Indigenous woes deepen in Australia

CANBERRA－Some of the targets to address the disadvantages faced by Australia's indigenous population are not on track to be met, a report has found.

According to the report of the Closing the Gap program published by the Productivity Commission on Thursday, indigenous Australians are significantly more likely to be imprisoned, die by suicide or have their children removed than non-indigenous people.

Launched in 2008, the Closing the Gap framework aims to reduce disadvantage among Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

Thursday's report was the first time that data on the strategy has been published since federal, state and territory governments reached an agreement with indigenous organizations to overhaul the framework in July 2020.

It found that while improvements in life expectancy for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders since the baseline of 2005-2007 narrowed the gap to 8.6 years for boys and 7.8 years for girls in 2015-2017, the national target of "no gap" was not on track to be met.

The suicide rate among indigenous people rose to 27.1 per 100,000 in 2019, with the target of a "significant and sustained reduction in suicide toward zero" not on course to be met.

Reduction goal

Among the agreement's targets is a goal to reduce incarceration rates among indigenous people by 15 percent within the decade.

The report found that the indigenous incarceration rate rose to 2,081 per 100,000 people in June 2020, with the national target not on track to be realized.

In 2020, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged up to 17 in out-of-home care was 56.3 per 1,000 children in the population, an increase from the 2019 baseline, with the national target of a "reduction in the rate of home care by 45 percent" not on track to be achieved, said the report.

However, the rate of indigenous children in youth detention fell to 25.7 per 10,000, with the national target on course to be met.

The Productivity Commission could not provide an update on some of the 17 targets due to a lack of data.

"The agreement is now 12 months old, but the most recent available data for monitoring these socioeconomic outcomes are only just hitting the commencement date for the agreement," commissioner Romlie Mokak said in a media release.

"It is likely to be some years before we see the influence of this agreement on these outcomes."

Xinhua