Australia making mixed progress in improving indigenous lives

Life’s not getting better for many in Australia’s poorest and most disadvantaged group.

A government report released Wednesday found mixed results in erasing disadvantages for indigenous Australians, with life expectancy still 10 years lower than for others.

Targets to reduce unemployment and boost school attendance weren’t on track, though a push to reduce child mortality was on target.

“We cannot, of course, sugar-coat the enormity of the job that remains,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told parliament while releasing the annual Closing the Gap report.

The report shows where Australia stands in its bid to end differences in health care, education, and job opportunities between the nation’s 700,000 Aborigines and other Australians, more than 220 years after European settlement.

Indigenous Australians populated the continent at least 50,000 years ago and while they are about 3 percent of the population, they make up 27 percent of the prison population.

The program, initiated by then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008, has sometimes struggled for momentum due to changes in government leadership.

Rudd offered the nation’s first apology to Aborigines taken from their families for assimilation with the white community, saying the policy was a “blemished chapter” in the nation’s history.

Still, the specter of racism in Australia remains, with an elite Aboriginal footballer jeered at games last year after he performed a tribal war dance.

Turnbull said his government will proceed with a bid to recognise indigenous people in the constitution through a national referendum.

While eradicating domestic violence remained a priority, employment opportunities -- particularly on remote communities -- needed to be increased along with ways of boosting self-determination, he said.

“A person’s right to shape their own identity and for that identity to be respected is central to the well-being of all people and yet for decades aboriginality and skin color have been used to control the live of indigenous people and to diminish their value in society,” Turnbull said. “This must be no longer.”