Is ‘Close the Gap’ a useful approach to improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians?

Kerryn Pholi
Dan Black
Craig Richards, University of Newcastle

ABSTRACT

There is widespread enthusiasm for the Australian government’s commitment to ‘Close the Gap’ in Indigenous disadvantage, health status and life expectancy. Yet despite the rhetoric, the pursuit of statistical equality for Indigenous Australians is not a novel or particularly promising approach. It is also an approach that reduces Indigenous Australians to a range of indicators of deficit, to be monitored and rectified towards government-set targets. This illustrates a substantial imbalance in power and control over the Indigenous affairs agenda in Australia, which is the ‘gap’ that must be addressed for the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians to improve.

At the time of writing, Kerryn Pholi <sendmailtokerryn@yahoo.com.au> worked as an Aboriginal Population Health Epidemiologist in Hunter New England Population Health, Hunter New England Area Health Service. She previously worked in the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics, Australian Bureau of Statistics. Dan Black <blackad@bigpond.com.au> is the former director (now retired) of the National Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Statistics, Australian Bureau of Statistics. He has had a leadership role in ABS Indigenous statistics for over 20 years. Dr Craig Richards <Craig.Richards@newcastle.edu.au> is an Aboriginal Medical Services GP, a senior lecturer in Indigenous health at the University of Newcastle and a Medical Epidemiologist in Hunter New England Population Health, Hunter New England Area Health Service.

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