Indigenous reform
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Indigenous Reform 2010-11: Comparing performance across Australia
This is our third report assessing progress under COAG’s National Indigenous Reform Agreement.
This year, the council focused on outcomes in the Agreement to improve health and education for Indigenous Australians.
The positive news on the Agreement's health-related targets is that the council has seen good progress toward halving the gap in death rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children within a decade. However, overall death rates for Indigenous Australians will need to fall faster to close the gap with non-Indigenous death rates by 2031.
The news is not as good for the education-related targets. The council reported that nearly all States and Territories are on track to halve the gap in reading and some are on track in numeracy–though this is based on only modest improvements in student performance in NAPLAN testing. The council has also seen some improvements in the rate at which Indigenous children stay on to enrol in Years 10 and 12, but school attendance is not improving.
National Partnership Agreement on Indigenous Economic Participation: Early assessment of progress
The COAG Reform Council was asked by COAG to provide an early assessment of progress under the National Partnership Agreement on the Indigenous Economic Participation (IEP NP) in response to delays in implementing the Agreement.
The IEP NP is the framework for the Commonwealth, States and Territories, apart from Tasmania, to work together to meet the COAG target to halve the gap in employment outcomes between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians within a decade.
Overall, the council found that while significant progress had been made since December 2009, there was still much work to be done to ensure that jurisdictions met their targets.
