CANBERRA, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- Australia's prime minister released the latest report card on Monday assessing the nation's attempt to eliminate disadvantages faced by the indigenous population.
The Closing the Gap report found that the government was on track to achieve three of the seven targets of the strategy, up from one in 2017.
The report revealed that infant mortality improvements and early education enrolments joined secondary school completion as the three key areas that were tracking well.
The other four targets - closing the 10-year gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians by 2031 and halving the gaps in employment, reading and numeracy and school attendance by 2018 - were all lagging.
"Three of the seven targets are on track this year, giving us the most promising result since 2011," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the parliament.
"The last decade has given us a richer understanding about what works and what does not.
"The most valuable lesson has come from applying advice to do with, not to (indigenous people)."
Closing the Gap was implemented in 2008, shortly after the then-prime minister formally apologized the 'Stolen Generation' of indigenous people who had been taken away from their family.
In the eight years from 2008 to 2016, 101 billion U.S. dollars was spent by the government in an attempt to achieve the seven key targets to little avail.
Turnbull announced earlier in February that the policy would be refreshed in 2018, on Monday saying the new policy would focus more on communities than targets.
"As part of the Closing the Gap refresh, state-by-state targets will give us more granular and specific local insight," he said.
"Data that ends up in a spreadsheet at the Australian Bureau of Statistics here in Canberra is meaningless.
"Too much is written about communities, not nearly enough is written for communities.
"To give effect, data must be local and made available to communities, to local decision-makers who need to know what is happening on the ground and track changes and monitor progress. This is a big shift."
The Opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) announced on Monday that if it is elected to government it would introduce a national compensation scheme which would make Stolen Generation survivors in the Northern Territory (NT) eligible for up to 58,000 U.S. dollars in compensation.
"We must remember the apology was so much more than a set of well-chosen words," ALP leader Bill Shorten told the parliament.
"It was not just an expression of sorrow or regret - but a declaration of intent, a promise for action.
"The continuing weight and meaning of the apology comes from what we do now, from our actions, from the change we drive, the gaps we close and the unfinished business we resolve.
"Compensation is about resolving some of the unfinished business of the apology."
Warren Snowdon, a member of the parliament, said that there was 150 surviving members of the Stolen Generation in the region.
Under the scheme, those survivors would be able to access compensation within 100 days of Shorten taking office as the prime minister.
"I know that there are people in the NT who have been enormously frustrated by the lack of action in this regard, and I am certain that there will be those that argue about the quantum, and all of those things; we welcome that discussion," Snowdon said.
