Indigenous Disadvantage

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:43): Supplementary: to date, Premier, how much success has there been in closing the gap in South Australia?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:43): A slightly odd question to ask because the refresh was only handed down, I think, four or five weeks ago, so the answer to that in truth is not much. As I said in my previous answer, there was a huge amount of work which was put into that refresh. This was something that was taken to COAG. I'm just trying to remember exactly when, but I think it probably would have been in late 2018. What was discussed in COAG was that we needed to have a different approach.

The Closing the Gap methodology, which was put in place under the previous Labor government following the national apology, hadn't worked and hadn't delivered. The time for the refresh gave us an opportunity to go back to including more Indigenous voices in the framing of what the objects of the Closing the Gap strategy were about. We welcomed that. We resourced that. We wanted to make sure that the Coalition of Peaks, who were represented in South Australia at the national level by Cheryl Axleby, had their say in the development of that plan and then, ultimately, we all worked together.

I have to say I was on that teleconference that finally signed off on that refresh. It was quite an incredible meeting. I have to say it was expertly chaired by Pat Turner, a very passionate health leader in Australia. Many people thought that the refresh would run very late because of COVID. Many people thought that what we would do would be to essentially delay and push off for another year. The Prime Minister was very focused on getting that refresh completed this year, so was Ken Wyatt and so was Pat Turner.

What transpired was everybody redoubled their effort during a very difficult year to make sure we had input from the Aboriginal controlled enterprises right across South Australia through their representative on that council of peaks, Cheryl Axleby. That was all fed in. Ultimately, the new themes were developed. What the success will be remains to be seen, but what we do know is that we have had Aboriginal voices around the table.

This is not a document developed by bureaucrats sitting in isolation thinking about what might be useful to close the gap on a range of metrics. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been involved in that refresh. Key components of this differ quite significantly, especially around making sure that there can be further Aboriginal controlled enterprise input into the delivery of the plan and also a very significant focus on building capability around governance. So there are some very good new themes and objectives. We are taking it very seriously.

We hope to have our response to this new document developed very quickly. We don't want to overly rush it. I am not promising it in the next couple of weeks, but what I can say is that we have acted very swiftly to put in place a very good mechanism for consultation so that we can work with the Coalition of Peaks, the Aboriginal controlled enterprises and the Public Service in South Australia to have our response in a timely way.