Closing The Gap

Closing the Gap is a government strategy that aims to reduce disadvantage among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with respect to life expectancy, child mortality, access to early childhood education, educational achievement, and employment outcomes. It is a formal commitment made by all Australian governments to achieve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equality within 25 years.

Closing the Gap was developed in response to the call of the Social justice report 2005 and the Close the Gap social justice campaign. In March 2008, Australian governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people agreed ‘to work together’ to achieve equality in health status and life expectancy between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians by the year 2030’ when they signed the Indigenous health equality summit statement of intent.

To monitor change, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has set measurable targets to monitor improvements in the health and wellbeing of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

The targets are:

1. close the gap in life expectancy within a generation
2. halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade
3. ensure all Indigenous four years-olds in remote communities have access to early childhood education within five years
4. halve the gap for Indigenous students in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade
5. halve the gap for Indigenous students in year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment rates by 2020
6. halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a decade.

Every year, the Prime Minister releases a Closing the Gap report to Parliament that details the progress on these targets. A report is also released by the Close the Gap Steering Committee that details progress on the two health-related targets and provides recommendations to the government.

These targets identify some of the substantial disadvantages experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; the achievement of substantial improvements in health and well being will depend largely on the effective implementation of strategies to achieve these targets.

The generous time frames for the Closing the Gap targets recognise the enormity of the challenge facing governments and the nation; effective, integrated, comprehensive strategies and policies will need to be sustained for a long time to enable targeted improvements to be reached.