Following the release of the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led review of progress under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, Independent Member of the ACT Legislative Assembly, Thomas Emerson MLA, has announced that he will introduce a Private Member’s Bill intended to ensure the ACT Government upholds its commitments moving forward.

The review found that “Governments have yet to commence any genuine transformative work. Governments continue with business-as-usual approaches that are inconsistent with their commitments under the National Agreement and are not yielding widespread impact.” A submission to the review said that “Governments are fundamentally misunderstanding their responsibility to transform how they operate, and how they must be accountable for embedding the priority reforms in everything that they do.” 

Mr Emerson said Closing the Gap targets would not be met for Aboriginal people in the ACT without a significant shift in the way the ACT Government operates.

“Closing the gap is everyone’s job,” Mr Emerson said.

“The National Agreement on Closing the Gap isn’t going to implement itself. The ACT Government committed to making transformative changes when it signed on to the Agreement, but too many of those changes haven’t been implemented.

“The message I’ve heard repeatedly from our local First Nations community is that promises haven’t been followed by sufficient action, and commitments haven’t been backed by sufficient accountability. That’s borne out in this review and in the data, which shows we’re not on track to close the gap.”

Mr Emerson said the ACT was not living up to its name as Australia’s most progressive jurisdiction, as evidenced by having the country’s highest persistent homelessness rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the largest Indigenous incarceration gap, and the highest rates of racial prejudice experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, at 76 per cent.

“The system is failing. In the ACT, an Aboriginal child is 12.5 times more likely to be in out-of-home care than a non-Aboriginal child. An Aboriginal young person is 14 times more likely to be in youth detention. An Aboriginal adult is 22.7 times more likely to be incarcerated. Systemic reform is needed,” Mr Emerson said.

Priority Reform Three in the National Agreement commits all governments across Australia to “systemic and structural transformation of mainstream government organisations to improve accountability and respond to the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.” Recommendation Two in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led review is focused on “realising the transformational intent of the National Agreement”. It states that this requires “systemic and structural changes” and calls for governments to “embed systemic change into leadership contracts and KPIs”.

Mr Emerson said the implementation of this recommendation would be facilitated if his bill is passed by the Assembly, saying the bill was developed to acquit essential action 3.5 from the Productivity Commission’s 2024 review of the National Agreement — “to embed responsibility for improving cultural capability and relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into the employment requirements, performance agreements and KPIs of public sector CEOs, executives and employees.”

“It’s not okay for governments to sign agreements without honouring them,” Mr Emerson said. 

“I will be introducing a bill in the coming week to make it clear that every public servant has a part to play in closing the gap, with added responsibility for those in leadership positions.”

The bill legislates the principles of the National Agreement in the statute governing the operation of the ACT Public Service, imposing clear requirements on all government officials to support the delivery of the Agreement with a particular focus on the transformational elements of Priority Reform Three.