12 September, 2019
Have your say about what is needed to make real change in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
The Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations (Coalition of Peaks), together with Australian governments, want to hear your views on what is needed to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
We are working with Australian governments to develop a new National Agreement on Closing the Gap (National Agreement) that will set out what we will do over the next ten years to improve the lives Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
We want to hear your ideas on what should be included in the new National Agreement. We want to hear from enough people across Australia to make sure we’re on the right track and have support to finalise the new National Agreement with governments. Face to face meetings are being held, as well as discussions on the phone and the online survey. A report on what is said will be prepared by the Coalition of Peaks, to be provided to governments and made public. The report will help us finalise the new National Agreement.
There is a discussion booklet that has background information on Closing the Gap and sets out what will be talked about in the survey. You can also look at an illustrated story of what the survey is about
The survey will take a little bit of time to complete. It would be great if you can answer all the questions, but you can also just focus on the issues that you care about most. To help you prepare your answers, you can look at a full copy here.
Some of you may have attended government led meetings about refreshing the Closing the Gap targets in 2017 and 2018. You can read more about the government’s refresh here https://closingthegap.niaa.gov.au/. This time the Coalition of Peaks are leading the discussion and we are now also talking about some important changes that we think needs to happen to improve our lives faster.
The online survey closes on 25 October 2019 at 5.00pm.
In addition to the work with the Coalition of Peaks, some governments are taking further steps to set up new shared decision making and partnership arrangements with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. One example is what is happening in Victoria on Treaty https://www.firstpeoplesvic.org/. In Western Australia, the government is developing a whole-of-government strategy for Aboriginal Affairs and is transforming the way they engage with Aboriginal people. The Tasmanian Government are also changing the way they work with Aboriginal people http://www.dpac.tas.gov.au/divisions/csr/oaa/resetting_the_relationship in their state.
We look forward to hearing your views.
Thanks for taking the time to complete the survey!
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the key agents of change in Closing the Gap and must be granted agency in the development and implementation of policies and programs that impact their lives.Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap 2019
