One year has passed since the proposal to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament was voted down in a referendum. Since that campaign ended, Indigenous affairs have been a far less prominent issue in the media and in politics.

One First Nations leader Crikey spoke to said there had been virtually no progress since on closing the gap of Indigenous disadvantage, while others pointed to limited improvements. 

Uluru Dialogue senior leader and Wiradjuri man Geoff Scott told Crikey he was disappointed with the progress in the past 12 months.

“There’s nothing, there have been no advances. The government is not committed to it at all, and every year we’re still handing out a [Closing the Gap] report and wringing our hands that the progress hasn’t been achieved,” Scott said. 

“The Voice was supposed to address that, providing a process where local people present local solutions to local problems, and now we don’t have a process for that. It’s time the government showed some courage and conviction, but at the moment they’ve walked away, washed their hands of it and moved on.” 

Coalition of Peaks, the peak body for Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, said over the past year there had been limited progress made on Closing the Gap — the strategy the Commonwealth, states and territories agreed on in 2008 to reduce the disparity between First Nations peoples and non-Indigenous Australians. 

“Real progress has been made in areas like employment and early childhood education … but the changes have to be systemic and they have to be long-term,” Coalition of Peaks lead convenor and Gudanji-Arrernte woman Patricia Turner said in a statement. “There’s important work still to do to make sure the rubber’s hitting the road, funding is getting to communities, and governments are truly changing.”

As examples of progress, Turner mentioned increased First Nations community input into out-of-home care for children, federal policy partnerships and early childhood services. 

Indigenous Australians Minister and Yanyuwa woman Malarndirri McCarthy said in a statement on Monday, “The most recent Closing the Gap data shows we still have a long way to go.”

“First Nations peoples continue to experience disadvantage characterised by high rates of poor health, poverty, incarceration, and overwhelmingly, a general lack of empowerment,” she said. “If we want to end this disadvantage once and for all, we need to work differently.”

Only five out of 19 Closing the Gap targets are currently “on track”, the minister said. 

Crikey understands that what the Labor government views as its proudest Closing the Gap achievements since the referendum include a remote jobs program that created 3,000 jobs, a $4 billion plan to halve overcrowding in remote Northern Territory communities, the establishment of a dedicated national commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, the appointment of a First Nations ambassador, and a program to improve community safety and reduce Indigenous incarceration rates. 

“The Albanese government is committed to working in partnership with First Nations people and other governments to improve life outcomes by Closing the Gap,” a government spokesperson told Crikey. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised during the 2022 election campaign he would implement the Makarrata Commission in full, but no progress appears to have been made on that front. Uluru Statement from the Heart co-architect and Cobble Cobble woman Megan Davis told the ABC last Friday it would be a “broken election promise” if one wasn’t established. 

Senator and Warlpiri/Celtic woman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Coalition’s Indigenous affairs spokesperson and a prominent No campaigner, said on Monday that Voice proponents needed to “accept the result” and “move forward”. 

“There are marginalised, Indigenous Australians whose lives need to be impacted in a positive way right now,” she said, according to the Australian Associated Press. 

During the campaign, Price argued that instead of creating a Voice to Parliament, the government should set up a royal commission into alleged child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, a proposal that was defeated in the Senate immediately following the referendum. 

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who also opposed the Voice, has mentioned Indigenous issues a handful of times in doorstop interviews in the past 12 months, usually as an aside to attack Albanese on his honesty or then Indigenous affairs minister and Wiradjuri woman Linda Burney on her competence.

More recently he has mentioned Indigenous disadvantage to justify his decision (once again) to not attend the Garma Festival with Indigenous leaders, or to call for unspecified “practical” measures to alleviate Indigenous disadvantage (or both). This was the case in May’s budget reply, which dedicated two lines of its roughly 4,500 words to Indigenous affairs. 

Dutton proposed an audit of government spending on Indigenous peoples and also said there should be a second referendum, which would symbolically recognise First Nations peoples in the constitution without creating a Voice. 

The proposal for a second referendum was abandoned just days after the October 14, 2023 vote. 

Crikey asked Price and Dutton a series of questions about what they had done to advance their proposals since last October, but did not receive a response from either. 

What other promises on Indigenous affairs have been forgotten? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.