Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Well-Being: Analysis of Close the Gap Campaign and AHRC Report

Running head: ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES WELL-BEING
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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' wellbeing
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ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES WELL-BEING
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Introduction
As a registered nurse, I came across a case of Matt who is an indigenous Australian with
24 years from Palm Island. He was an inpatient waiting to move to the discharge lounge. He is
supposed to travel back to Townsville to be taken care of by his mother. He however
experienced different challenges but since I was confident and good at cultural care, I was able to
overcome the challenges. One of my colleagues however feels that indigenous Australians are
given everything since closing the gap funded travel and accommodation expenses of Matts
Mother. In 2018, the AHRC also published a report critiquing the Australian government over
the same. I feel that all this criticism is unfair since indigenous Australians have a higher burden
of diseases (Ring, Dixon, Lovett, & Al-Yaman, 2016). To achieve equality, it has to spend more.
In this assignment, there will be an analysis of the case study.
Discussion
Closing the Gap vs close the Gap campaign.
With studies agreeing that there exists a huge gap in healthcare between indigenous and
non-indigenous Australians, there was an urgent need of initiatives whose agenda was to propose
ways to eliminate or reduce the disparities (Duke, Kado, Auto, Amini, & Gilbert, 2015). One
such initiative was close the Gap Campaign. This is an initiative by NGOs, human right
organizations and both indigenous and non-indigenous health bodies. All these stakeholders
came together with an objective of achieving universal healthcare and life expectancy between
both the indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. It was established back in 2007 and it is
expected that by 2030, their objectives would have been achieved.

ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLES WELL-BEING
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The Australian Government was also concerned about the increasing inequalities in
healthcare between the indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and came up with its own
strategies to combat the same. This strategy is known as closing the gap Australian Government
Policy framework (Sibthorpe, Gardner, & McAullay, 2016). In this closing the gap strategy, the
government rolled out certain targets. One of it is to close the gap of life expectancy,
employment, child mortality rates, reading and writing of numeracy. This targets were supposed
to be achieved by 2018.The government also had a target of enrolling 95% of indigenous
children above 4 years to early childhood development schools (McDonald, 2011).The only
difference between the two initiatives is that while close the gap is by different stakeholders,
closing the gap is a government’s initiative. However, both of them have a similar objective, to
eliminate inequalities in healthcare between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
AHRC report and funding myth
In order for the close the Gap campaign to succeed, there is need for substantial
investment or spending by the Australian government. It the AHRC report of 2018, it is very
clear that the campaign is not on course and it is feared that it might never be accomplished
(Wendt, 2017). The funding myth is one of the barriers to the success of the close the gap
campaign.
The 2018 report notes that a section of Australians feel that the government is spending
too much of the taxpayers money towards the close the gap campaign. This is just a myth and
doesn’t hold any substance at all (The Lancet, 2019). This is due to the fact that the indigenous
population is 2.3 times at risk of getting diseases as compared to the non-indigenous Australians.
Furthermore, surveys show that the Australian government spends on $1.38 average per
indigenous person while it spends $1.00 per non-indigenous Australians (Reath & O'Mara,