About

A few weeks ago, we did a three-part series looking at Aboriginal deaths in custody and the deeply systemic issues that disadvantage Aboriginal people on almost every level. And since we did that series, activists and Aboriginal advocacy groups have continued to call for justice for the families of those killed in custody, and for a review into police conduct and discrimination in the legal system.  In recent weeks, peak bodies representing youth advocates, doctors and lawyers called on the Australian Government to raise the age of criminal responsibility, a request that was denied. The UN commission on the rights of the child has stipulated that the minimum age of criminal responsibility be 14 years. In Australia however, children as young as 10 can be criminally charged and locked up and Aboriginal children are 25 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Aboriginal children. And then this week, the government launched an ‘ambitious new set of targets’ for closing the gap between Aboriginal people and the rest of Australia. The first ‘closing the gap’ scheme was launched in 2008 under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Every year, the government reviews it’s progress and every year it finds progress to be well below the target.  This week we want to look at the old ‘closing the gap’ scheme, why it didn’t work, and discuss how much hope we can have for the new agreement