No Economic Base or Future: Researcher Says Indigenous Community Funding Should Go Elsewhere

An Indigenous Australian researcher says education is the key to addressing entrenched disadvantage in Aboriginal communities, as new data shows most Closing the Gap targets are not on track.

The Productivity Commission has reported that, out of the 19 socio-economic targets, only four have met expectations, with several stagnating or worsening.

The “gap” refers to the perceived differences in health, education, employment, and wellbeing between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Gary Johns, chairman of Close the Gap Research, said governments should shift investment from remote community development to individuals.

“The gap will never close until policymakers are honest and admit that there are two classes of Aboriginal people—those who came in, and those who have been left out,” the former Labor minister told The Epoch Times.

“Those left out of modern Australia can never hope to be well enough educated to enter the workforce. All else follows—their poor health, overcrowding, and more.

Johns noted a school attendance rate of just four percent for Years 7-10 in the Northern Territory.

“If you don’t go to school, you cannot learn. The only way forward is to invest in people, not communities,” he said.

Johns explains that “community development is a false goal.”

“Almost all remote communities are failures, as there is no economic base. Without a base, there will never be a future,” he said.

“Successful Aborigines left these places generations ago.

“Every dollar that goes to community development must be diverted to children’s education, preferably away from their communities and the destructive cultures of humbug and payback.”

Johns said policymakers were “too frightened and weak to call it out against the elite Aborigines that run the industry.”

The Data

The four targets on track include preschool enrolments, native title land and water, and a 2021 employment rate of 55.7 percent among Indigenous Australians aged 25-64 (pdf).

However, only 33.9 percent of Aboriginal schoolchildren were developmentally on track in 2024, and 50.3 out of every 1,000 children were placed into care.

Suicide rates for Indigenous Australians reached 30.8 per 100,000 in 2023—more than double the national rate of 11.8.

Crime also continues to plague Aboriginal communities, with 2,304.4 out of every 100,000 Indigenous Australians incarcerated in 2024.

Productivity Commission chief Selwyn Button said governments had failed to implement transformational change.

“The outcomes reflect limited progress of governments in sharing decision-making and data with communities, strengthening the Aboriginal Community Controlled sector, and changing the way governments operate,” he said in a statement.

“The transformational change that governments committed to is falling well short of what has been promised.”

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