PM’s Closing the Gap statement on repeat

Every February, the Prime Minister makes a Closing the Gap statement — and every year the incumbent reports pretty much the same findings: ‘while there have been some improvements, overall, the gaps are not closing.’

Then come the platitudes about how Closing the Gap is a worthy cause, and how hopefully in the future we will see improvements in Indigenous outcomes.

Desperate to avoid sounding like former Prime Ministers, Malcolm Turnbull has reportedly asked Indigenous leaders to provide him with some ‘novel ideas’ to try and breach this impasse.

However, while the Closing the Gap policy might appear to be a well-intentioned and benign way of highlighting levels of indigenous disadvantage, it is a fairly useless tool for distinguishing how Indigenous Australians are really tracking against their non-Indigenous compatriots.

For one thing, while Indigenous outcomes may improve, non-Indigenous Australians outcomes may improve at a higher rate, therefore preventing any ‘closing’ of the gaps.

But the biggest problem with the Closing the Gap policy is that it attributes poor outcomes to race rather than recognising that different life experiences are the real cause of disadvantage. By lumping all Indigenous people together as one, the policy ignores those who have achieved success and downplays the real levels of disadvantage experienced by others.

In the late 1990s, the New Zealand government employed a similar political slogan. But its ‘Closing the Gaps’ campaign was quietly put to bed when it was found to perpetuate negative perceptions of Maori.

Australia needs to stop pretending that the Closing the Gaps policy is having any effect on those Indigenous Australians at the bottom of the heap. 

An article from 35 years ago in our Policy magazine archive is remarkably prescient when considering what has occurred under the Closing the Gap policy:

“So long as policies target Aborigines as a group, rather than the most disadvantaged of them, or indeed, the most disadvantaged of the community as whole — those policies will further advantage already employed members of the Aboriginal subgroup and leave unaffected the long-term unemployed and welfare dependent (Pollard, D 1991 Ending Aboriginal Poverty).

It is time to take the Prime Minister’s Closing the Gap statement off repeat.