Prime Minister Tony Abbott has presented the 2014 Closing the Gap report on Indigenous Australians.
Abbott said Aboriginal policy has become for him “personal rather than just political”. He said: “It has become a personal mission to help my fellow Australians to open their hearts, as much as to change their minds, on Aboriginal policy.”
This year’s Closing the Gap shows some progress. Halving the gap in child mortality within a decade is on track and the target of 95% of remote children enrolled for pre-school is close, as is the goal of halving the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020.
In his speech to the Northern Territory Parliament, Ah Kit said: “I am talking of the dysfunction that is endemic through virtually all of our communities, both in towns and the bush. We cannot pretend that a community is functional when half the kids don’t go to school because they have been up most of the night coping with drunken parents, or because they themselves have been up all night sniffing petrol.