Comment: Actions, not words needed to make positive change

By PETER ROWE

EDITOR

There is spin and then there is Canberra spin.

The headline in an ACT story this week told it all – ‘Some good Closing the Gap news…’

Really? Good news? Where?

Oh, yes of course … Land and Sea rights, internet access and ‘some’ health and wellbeing in ‘some’ States.

And weigh that against the bad news, the criticisms outlined in the latest Productivity Commission report into Closing the Gap:

• Incarceration up by 15 per cent – The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prisons increased by 30 per cent since 2019.
• The rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care has risen from 47.3 per 1,000 in 2019 to 50.3 per 1,000 in 2024.
• The rate of suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people reached 30.8 per 100,000 in 2023, the highest recorded since 2018.

The commission chief Selwyn Button pointed the finger at government and the bureaucracy of Canberra – a place where tokenism rules supreme.

“We found that governments had not taken enough meaningful action to meet their commitments under the agreement,” he said.

Pat Turner, lead convenor of the Coalition of Peaks, hit the nail on the head when she said: “Too often, we see delay, half-measures and a failure to empower our communities with real decision-making power.

“If we are to achieve lasting change, the solutions must be led by us, not imposed upon us.”

Positive change is achievable when governments work in genuine partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

But currently there is too little positive change and often too late.

That has to change if there is any hope of actually making a difference.