Report card on aboriginal Australians paints bleak picture

“We are sick and exhausted of going to funerals on a very regular basis”.

The report showed that not enough gains had been made to close the 10-year gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians by 2031, and Aboriginal unemployment is not expected to be halved by 2018 as previously pledged.

Indigenous leaders have said they are “a little bit cynical” about Malcolm Turnbull’s commitment to bring them in to help address indigenous inequality, as leaders react and respond to the Closing The Gap report tabled in parliament on Wednesday.

Only two areas – halving the child mortality gap by 2018, and halving the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020 – are on track.

And while there have been calls to overhaul the Closing The Gap system and formula to better address indigenous outcomes, Oxfam Australia has urged the PM against changing the framework.

“I constantly talk about the ATSIC days where you had people on the ground addressing the issues”, he said. “We’ve been doing that all of our lives”, Good said. “It is not until Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the same opportunities for health, education and employment that we can truly say we are a country of equal opportunity”, he said in the report’s introduction.

He also said he understood the frustration of Indigenous leaders who have expressed anger that their voices were not being heard.

Gooda said governments should not fear having hard conversations with community leaders about how to do more with less cash in a tight fiscal environment.

“A person’s right to shape their own identity and for that identity to be respected is central to the well-being of all people and yet for decades aboriginality and skin color have been used to control the live of indigenous people and to diminish their value in society”, Turnbull said.

“We need consistent funding and support from all governments to reach Close the Gap targets”, Owler said.

He announced $20 million in extra funding for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, to collect “critical” cultural knowledge.

Oxfam’s Indigenous policy adviser, Peter Lewis, warned that “chopping and changing health policy at this point would be destructive”.

“However, it’s unclear if it will be funded in the 2016 federal budget”.

“We can’t see much daylight at the end of the tunnel at the moment”, Gordon Gray, Chairman of the Mid West Aboriginal Organisation Alliance in Geraldton, told Arthur Muhl on ABC Mid West WA.

The Law Council of Australia labelled the incarceration rate as “a national crisis that requires national leadership”.

“The link between disadvantage, crime, and imprisonment is already well established among criminologists”. And so we need to listen to and draw on the wisdom, the ingenuity, the insights of indigenous people across the nation from the cities to remote communities … we have to redouble our efforts to ensure effective engagement between the government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to build trust and develop further that respectful relationship.

“We look forward to starting a new chapter for our people, because things cannot progress as they have”, she said.