles to be incarcerated and Aboriginal people in some states are twice as likely than non-Aboriginal people to have their case proceed through the courtsystem, rather than receive a caution or other diversion from the court system.

We will work with the Standing Committee of Law and Justice to address this.

I also welcome today’s tangible commitment by the Government to see our peoples recognised in the Constitution with a $10 million education campaign.

Congress is 100 percent committed to convincing all Australian’s that this is the right thing to do.

We will fight tooth and nail to achieve the recommendations of the Expert Panel through an informed conversation based on the facts.

We look forward to partnering with Reconciliation Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission to achieve this historic opportunity for our nation, said Ms Broun.

Dowload the pdf of the Congress media release here.

Read the Close the Gap media release here.

Download and read the Close the Gap Steering Committee Shadow Report here.