The broken Closing the Gap machine

 

The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite

That ever I was born to set it right!

Nay, come, let’s go together.

Hamlet, Act one, Scene five.

 

Ten days ago (on 12 February 2026) Prime Minister Albanese delivered the annual Statement to Parliament on Closing the Gap (link here). Simultaneously the NIAA released the Commonwealth Closing the Gap 2025 Annual Report and 2026 Implementation Plan (link here). I urge interested readers to take the time to have a look at both documents as I cannot give either the justice they deserve.

It would be churlish not to acknowledge that both documents make a strong case for a range of positive initiatives which will make tangible differences to the lives of many Indigenous Australians. These include initiatives related to housing, food security, hospitals and Indigenous health, remote employment, and clean water infrastructure in remote communities, and increased funding for PBCs, the corporate entities that hold native title on behalf of native title owners. 

The Prime Minister’s speech is a well-crafted list of achievements and ongoing work, albeit without key details and history that would provide adequate contextualisation to enable a critical assessment of the Government’s performance in addressing this policy agenda. For example, the inclusion of the section recounting the important and creditable investments in water infrastructure omits both the salient fact that this was previously announced in 2023 by Minister Burney (link here) and that it is part of the funding operations of the National Water Grid Authority (link here) and is in effect a carve out of normal and ongoing mainstream funding, and thus may not involve additional fiscal effort. The data point cited by the Prime Minister (40 clean water projects delivering for around 34,000 people in 110 communities) is not available on the National Water Grid Authority web site or fact sheet (link here) on First Nations projects, though the fact sheet does mention that the initiative will contribute to target 9b under Closing the Gap. The Productivity Commission dashboard (link here) indicates however that there is no data source currently available which includes all required data elements to enable reporting against this target (a larger problem than just data on clean water provision).

He also includes a sophisticated argument about the inter-connectedness of socio-economic life as well as the potential life changing implications of a single event or action:

… one lifeline, one moment when someone recognises your potential and backs it, can change everything. Sometimes when we talk about Closing the Gap, we can be guilty of focusing on that first idea [the interconnectedness of everything] at the expense of the second. The challenges facing us are significant, complex and connected, with causes that reach back generations. But that does not render us powerless - it makes each act of change powerful. It means progress towards one target, will drive improvement in others.

This analysis is of course correct, but in the real world it can operate both positively or negatively, for better and for worse. Yet the Prime Minister wishes to focus only on the former and not the latter.

The Prime Minister’s speech includes a pre-emptive defence against nay sayers and critics built on that partial analysis and is reinforced by a Panglossian reliance on the psychology of positivity and optimism and interlaced with a generous dose of conceptual conflation. Excellent rhetoric, poor analysis. For example, I was struck by this segment of the speech:

We are now 5 years away from most of the target deadlines. We are clear about where there is more to do. We must also guard against talk of failure. Because talk of failure dismisses the aspirations and achievements of Indigenous Australians. It ignores the leaders and communities who are changing lives. Failure is a word for those who have stopped trying - or given up listening. I make this clear today: I am not contemplating failure. Our Government is not contemplating failure. We are determined to succeed. The Closing the Gap targets are a measure of our national progress. And there is real progress.

I too do not wish to contemplate failure, but I fundamentally disagree with the Prime Minister. The targets themselves are not ‘a measure of our national progress’, but if well designed and structured can be a way to measure progress or lack of it. Success in policy formulation and implementation is never guaranteed. It requires hardheaded analysis, a sense of realism, the establishment of a framework that does not raise expectations beyond the capacity to deliver, and balancing of available resources (financial, intellectual and human), the development of a workable and politically attuned strategy, and a commitment to staying the course. Indeed, it requires a real determination to succeed, and such determination can be strengthened and sustained by contemplating the consequences of failure. Importantly, success requires a preparedness to assess progress, to identify and acknowledge both successes and failures, and then a preparedness to refine — as necessary — the strategy, the resources, the implementation plan, the time frame, or all of the above. Unfortunately, neither this Government nor its predecessors have been prepared to be open and honest with the wider community and with First Nations. Instead, they have adopted the unstated and arguably deliberately dishonest strategy of deciding to muddle through, while avoiding being held to account.

The NIAA Annual Report is a highly sophisticated version of a classic glossy public relations product replete with good news stories. One must read through to page 78 (Appendix C) of the eighty-page document to get a high-level account of the progress against the 20 formal targets. There is no mention of the Priority Reforms, but the Productivity Commission dashboard tells us that no data is currently available to assess progress on these. Of the 20 socioeconomic targets, 4 are improving and on track, 7 are improving but not on track, 4 are worsening and not on track, 1is no change, and 4 have no assessment available. Note the embedded ambiguity: 11 are improving, with 9 not improving or unable to be determined; but only 4 are on track to meet their target with the balance not on track or unable to be determined. These are national level statistics. There is substantial variation across the states and territories, and of more significance, an analysis of the same targets for remote regions would be much more dire (but demonstrating this comprehensively is an exercise for another day).

Here is my high-level critique of the current strategy for closing the gap which to be fair to the current Labor Government, was negotiated and put in place by its LNP predecessor with the negotiation of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap in 2020. It has however been continued without change by the Albanese Government.

It was not based on an explicit strategic analysis and fudges the demographic and policy relevant data. The original impetus for the strategy was to close the socio-economic gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, but the framework chosen by successive governments was never clear on why various socio-economic indicators were chosen as targets, and whether they were meant to be the primary areas for policy attention, or merely signposts or indicators of progress or lack of it in relation to wider policies addressing much broader socio-economic disadvantage. If the former, there was no comprehensive strategy employed to reach the targets. If the latter, it was not articulated. Of more significance however was the decision to not choose certain key social indicators, and no reasons for these omissions were given apart from vague statements about the desirability of relying on ‘strength based’ approaches and avoiding ‘deficit discourse’.

Moreover, in relation to most targets, the denominator is the relevant Indigenous population. In recent decades it has become increasingly apparent that the Indigenous population is demographically fluid, and the structural composition of the Indigenous population has been changing rapidly. This is an issue that raises fundamental questions regarding the conceptual underpinnings of the Closing the Gap policy and strategy; questions that are never asked, let alone answered.

Since the establishment of Closing the Gap in 2008, what has always been hidden in plain sight is that there is no alignment between the targets and programs designed to reach them. In a very real sense, the targets have always been aspirational, and governments have continued to do what they always do, devise and implement programs willy nilly to assuage the concerns and pressure of various constituencies. Government rhetoric has always emphasised that Closing the Gap is directed at meeting the needs and expectations of Indigenous interests. My own (admittedly heterodox) view is that this has always been disingenuous; in reality, for governments, Closing the Gap is fundamentally about assuaging the vague and intuitive concerns of the wider community that we as a nation have mistreated Indigenous peoples. In response, governments do just enough to demonstrate that they are acting/trying while not doing so much that scarce fiscal resources are wasted on regions or programs that are not electorally efficient in harnessing or maintaining votes.

The chosen targets have invariably been framed as partial: even if all targets were to be met by say 2031, the actual and real gap in socio-economic outcomes would still not be closed. The wider community does not understand this. I understand why governments may wish to be cautious in making commitments, but the partial nature of the Closing the Gap policy framework guarantees a day of reckoning when the wider community will realise the present strategy is not assuaging their diffuse concerns about giving all citizens a fair go, and yet the gap continues, and a populist consensus will emerge to try something else.  

The complexity of the Closing the Gap framework is mind boggling. I challenge anyone to have a close look at the Productivity Commission dashboard (link here) and not step away confounded. There are four priority reforms that are effectively treated as targets (I have argued elsewhere that seeking to measure them like targets is a mistake), 17 targets or outcome areas, three of which have two elements. In total, the nation is seeking to measure and assess progress against 24 effective targets.

The bulk of the targets relate to policy and program sectors that are traditionally state or territory responsibilities. So, for each target we have eight separate jurisdictional outcomes (changing year to year depending on data availability) plus the national outcome. Conceptually, anyone seeking to assess progress overall must consider a matrix with dimensions of 24(targets) by 9 (jurisdictions), a total of 216 separate cells each year. Each cell is further elaborated by a suite of varying supporting categories of disaggregated data. For example, target 3 related to early childhood education includes disaggregated data by sex, by remoteness area (five separate categories), by Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage (IRSD) quintile, and finally by disability status.

Further, each target is measured using multiple data sources for both the numerator and denominator. The targets were chosen without first assessing whether the data to measure them is available, and in fact, in many cases it is not. Data is often unavailable, and/or collected only every five years in the census (link here).

The responsibility for collection of the temporal year by year performance data comprising what becomes a multi-dimensional matrix is the responsibility of multiple agencies across multiple jurisdictions, with the only high-level oversight being a sub-committee of the Joint Council which oversees the implementation of the National Agreement (see Appendix B to the NIAA Annual Report).   

Jurisdictional implementation plans are not consistent utilising different templates and often read more like lists of every Indigenous related activity a jurisdiction is undertaking and have little or no obvious link to the data being collected for each target (See Appendixes E, F & G for the Commonwealth’s current approach to reporting on implementation). Assessing all implementation plans for any one year would involve reading and comprehending hundreds if not thousands of pages of often unsourced initiatives described in bureaucratese (a language few Australians speak or understand).

The overall CtG framework was devised by senior and experienced bureaucrats, and therefore we can confidently assert the complexity was clearly deliberate; the result is a deep-seated avoidance of accountability. The Productivity Commission which oversights the data dashboard is also responsible for one of the regular reviews of the Closing the Gap process (and thus arguably has a conflict of interest in relation to some aspects of the National Agreements implementation), but Indigenous interests insisted that they too should commission a regular review. These reviews are the product of seemingly unending consultation and ‘co-design’ and end up being long and unwieldy documents spanning hundreds of pages which inevitably sink without trace and without any apparent political or policy impact apart from ephemeral mentions upon their initial publication in the daily media cycle (But see Appendix D of the NIAA Annual Report for the exception that proves the rule).

The National Agreement on Closing the Gap which was a truly innovative step forward in many respects (link here) involves the Coalition of Peaks, and the Coalition’s Secretariat is funded by NIAA. It appears that its staffing is about the size of a single branch in a large government agency. These limited policy capabilities are arrayed against the combined bureaucratic and policy heft of nine governments and span virtually the entire extent of government activity. If they are to have any substantive influence with government policy development, the Coalition of Peaks (and their state and territory components) must be experts on virtually every facet of government; an extraordinary ask for an impossible task. See Appendix E for a stocktake of the 50 odd partnerships that ostensibly operate in refutation of my assertions. I would merely note that while they give Indigenous participants the sense of interacting with government decisionmakers, in a complex and process-dominated policy environment, the power imbalance is huge. There is no line of sight which allows th effectiveness of these processes to be independently assessed.

Finally, notwithstanding the Commonwealth’s constitutional powers in relation to Indigenous matters, the Commonwealth refuses to step up and take a leadership or coordination role in relation to the implementation of the National Agreement. In a December 2025 Estimates Hearing, Senator Barbara Pocock asked Minister McCarthy a follow up question related to previous claims she had publicly made that she would consider aligning funding to the states and territories with progress on Closing the Gap targets (link here). Notwithstanding her recent comments (link here), the answer provided on notice (NIAA1743) is a lesson in bureaucratic fudging. The Minister’s idea (which was directed at assuaging concerns in the Indigenous community) will disappear without trace.

A cynic might think that the Closing the Gap framework is a machine designed to achieve the minimum necessary while giving the appearance of action. They would be wrong: for the machine does not work perfectly. Every component of the machine’s operations is subject to failure, and a single component failure can bring the machine to a halt. Bureaucratic delay, complexity, data constraints, inter-agency conflicts, and the myriad opportunities for implementation failure mean that this machine in terms of its ostensible aims is entirely ineffective. Any positive outcomes (and there have been a few) are the results of a rising demographic tide, th operation of pre-existing institutional frameworks such as exists for native title, and the innovation, experience and determination of a very few individuals within the system (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) who find ways to produce outcomes despite the machine’s built-in design constraints.

This critique is arguably too abstract to be persuasive. To address that deficiency, I will point to just one of the areas of egregious policy failure that the Closing the Gap machine fails to address: remote school attendance.

According to the agency charged with measuring national school attendance,  ACARA (link here):

In Australia in 2025:

• The attendance rate for [all] students in Years 1–10 was 88.8% …

• Attendance rates:

v  were higher among students in major cities than in remote areas;

v  were lower among students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds than for non-Indigenous students.  

According to ACARA (link here), the attendance rate for the NT in 2025 was 76.9%, a full 11 % below the national average.

The NT Education Department recently released attendance data for public schools across the NT (link here). It shows (Table 3) that in very remote areas, there were 6881enrolled Aboriginal students and 7886 non-Aboriginal students. The attendance rates for Aboriginal students averaged 40% compared to 80 % for non-Aboriginal students. In some of the larger remote communities, attendance rates dipped well below 40%.

The Closing the Gap framework has no target related to school attendance. The bottom line: school attendance rates in the NT are well below the rest of Australia and Aboriginal student attendance is extraordinarily low. In very remote NT regions, the school attendance rate for Aboriginal children is catastrophic. Given that low school attendance has been a problem for decades, and will not be turned around overnight, it is safe to assert that we as a nation are allowing a generation of children numbered in the tens of thousands to reach adulthood without the basic numeracy and literacy skills that will allow them to engage with the modern world they will live in. In a recent media release (link here) the NT Minister for Education promised to continue to crack down on low attendance through the use of truancy officers and making parents responsible, but gave no indication that she understood that there was a major crisis ongoing in her portfolio.

The takeout from this example is that governments are deliberately ignoring the hard problems, and that the very hardest problems are in remote Australia. I have been banging this drum for a couple of decades with little success. It has been a consistent theme of this blog (for example: link here, link here, link here, and link here). If change for the better is to occur, clearly governments must do something different.

Reform options for Closing the Gap

Clearly the challenges facing the nation in terms of Indigenous socio-economic disadvantage are enormous and seemingly intractable. I do not consider them to be intractable, rather the evidence suggests that while the problems are complex, and not all the solutions are within the capacities or remit of government, the reality is that governments have not been prepared to put their shoulder to the wheel in ways that make a difference. Worse still, they have adopted a strategy of pretending to be concerned and pretending to act because the politics of being honest with the Australian community and with First Nations is too difficult.

There are ways forward, and there is no single lever to pull which will solve the policy challenges or even ensure we are on the right path. I do have some suggestions for how governments should proceed. Here are five broad suggestions that would be a good start.

First, acknowledge that the Closing the Gap machine is broken. It is too complex; it is too focussed on process. It lacks effective political leadership. It needs reform (not abolition, not disposal, not starting afresh). Reform would necessarily involve a radical rethink based on a critical assessment of the conceptual underpinnings. It would require a radical simplification to focus on what is important, to identify a limited number of strategically significant priorities (I would nominate education, employment, incarceration, housing and health; cross cutting priorities would include alcohol reform and disability access). It would require the ditching of the political correctness that fails to recognise that Closing the Gap is as much about the nature of mainstream Australia as it is about the future of First Nations interests.

Second, I would suggest that the National Agreement on Closing the Gap be reconstituted into two separate agreements: one for urban and regional Australia, and another for remote Australia. Indigenous Australians living in both domains have significant challenges to be included within the institutions that frame the daily lives of mainstream Australians, but they are fundamentally different in nature across a considerable number of domains.

Third, given:

·       the increasing political polarisation in modern liberal democracies;

·       the seeming intractability of the issues in play; and

·       the poor understanding of the experience and realities of life for many First Australians; and (frankly)

·       the policy illiteracy of most Australians based on the rise of social media and the complexity of modern government in a rapidly changing global world;

there is a pressing need for an innovative approach to the governance of the oversight of this policy domain. My suggestion is that key elements of its governance should be placed at arm’s length from Executive Government in recognition of the ongoing failure of Executive governments across the partisan divide to turn these issues around (while acknowledging that ultimately governments are elected to make final policy determinations). My suggestion is to build into the governance of a new Closing the Gap model scope for the extensive use of deliberative democracy and citizens juries to deal with major policy challenges (like remote education, and the regular oversight reviews of the process).

Fourth, while the states and territories have been and will continue to be substantial players in the Indigenous policy domain, the nation requires the Commonwealth to step up and ensure that these issues are considered from a national perspective. The 1967 Referendum passed with an overwhelming majority and gave the Commonwealth the power to legislate in relation to Indigenous affairs. The decision by Commonwealth governments over the past decade to step back and abdicate control and authority by effectively leaving responsibility for Closing the Gap outcomes with the states and territories has been both a gross dereliction and a policy disaster.

Fifth, the focus of reform efforts must be on institutional reform, not greater access to benefits for selected constituencies within the current framework. One example of institutional reform would be a comprehensive shift to ensure the greater use of needs-based allocations across the board thus ensuring that constituencies where disadvantaged Indigenous citizens are over-represented are allocated greater attention without framing the policy as an indigenous specific program. If implemented widely, this would do much to undercut the potential for populist backlash which has been a major constraint on Indigenous policy reform over recent decades.

Conclusion

The Closing the Gap machine is broken. It requires reform, not jettisoning or discarding. There are pathways forward. Unfortunately, I see little prospect that a critical mass of concern presently exists that might lead to such reform. From governments, all we get are words, words, words.

In remote Australia, largely out of sight of mainstream Australia, we are building another machine which is efficiently producing ongoing illiteracy, innumeracy, dysfunction, crime and hyper-incarceration. Tens of thousands of Australian citizens are being relegated to live shortened lives, often shaped by violence, family tragedy and despair. It is easy for some to blame the victims. Overwhelmingly, they are not responsible for the life choices available to them.

In 2007, I co-authored a book with Neil Westbury where we argued that remote Australia is in effect a failed state. The institutional frameworks that we take granted in non-remote Australia were under-developed and/or non-existent. The following two decades have seen some improvements, but in many respects, not much has changed. How can we accept a school system where for tens of thousands of students the attendance rate is forty percent. How can we accept a culture where alcohol and substance abuse are rampant, and governments fail to rein in the ability of liquor retailers to sell alcohol to vulnerable people (of all backgrounds) while they know that alcohol is an underlying cause of widespread health issues. The causes of state failure are complex and the solutions are complicated. But an absolute pre-requisite is for governments to do their job, acting in the public interest, and not at the behest of private interests. An essential part of the job for our political leaders is to focus on what matters for all Australians, not just some Australians, and certainly the job is not to deliberately obscure what matters.

The Closing the Gap machine is failing. Our leaders have stopped trying…and listening.

The times are certainly out of joint.

 

22 February 2026

The rough torrent of occasion: new updates from Groote Eylandt

 

We see which way the stream of time doth run

And are enforced from our most quiet there

By the rough torrent of occasion

Henry IV Part 2, Act four, Scene one.

 

Next week will see the Additional Estimates 2025/26 Hearings. NIAA and the four NT Land Councils will appear on Monday, while the other PM&C Indigenous portfolio bodies will appear on Tuesday. The current program suggests that the NT Aboriginal Investment Corporation, otherwise known as Aboriginal Investment NT (AINT) has not been called to appear.

I previously noted (link here) that neither the ALC, nor the AINT and an associated Trust entity, have lodged their 2025 Annual Reports which were due by end October 2025. I subsequently updated that earlier post to report that both entities had been granted an extension to the end of November by the Minister. That extension appears to have been further extended to the end of February. The problem appears to relate to the inability of the ANAO to finalise its audits of these entities; see the relevant correspondence from each entity dated 29 November which was then tabled in Parliament (link here and link here).

Following the early December Supplementary Senate Estimates hearings of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee for the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio, Senator David Pocock lodged a series of questions relating to the ongoing accountability vacuum surrounding Groote Eylandt and the operations of the Anindilyakwa Land Council (ALC) and related entities in receipt of section 64(3) royalty equivalent payments sourced from the Aboriginals Benefit Account managed by NIAA.

Answers to those questions have now been tabled:

·         The first, Question # NIAA1817 related to the ALC and the termination of the former CEO (link here).

·         The second, Question # NIAA 1818 related to the financial statements of the Anindilyakwa Advancement Aboriginal Corporation (AAAC) (link here).

·         The third, Question # NIAA1819 related to Aboriginal land rights and regulatory responsibilities (link here).

I don’t propose to summarise the detailed questions nor the answers, so suggest interested readers have a look for themselves. In many respects, the significance of the information provided is in the additional context that it provides rather than in any specific revelations. They provide more pieces in the extensive and complex jigsaw puzzle that is emanating from Groote and reverberating well beyond. For these reasons, and given my longstanding interest in these issues both in their own rights, but also as a microcosm of the wider risks, flaws, and accountability gaps that exist across the Indigenous policy domain, I feel it is incumbent on me to at least point out some of the more salient implications.

In relation to Q#1817, the ALC has very helpfully provided a copy of the letter sent to the ALC Board by the then CEO on 28 September 2024. In the letter, the CEO identified the need to resolve the perceived conflict of interest issue identified in the BellchambersBarrett review (link here) which was finalised in August 2024 as the instigation for his proposal. The review noted (at page 4)

Some conflicts, perceived or actual, are unlikely to be able to be effectively managed, an example being the current dual remunerated CEO positions for ALC and Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd, noting

·         a public official role (ALC CEO) in comparison to a commercial activity management role (Winchelsea Mining CEO),

·         time and attention needed for both roles, and

·         the ALC makes funding decisions and Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd is a beneficiary of ALC funding decisions

One intriguing aspect of this imbroglio is that the then Chair of the ALC was in the same conflicted position as Mr Hewitt but was not identified in the Bellchambers report and appears not to have been under the same pressure to resolve his position. This gap reflects the lack of substantive independence in that report.

It is clear that the termination was not instigated by the Board, but what is less clear is whether there was informal pressure on the CEO to resolve the issues from the Minister or NIAA. Certainly, the tone of the letter is entirely equivocal on the part of the CEO. What adds to the likelihood of such an interpretation is the fact that the NIAA injected themselves into the ALC Board consideration, while leaving no trail of file notes nor written briefing for the minister or her office. The fact that the ALC board meeting occurred in the same week as the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) visited Groote merely adds weight to the suggestion that there may have been a sense of panic on the part of the minister about the ongoing tenure of the CEO.

It would be useful if the Estimates Committee was to ask the Minister whether she or her representatives was involved in any communication with Mr Hewitt regarding his tenure prior to the preparation of his correspondence to the ALC in September 2024.

The answers to sub-questions (a), (b) and (c) are intriguing. They list a number of corporations which the ALC provides assistance to in accordance with section 23(1)(ea) of the ALRA, including the various service agreements put in place. However, the list does not include AAAC (which owns the majority stake in Winchelsea mining) and GHAC (which controls and owns the various developments at Little Paradise. As was previously reported to the Senate, these two corporations received $70m in s.64(3) payments directed to the preparation for the Winchelsea mine from the ALC. The former CEO and his spouse provided assistance in person to both these corporations (and it seems likely that ALC staff assisted them in multiple ways) but there appears not to have been a formal decision to assist them by the ALC. See also the last two paragraphs of the answer (page 3 of 23).

The ALC answer to the sub-question at paragraph (f) is entirely inadequate as they fail to answer the question asked and instead provide a detailed workplan (going forward) relating to the revised Finance Audit and Risk Committee. One might surmise that the previous Audit and Risk Committee (which was itself conflicted) did not undertake any oversight of the ALC’s activities under section 23(1)(ea). In relation to the issue of budget cover, while the answer confirms that the ALC received no additional section 64(1) funding form the ABA to cover the termination payment, they do not inform us whether the Minister approved the expenditure of the termination payment as was suggested might be required in a previously released NIAA document.

In relation to Q#NIAA 1818, the answer provided confirms that the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations is pursuing AAAC for its failure to lodge its financial statements in 2024 and 2025, and the corporation is due to appear in a Darwin court on 17 February ‘for failure to meet its reporting obligations’. Given that the AAAC is the owner of 70 percent of Winchelsea Mining, this seems to be a rather ominous development for the future prospects of the company and the mine. I can’t help noting that the failure to lodge financial statements overlaps substantially with the departure of Mr Hewitt and Ms Liu from their involvement on Groote. I have long held the view that the ALC exerted effective control over key organisations operating on Groote. This is further anecdotal evidence consistent with (but not irrefutable evidence of) that view. The recent decision of the Registrar to initiate a financial investigation into GHAC, while providing no information or background to that decision, serves to reinforce this perspective.

It would be useful if the Estimates Committee was to seek further information from ORIC into both these developments, including the background to and terms of reference for the GHAC review and ORIC’s strategy beyond achieving a court conviction against AAAC and its Directors.

In relation to Q#NIAA 1819, Senator Pocock’s question in effect seeks to understand the extent to which the NIAA (and by implication the Minister) has focussed on identifying and managing the financial risks involved in the administration of the Aboriginals Benefit Account (ABA). The answer provided has two levels.

The first level is to seek to deflect responsibility with the statement in the first paragraph which states:

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) does not establish a regulatory relationship between the NIAA and Land Councils established under that Act. The ALRA provides the Minister with specified powers and the NIAA supports the Minister in the exercise of these powers, including through the exercise of certain Ministerial powers and functions under delegation [emphasis added].

The first sentence verges on being misleading and the paragraph is an exercise in deflection. The reality is that the Minister has numerous decision-making responsibilities under the ALRA in relation to land councils and other matters, including approval of budgets, allocation of funding amounts, approval of the selection process of land councils, and much more besides. There are around 90 provisions in the ALRA that provide for Ministerial decisions or approvals in relation ot land council matters. The NIAA is the organisational entity within the PMC portfolio which provides technical and policy advice to the Minister in relation to those responsibilities. Further, the NIAA administers the Aboriginals Benefit Account (controlled by Minister) which is the source of virtually all funding for the NT land councils.  There is a requirement for stand alone ABA financial statements and these are published each year an appendix to the NIAA Annual Report (link here). The NIAA directly administer the ABA and itself makes decisions relating to its financial management and the investment of funds (see for example the following extract from the ABA Annual Report for 2024-25 (page 186):

The investment objective of the NIAA as administrators for the ABA is to ensure that the ABA complies with legislative obligations under the PGPA Act and the ALRA, and that the ABA maintains and preserves its capital base [emphasis added].

The claim that the NIAA has no regulatory role vis a vis the land councils, and the ALC in particular,  does not accord with the fact that the NIAA attended the ALC meeting which terminated the former CEO, commissioned the Bellchambers Review subsequent to the critical ANAO report in 2023, and has been directly involved in the implementation of the governance conditions imposed by the Minister in late 2024.

The second level of the answer is the recounting of the various minutes of the NIAA Audit and Risk Committee over the five years. These record the ARC consideration the financial statements for the ABA (as part of the broader annual finalisation process for the NIAA financial statements). These ARC considerations are high level and for the most part are formalities. The answer provides no information in relation to any discussion by the Risk and Operations Committee, and we can only assume that they have not in the last five years considered risks in relation to the ABA and the operation of land councils. The answer does mention a discussion in the ARC on 30 August 2025 where the minutes state (according to the answer provided to Senator Pocock):

The Financial Statements for ABA are audited; however, the Committee does not receive regular reports as part of the CFO report. The ABA is not an entity but is required under provisions of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act to publish a set of financial statements. Once payments are made by the NIAA to the various Land Councils and to the Aboriginal Investment NT agency the responsibility for accountability and oversight transfers to those PGPA entities. There are some legacy grants which continue to be paid from ABA and administered by NIAA.

Again, we have the denial of responsibility discussed above. NIAA can attempt to dance on a semantic and legal pinhead, but the political and policy reality is that under the Westminster principles, the Minister is responsible, and the NIAA is the Minister’s primary adviser on her legislative and policy responsibilities. Those responsibilities include the ABA and the ALRA, and the ALC and ORIC.  

For the NIAA to assert that they have no oversight responsibilities over the land councils when the Minister clearly does have those responsibilities is not only in my view incorrect but is of itself a damning indictment of how the wide-ranging imbroglio and fiasco on Groote Eylandt was allowed to progressively emerge and run unimpeded for over five years.

 

 

6 February 2026

 

 

 

The sign in the window: Lessons from Davos?

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Julius Caesar Act one, Scene two.

 

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Which we ascribe to heaven

Alls Well that Ends Well, Act one, Scene one.

 

The speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on 20 January 2026 (link here)  reverberated globally. I recommend reading it in full, or even better, watching it (link here).

David French, writing in the New York Times (link here) suggested that Carney:

delivered what might be the most important address of Trump’s second term so far. To enthusiastic applause in Davos, he articulated a vision of how the “middle powers” — nations like Canada — should respond to the great powers.

For middle powers, according to French:

Carney sees this reality clearly. “Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons,” he said. “Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” Integration, he said, has become the source of their “subordination.”

And then

Carney’s conclusion was clear: “The powerful have their power. But we have something, too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.”

In a complementary opinion piece, Ezra Klein (link here) focussed on Trump’s transactionalism [transnationalism], and explored the implications of Carney’s reference to Vaclav Havel’s example of the fruit shop owner under communist rule who posts a sign in his window proclaiming ‘workers of the world unite’:

“Havel called this ‘living within a lie,’” said Carney. “The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.

There has been a considerable reaction within Australian policy circles to the Carney speech as one of our Five Eyes partners has in effect taken down the sign in the window, and is prepared to both tell the truth about key issues that go to the security relations and has indicated that it is already moving to decrease its reliance on what Carney calls the hegemon. The Treasurer made clear (link here) that the Carney speech was being taken very seriously at the highest levels of the Australian Government, and the implications of the current US administration’s foreign and domestic policy approaches are increasingly making it clear to Australian policymakers that Australia too will have to adjust its policy settings, reduce its reliance on the US as the single source of its security guarantee, and ultimately that Australia must adopt a more self-reliant stance. The discussion of these issues in the mainstream media has been muted, but  it is clear that momentum is building (link here and link here and link here).

The issue I wish to explore however is to ask the somewhat sensitive question: what lessons for Australian policy opportunities, if any, might Indigenous interests and their allies take from Mark Carney’s analysis of the rupture in the post war international order under the Trump administration? Or to put this another way, what is the best strategy for Indigenous interests and for Governments to adopt in dealing with the outcomes of what is almost universally recognised to have been a violent and unjust process of colonial subordination of Indigenous peoples in a process that has been ongoing for two and a half centuries.

My short answer is as follows: it is time for Australian policymakers, the advocates that seek to influence them, and the critics that seek to criticise them, to focus on substantive policy reforms instead of ephemeral performative announcements raising unrealistic expectations and potentially harming community cohesion both within Indigenous Australia and beyond. Here are my reasons.

My analysis of the performance of governments in broad terms is that the election of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972 initiated a decades long project of incremental reform policies grounded in social justice and aimed at progressively including Indigenous Australians under the carapace of the nation’s protective and facilitative institutions. One might list numerous examples of the substantive reforms put in place between 1972 and 2015.

However, over the past decade governments have reversed course, and are no longer serious about pursuing structural or systemic reforms. I would struggle to list any substantive reforms in this period, and see little prospect of any for the decade ahead. Instead, they have resorted to a broad policy framework of articulating the rhetoric of reform and social justice, while not investing the political capital required to drive substantive reform. This has become a feasible and viable strategy through the adoption of two symbiotic strategies.

The first strategy is public relations management aimed at neutralising difficult issues with the appearance of action, the allocation of ad hoc funding to silence squeaky wheels, and using the considerable heft and footprint of government to throw dust in the air and evade responsibility wherever possible. The rapid acceleration of the media news cycle and the considerable investment of government in hiring media staff to engage with journalists and media outlets including social media has the ability to overwhelm all but the largest and most sophisticated corporations and organisations.

The second strategy derives from a poorly understood dynamic in political behaviour across the political spectrum, and one which is deeply embedded within high level interest group competition and dynamics; that dynamic can be summed up in one word: transactionalism. In my experience politicians are not only transactional in their approach to politics and policy, but they also assume that virtually all their interlocutors both inside and outside the political domain, are themselves transactional. And mostly they are right, because interest group activities are heavily professionalised and interest groups have been trained (like Pavlov’s dog) to be transactional. Moreover, the reality is that no-one ever gets everything they want, so the process of giving and taking becomes the de facto default for policy engagement. Given this dynamic, the way is open for governments to engage transactionally with both bona fide advocates and potential critics in ways which in effect buy their silence. Board appointments, privileged access to government processes, denial of access, selectively overlooking administrative or other flaws, and of course the use of funding and the implicit threat of cessation or cuts to existing funding are all tactics that governments resort to almost as an everyday practice.

I understand only too well that interest groups have no choice but to engage with governments on policy matters, but if you are a less powerful interest group, you will face much greater challenges in gaining access, in being heard, in persuading governments to act, and if devising the most effective strategies to achieve your ends. If an interest group is divided or worse, incoherent due to multiple voices, the inevitable result is that none will be heard and no action will result. If an interest group is not strategic in building alliances and building networks within the policy domain in advance of seeking some action, or not strategic in focussing its human and financial capital on issues that make a difference, then it is effectively daydreaming. The problem is that daydreamers are often susceptible to self-delusion, and this risk is exacerbated when governments use their considerable armoury of tactics to persuade individuals or organisations that they are being listened to when they are not.

Of course, we elect governments to govern under the implicit contract and assumption that they will act in the public interest broadly defined. Unfortunately, government and politicians too are vulnerable to being captured by powerful interests and the result is that they do not always act in the public interest, but rather in favour of private interests. We cannot assume that government, and the bureaucracy that no longer understands how to provide policy advice without fear or favour, are altruistic. In these circumstances, there is much to be said in favour of citizens minimising their engagement with governments, and devising ways to build mechanisms to provide support within local communities and engaging with NGOs and philanthropists. This applies as much in the Indigenous policy domain as to the wider domain. Arguably Australians expect too much of governments yet invest too little to holding them to account.

If indigenous interests wish to see governments at all levels shift away from performance politics and towards driving substantive policy reform, they should in my humble opinion begin to invest much more in building their own policy and political capability. This will mean building policy and political alliances both within and beyond the Indigenous policy domain. It will take time. And most importantly, it will mean focussing on what is real and feasible rather than on ideological slogans that may have conceptual merit but have no relevance in the real politik of modern Australia.

Non-Indigenous Australians would do both Indigenous interests and the nation a service if they were prepared to look behind the rhetoric of governments, assess policy on its substantive coherence rather than the rhetorical and ideological flim flam thrown up by those engaged in performance politics, and express their views on the basis that all Australians have a stake in ensuring that all policy is truly inclusive, is effective and is making a difference.

We should all take the signs in our windows down and stop living within the lies that underpin the ongoing blot on the Australian political landscape.

 

26 January 2026

Avoiding responsibility: the ANAO Performance Audit of childhood development

O, what may man within him hide,

Though angel on the outward side!

Measure for Measure, Act three, Scene two

 

The ANAO have recently issued a new performance audit titled Closing the Gap in Schooling and Early Childhood Development — Partnership and Reporting (link here).

The focus of the audit is the implementation of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap as it relates to 3 targets related to addressing inequality in outcomes related to schooling and early childhood development: targets 3, 4 and 5 of Closing the Gap.

According to the Productivity Commission Closing the Gap dashboard (link here), at present, Target 3 on Early Childhood Education is improving and on track with 94.2 % of children enrolled in pre-school in 2024 (but see the discussion of data issues below). Target 4 on Children Thriving is worsening and not on track, with only 33.9 % of Indigenous children commencing school being developmentally on track. Target 5 on Student Learning Potential has improved but is not on track with 68.1% of Indigenous people aged 20-24 having attained Year 12 or equivalent in 2021.

While comprising less than 120 pages including appendices, the ANAO Performance Audit is a dense and complicated read, not assisted by its focus on intricate program detail and the complexity of the processes across multiple portfolios, jurisdictions and programs that impact upon these targets.

In para 1, the report states [footnotes removed]:

The objective of the National Agreement is to ‘overcome the entrenched inequality faced by too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so that their life outcomes are equal to all Australians’. The Australian Government is jointly accountable with the state and territory governments for the implementation of the National Agreement.

In para 9, the ANAO lay out the objectives of the audit as follows:

… to assess the effectiveness of partnership arrangements, funding design activities and measurement of progress for schooling and early childhood development commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

In this post, I do not propose to attempt to summarise the audit in any comprehensive way but instead will focus on those findings which seem to me to reveal something deeper about the National Agreement, its implementation, and the performance of the agencies involved. I recommend readers at least have a look at the introductory Summary and Recommendations section to obtain a sense of the overall shape and contents of the Performance Audit.

Paragraphs 11 to 14 of the Summary and Recommendations section outline the conclusions of the audit. Bolding of text has been added to emphasise key points.

In paras. 13 and 14, the ANAO note that:

More can be done to align mainstream federal funding agreements to the priority reforms. There is a lack of transparency over how federal funding agreements support Aboriginal community-controlled organisations…

The Australian Government’s progress reporting for Targets 3, 4 and 5 could be more reliable and complete. Dashboard information published by the Productivity Commission on Targets 3, 4 and 5 is accurate, however Target 3 results (the only one of these three targets considered to be ‘on track’) are not fully meaningful due to a measurement issue. Many ‘supporting indicators’ set out in the 2020 National Agreement on Closing the Gap, which are intended to lead to greater understanding and insight into how governments are tracking against the targets, were not developed as at June 2025. The Australian Government’s annual reports on Closing the Gap are accurate but increasingly incomplete and unmeaningful. The NIAA has not done enough to appropriately advise the government about annual reporting requirements established in the National Agreement.

In para. 17, referring to placed based agreements the ANAO state:

In 2021 it was agreed that state and territory governments would resource the establishment and governance costs for any place-based partnerships in their jurisdiction. Place‑based partnerships were not fully established by 2024 as specified in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. …. The NIAA coordinated Australian Government participation in governance arrangements but did not coordinate with the relevant state governments to facilitate establishment of the two place-based partnerships. Australian Government reporting on place-based partnerships, including for place‑based partnerships relevant to schooling and early childhood development, is deficient and worsening.

In para. 19, the ANAO note:

… The Australian Government has not met the requirement in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap to report annually on the allocation of grant funding to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations (including ACCOs).

In para. 22, the ANAO note:

The coordination and publication of the Australian Government’s annual reports on the Closing the Gap National Agreement have been facilitated by the NIAA. While accurately drawing on the PC dashboards, information on Targets 3, 4 and 5 has become less complete over time, reducing transparency over Closing the Gap progress in schooling and early childhood development.

ANAO Recommendations

The ANAO made only four formal recommendations (pages 11 and 12), each of them quite anodyne. The response to the single recommendation to the Education Department was ‘agreed’. The three recommendations to NIAA recommend actions simply amount to requests for mere compliance with the terms of the National Agreement. In each case, the NIAA response might best be described as prevarication.

Recommendation One focusses on reporting on the implementation of place-based partnerships; see paragraph 2.25 to 2.36. In para 2.34, the ANAO note that the last three annual reports on closing the gap compiled by NIAA have not complied with the requirements of clause 37 of the Agreement. The NIAA response was not to agree, nor to disagree, but to ‘note’ the recommendation, adding a comment that the content of the annual reports is a matter for Government.

Recommendation Two, which arose from the analysis in Chapter 3 of the Audit on funding design focusses on the extent to which the annual reports list the number of Community controlled organisations receiving funding, a requirement of clause 118 of the National Agreement. The NIAA response was identical to that provided in relation to Recommendation One. In this case, the ANAO had noted (para. 3.46) that NIAA had not briefed the Minister on the requirement to include this information prior to her approval of the Annual Report.

Recommendation Three was directed to the Department of Education and dealt with improved monitoring of the same issues. The Department’s response was to agree with the recommendation and (in effect) promise to do better.

Recommendation Four (para 4.36) dealt with reporting on progress on closing the gap. The ANAO had examined this issue in detail in Chapter Four of the audit and raised a series of detailed issues which I won’t seek to summarise. I will note one instance (para. 4.13) where the formula used to measure Target Three used different data sources for the numerator and denominator, and this led to inaccuracies and overestimates in the progress being achieved. In 2021, the Productivity Commmission commissioned a review from the ANU to identify improved ways of dealing with the data measurement problems. The ANU report recommended in November 2024 the use of an alternative data source ‘to avoid the biased and at times mathematically impossible observations that result from the numerator-denominator mismatch’. The ANAO report that as of June 2024, the Joint Council’s Partnership Working Group had not considered the recommendation and further reported that the Productivity Commission had advised (footnote 124) that a further study would be required. In this policy domain, everyone hastens slowly.

In relation to the meaningfulness of annual reporting on closing the gap, in para. 4.27, the ANAO state:

When preparing the Australian Government 2022 Annual Report, a brief to the NIAA Chief Executive Officer from the Closing the Gap Branch stated that, in order to meet commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, the annual report would ‘at a minimum’ need to comply with Clause 118 of the agreement (see paragraph 4.23).

Yet, as noted in para 4.29:

since the 2022 Annual Report, for Targets 3,4 and 5, the completeness of target information included in the annual report has declined (Table 4.4), reducing transparency over outcome progress for schooling and early childhood development commitments.

In concluding their audit, the ANAO cited (para 4.34) the Productivity Commission (PC) 2024 Review:

In 2024 the PC’s three-yearly Review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap found that implementation plans and annual reports were not fulfilling the intended purpose. The review found that the two documents did not reconcile (annual reports contained a limited set of the actions that governments had committed to and reported on actions not listed in the Closing the Gap implementation plan). The review found that reporting on progress was high level or incomplete, and delivery risk and issues were not included. The PC concluded:

By and large, the annual reports focus on listing activities that have been undertaken, while giving significantly less attention to describing what has not been delivered as planned and areas where there has been little progress.

Recommendation Four and the NIAA response are the concluding two paragraphs of the ANAO Audit report:

4.36 The Australian Government improve the completeness and meaningfulness of the Australian Government’s Closing the Gap annual reports and comply with clause 118 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap by: drawing from the Productivity Commission dashboard to include information about target results and status; and including risks, successes, failures and lessons learned.

National Indigenous Australians Agency response: Noted

4.37 Any amendments to the Commonwealth Closing the Gap Annual Report is a matter for consideration by Government. The NIAA will brief the Government on the ANAO findings and recommendations.

Commentary

The following comments in response to this audit are high level and are best characterised as comprising a set of assertions and questions based on my own experience rather than detailed analyses.

The ANAO are to be commended for their detailed analysis of what is a complex and dynamic policy domain, however, I was left with a deep-seated sense that they are much too cautious. Their analysis itself focusses on compliance with process, taking the National Agreement as the benchmark, and assessing all that is going on (or not going on) against that benchmark. But the benchmark itself (that is the institutional architecture of Closing the Gap) is deeply flawed and as I have argued elsewhere (link here and link here), seems likely to have been deliberately designed to be partial in its focus, and to be so complex and complicated that no interested observer (not even the ANAO) can effectively monitor its implementation. The result is that there is no way for anyone, from the Joint Council down to scribblers based in universities, to keep governments accountable. In these circumstances, the ANAO’s efforts in devoting around a year’s work to assessing compliance against a flawed benchmark is in effect a wasted opportunity. In addition, the audit reflects a wider flaw in ANAO reports, namely that the formal recommendations do not adequately reflect the shortcomings identified in the analysis. This appears to be a deliberate policy aimed at not upsetting the Executive arm of government (which effectively controls the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit to which the ANAO reports), while maintaining a technical commitment to independence and evidence-based analysis. For an example of the operation of this dynamic hidden in plain sight, refer to Appendix Two of the ANAO Performance Audit.

A close reading of the Audit makes extremely clear that NIAA are failing comprehensively in both ensuring the National Agreement is implemented, and in undertaking the policy work (that used to be core business for the APS) that would allow and ensure that the policy was being updated and made increasingly effective. It is as if the NIAA considers that suggesting improvement to the National Agreement is someone else’s job. And as for the NIAA responses to the three recommendations, they amount to telling the ANAO and the wider public to ‘go jump’; in effect, they are saying it’s not their problem.

As the NIAA CEO states in her response letter in Appendix 1, the NIAA ‘will continue to work with Government to support implementation of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap within its remit.’ [emphasis added]. How this supporting role and implicitly constrained remit aligns with the functions contained in the Executive Order establishing NIAA (link here) is difficult to reconcile. Those functions are unequivocal and provide NIAA with an expansive remit involving leadership and coordination across the breadth of the public sector:

•  To lead and coordinate Commonwealth policy development, program design and implementation and service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• To provide advice to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Indigenous Australians on whole-of-government priorities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
• To lead and coordinate the development and implementation of Australia’s Closing the Gap targets in partnership with Indigenous Australians

The ANAO performance audit is the result of perhaps a year’s work by a team of around eight analysts, yet there is no discussion about

·       whether the schooling and education elements of closing the gap are in fact working well or not, and if not why not;

·       the implications of rapid demographic change in the Indigenous population;

·       why there is no target directed to improving school attendance;

·       whether there are regional differences in outcomes, and if so what to do about them;

·       whether the 44 separate programs (listed in Appendix 7) directed at the three targets in focus are designed to be effective (rather than just whether they involve partnerships or community-controlled organisations);

·       and importantly, whether the $1.48bn allocated nationally to addressing the targets (see Appendix 7) is too little, or perhaps too much, spent well or poorly, or whether it is poorly directed.

Of course, the response to this critique will be that I am asking for an evaluation not a performance audit. Or to put it another way, I am focussing on effectiveness, whereas the ANAO and the relevant agencies are focussed on efficiency. If so, I plead guilty. The 2024 PC review of Closing the Gap did not address most of these issues and arguably failed to adequately address the structural conflict of interest involved in its management of the dashboard and reporting framework for Closing the Gap. There is a desperate need for an independent and comprehensive macro-evaluation of the entire Closing the Gap framework.

Agencies control what is to be evaluated and when, and often decide to delay or cancel publication (link here). The bottom line is that across the public sector the resources directed to systematic and comprehensive evaluation of Government programs is minimal and decentralised notwithstanding the comparatively recent establishment of the Australian Centre for Evaluation (link here). Invariably, agency initiated evaluations focus on micro programs rather than larger programs, thus avoiding the possibility that an evaluation will reach politically embarrassing conclusions. Governments prefer not to be held to account for lack of effectiveness and find it much easier to manage issues that can be characterised as related to efficiency or process. A focus on effectiveness involves asking whether adequate resources are being allocated, whereas a focus on efficiency sets the issue of adequate funding aside. The absence of adequate investment in effectiveness evaluation is a root cause of structural and systemic policy failure, especially where the interests advocating for greater access to government resources are comparatively weak.

Conclusion

The bottom line here is that the ANAO has done an excellent job in identifying and laying out the myriad ways in which implementation actions directed towards just three of the 19 Closing the Gap targets are not meeting the benchmarks established in the National Agreement. One can only wonder what the comparative results would be for the 16 targets not examined. Yet the more fundamental questions of effectiveness that permeate the policy architecture established to implement and monitor ongoing policy and program action to close the gap have not been addressed.

The Commonwealth Government has not provided a response to the Productivity Commission Review of Closing the Gap completed in 2024, and no Commonwealth Government has formally responded to the 2017 Productivity Commission Review into an Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (link here). What we observe here is the contemporary and ongoing maintenance of Stanner’s Great Australian Silence (link here). In these circumstances, the ANAO by deciding to initiate a Performance Audit focussed on process has in effect provided yet more political and policy cover for ongoing Government inaction in relation to addressing the endemic and systemic effectiveness issues that prevent the Closing the Gap policy from succeeding.

The continuing policy failure on Closing the Gap, and the deliberate refusal to avoid addressing issues related to the effectiveness of current policy approaches is a tragedy for Indigenous interests (particularly those Indigenous citizens suffering deep social and economic disadvantage), but also a tragedy for the nation. It represents a major failure of our political democracy.

 

 

23 January 2026