00:00 Across health, education and housing, Aboriginal-run organisations are delivering services every
00:07 day under the Closing the Gap Agreement. Now a damning report is criticising government
00:15 for not keeping its end of the deal.
00:17 The majority of funding relating to services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
00:21 people actually doesn't go to the community controlled sector. It goes to the NGO sector,
00:26 which is not us.
00:29 Aboriginal community controlled organisations have told the Productivity Commission review
00:33 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, it's not working.
00:37 The intention was that governments would work with the Aboriginal community controlled sector
00:43 acknowledging that they were underfunded compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts and that
00:48 has not yet happened across the entire agreement.
00:52 Closing the Gap is 15 years old, but in 2020 governments signed up to a radical overhaul,
00:59 promising to share power with Indigenous-run organisations.
01:04 Today's report says governments are unwilling to relinquish control and aren't revealing
01:09 where and what it's spending money on.
01:12 What we need to do is hold Indigenous organisations responsible for the money that the taxpayer
01:18 is giving them and stop turning a blind eye to make sure that money is being well spent.
01:24 Aboriginal community controlled organisations are already audited. There are really, really
01:28 strong controls in place.
01:30 The Productivity Commission spent three years looking into the effectiveness of the 2020
01:34 agreement. What was prevalent in the submissions was tension over money.
01:40 Yes, we did see examples where funding was given to external bodies outside of the Aboriginal
01:46 community controlled sector.
01:48 A message noted by the nation's leader.
01:51 We'll continue to put forward practical measures in order to close the gap and we'll be making
01:56 our statements when the Closing the Gap report is tabled shortly.
02:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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