Introduction by Croakey: The returned Albanese Government faces widespread pressure – including from its own MPs – to lift its game in addressing the needs of First Nations peoples and communities.
Greens Senator Dorinda Cox plans to reintroduce her bill for a Truth and Justice Commission later in the year, creating a pathway for a federal treaty, she told ABC this week.
Labor could not be “hiding behind the couch anymore and blaming crossbenchers and blaming the Opposition for not being able to pass legislation that is progressive and delivers First Nations justice”, she said.
Marion Scrymgour, Labor’s newly appointed Special Envoy for Remote Communities, told the ABC she was looking forward to speaking with the Prime Minister about progressing the remaining elements of the Uluru Statement: treaty and truth-tellling.
While she “accepted” the PM had said he was “not going to go down that way”, the Lingiari MP said she had heard calls for progress “loud and clear” from constituents in her large NT electorate.
“Our communities want healing,” she told the ABC. “They want to heal with this country and move forward,”
In a letter to Uluru Statement supporters this week, Professor Megan Davis AC & Pat Anderson AO said they had hoped for a minority government – “because change for mob has never come from the major parties. It comes in spite of them”.
The election was “a moment to reassess and think about how we get meaningful constitutional recognition back on the table. How we get genuine change for First Nations people back on the agenda”, they wrote.
Meanwhile, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health organisations and advocates have a big job ahead in educating Rebecca White, the former Tasmanian Labor Opposition Leader who is now Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health, in addition to her other roles as Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, and for Women. Her predecessor Ged Kearney had a long history of relationships and working in the space.
Of course, the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people depends upon decisions made in many portfolios beyond health, a point underscored by NACCHO CEO Pat Turner this week: “Closing the Gap is every minister’s responsibility, not just Malarndirri McCarthy’s, it belongs to every minister in the federal cabinet.”
In the article below, Karl Briscoe, Chair of the National Indigenous Health Leadership Alliance (NIHLA), urges a “whole-of-government transformation”, with decisive leadership needed from “every Minister and Department head in the country”.
The PM’s leadership will be critical in determining “whether this term of government leaves a legacy of integrity and progress, or a continuation of broken promises”, he writes.
Karl Briscoe writes:
As the dust settles on the 2025 federal election, a pressing question remains for the returned Albanese Government: Will this be the term where governments finally act on their promises to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples?
The National Indigenous Health Leadership Alliance (NIHLA) acknowledges and welcomes the appointment of Rebecca White MP as the new Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health and the reappointment of Senator Malarndirri McCarthy as Minister for Indigenous Australians.
We look forward to working constructively with both Ministers to ensure that Indigenous health policy is grounded in partnership, evidence, and accountability – and that this term of government listens to and backs the leadership of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
For too long, the burden of improving outcomes for our people has been disproportionately placed on the Indigenous Affairs portfolio – a department without the purse strings or power to drive system-wide reform.
Yet the stark truth is this: we will not close the gap in health, incarceration, child removal, or life expectancy without a whole-of-government transformation.
NIHLA represents the collective voice of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing organisations, is calling for decisive leadership – not just from the Minister for Indigenous Australians, but from every Minister and Department head in the country.
We have made our message clear in letters to Ministers and through our submissions to the Indigenous-led review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap: this Agreement cannot be allowed to fail.
Lives are on the line. Our people are still dying too young. We are still being locked up at some of the highest rates in the world. Children are still being removed from families at alarming and intergenerationally traumatic rates.
These outcomes are not the fault of our communities – they are the result of a public policy system that continues to impose top-down solutions instead of listening and investing in what works.
We must stop allowing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be used for political leverage. We are not a problem to be managed or a line in a campaign speech.
We are people – entitled to dignity, support, and the same opportunities as every other Australian. Yet the structures that govern us still perpetuate disadvantage, discrimination, and disempowerment.
If the Closing the Gap Agreement is to succeed, all of our public services, including the Australian Public Service, must change.
Governments must move beyond transactional funding and performance-by-paper reporting.
We need long-term, coherent investment in community-led, place-based solutions. We need structural reforms that embed cultural safety, shift decision-making power, and hold every agency accountable – not just Indigenous-specific ones.
This also means recognising the urgent need to implement the outstanding recommendations of Bringing Them Home, and ensuring that Elders, Stolen Generations survivors, and their descendants are no longer invisible in national frameworks.
NIHLA believes that real change is possible. Across the country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations are leading the way in health, healing, housing, justice, and workforce development.
What we need now is for government systems to catch up — to get out of the way, and to get behind the solutions communities have been advocating for decades.
Prime Minister Albanese’s leadership will be critical.
The tone he sets – across Cabinet, across the APS, and with the Australian public – will determine whether this term of government leaves a legacy of integrity and progress, or a continuation of broken promises.
Let this be the term we stopped talking and started transforming. Not just in words, but in structures, systems, and shared power.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on Indigenous health and wellbeing
