Australia’s Closing the Gap agenda enters the final weeks of 2025 with a mixed and often sobering scorecard, as independent reviews and new data show too many outcomes are still off track while community-led solutions continue to demonstrate promise.
The Productivity Commission’s first statutory review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, released in February 2024, urged “fundamental changes” to how governments work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, finding that structural reform and genuine power-sharing are essential to improve results. The review highlighted limited progress on priority reforms designed to shift decision-making, empower community-controlled sectors and improve data sharing.
Throughout 2025, subsequent reporting reinforced those concerns. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s analysis of 14 of the 17 national targets showed only a handful trending in the right direction, with many either not on track or worsening, particularly in justice, child protection and youth engagement. The report emphasised that the drivers of change are multi-dimensional and require coordinated action across governments and sectors.
The Close the Gap Campaign’s 2025 annual report amplified on-the-ground examples of what works, pointing to case studies where First Nations leadership, community control and place-based approaches delivered tangible gains. The report called for governments to follow communities’ lead and invest at the scale required.
Justice remains a flashpoint. Inquiries and parliamentary debate during 2025 again drew attention to deaths in custody and over-representation, with senators and legal advocates urging urgent reforms in bail, remand and therapeutic services. Real-time dashboards maintained by the Australian Institute of Criminology continue to track deaths in custody nationally, a program established after the 1991 Royal Commission.
Housing is a counterpoint where investment is beginning to convert to outcomes. A landmark 10-year, $4 billion program jointly funded by the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments aims to halve overcrowding and build up to 2,700 homes, with ministerial updates in 2025 reporting new stock reducing overcrowding pressures across dozens of communities.
The overall picture is clear. There are credible, community-driven solutions proving effective… but the pace and scale of system-level reform has not kept up.
So as 2026 approaches, the central test for governments will be whether they embed shared decision-making and redirect funding to the community-controlled sector at the level required to move stubborn national indicators.
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