Commonwealth Indigenous budget bulletin - June 2009

• Lesley Russell
• Macroeconomics.com.au

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15 June 2009The Indigenous Budget Bulletin is prepared by the Macroeconomics health team to help engender public debate and scrutiny of Indigenous budget policy. The bulletins are published at least twice a year (coinciding with the release of the Budget and the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook) along with supplementary features which are supplied as issues arise in relevantportfolios.

In its first year the Rudd Government recast the relationship between the Commonwealth Government and the  Indigenous community by apologising for the stolen generation and making a bold commitment to ‘close the gap’ with respect toIndigenous life expectancy, child mortality, access to early childhood education, educational attainment and employment outcomes. 

This Budget sees the Government taking its next steps to putting its stamp on Indigenous policy by outlining and funding further changes to the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER), detailing specific measures under its “closing the gap” commitment and, perhaps most importantly, setting out how funding for Indigenous policies and programs will be structured, in partnership with the States and Territories, through the National Partnership (NP) Agreements. 

Dr Russell is a senior adviser to Macroeconomics on health economics and policy including program analysis. She is the inaugural Menzies Foundation Fellow at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy which is co-located at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. She is actively involved in health policy research, analysis and commentary.