Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This 19th biennial report is full of lots of facts and figures, some of which cause some hope and some of which continue to be very, very discouraging. I am someone that's worked within government policy, in NGOs in the community and even in research at the local university in Western Australia, and we constantly refer to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's statistical data to guide and reaffirm some of our policy positions. Although there have been some improvements in health and social indicators for First Nations people, the so-called health gap continues to narrow slowly.

We know that there are only four of the 19 Closing the Gap targets that are on track, that a couple of them are in fact going backwards—really critical targets—and that we can contribute more too. The disparity is very clear in this report, and it remains the fact that most of the measured health outcomes for First Nations people show that the health gap that's represented through the statistics continues to be glaringly obvious. My contribution is: are we measuring this all wrong? We are putting statistical data for First Nations people up against data for non-Indigenous people who have different factors, which, in fact, have a significant impact on their health gap and their wellbeing.

One of the things that jumped out at me from this report is that 35 per cent of the gap comes down to the social determinants of health such as education and employment; 30 per cent was due to the difference in the health factors; and 35 per cent is probably due to the factors for which the data is not available, such as discrimination and the difference in access to health services. The thing that I know from working in frontline health services, particularly in public health, is that access to health services, education and discrimination cannot and should not be off the government's agenda in relation to closing the gap. What I haven't seen is how we've shifted the dial on that. In all these years, we continue to do things in a vacuum.

This report concludes: 'If First Nations adult had the same average equivalised household income, average employment rate and hours worked and the same average smoking rate as non-Indigenous adults, the health gap would be reduced by more than one-third.' Isn't that a perfect world! But we don't live in a perfect world; we live in a world where there are 65,000 years of history and culture, and people who are being denied access to their rights in this country. It's having a detrimental impact on their wellbeing through the intergenerational trauma.

We don't measure the resilience of our communities, we don't measure the strength of First Nations communities, and we certainly don't look at the social infrastructure that actually exists in some of those communities. It's striking that one-third of the gap would be reduced in relation to the health disparity that currently exists. Everything that we do in this place to address discrimination and bring economic justice for First Nations people will actually save lives: having access to country, having access to caring for country, having justice responses that don't involve the criminal justice system and, in fact, involve restorative justice, and making sure that we are looking after our children, our women, our men and our old people are important in how we are going to shift the dial on this.

I urge the government to use this piece of statistical data against the Productivity Commission's report on Closing the Gap to show that we can and should do better. I posed the question at the last Senate estimates directly to the Productivity Commission: should we be looking at how we are measuring those targets and, more so, at how we are evaluating alongside the community? I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.