For those who don’t watch the national broadcaster, it came as a surprise to discover that the federal government is apparently engaged in a campaign of ‘genocide’ to eradicate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

The news was delivered by Dana Morse, an ABC reporter on the Insiders program last Sunday 25 June who identifies as ‘plangermaireener palawa’, that is a woman of Tasmanian Aboriginal descent. She said that what people were protesting about on Australia Day is the invasion of Australia and ‘the genocide of Aboriginal people that is ongoing today’.

The statement was immediately condemned as false by the opposition spokeswoman on Indigenous Affairs Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and fellow No campaigner Warren Mundine but not by anyone on Insiders or anywhere else at the ABC. ABC Fact Check hasn’t bothered to fact-check it perhaps because they think it is self-evidently true. An ABC spokesperson told the Speccie, ‘The comments were intended to summarise the perspectives and reasoning of people protesting against the Australia Day date rather than expressing a position by the ABC’. Elsewhere amongst progressives, there was a stony silence. There was no comment from Prime Minister Albanese or the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney.

So is there an ongoing genocide in Australia? Morse’s most recent article on the living conditions of Indigenous Australians looks at updated data on ‘Closing the Gap’ produced by the Productivity Commission (PC) released a fortnight ago on 15 June. She writes that ‘the latest figures show a number of incremental improvements across the socio-economic indicators, but overall, the gap is not closing’. That doesn’t sound like evidence of an ‘ongoing genocide’. And the good news is that the latest ABS data states that 812,000 people identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander in the 2021 census, which amounts to 3.2 per cent of the population. This was up from 2.8 per cent in 2016, and 2.5 per cent in 2011.

So if the Albanese government is conducting a genocide against Aboriginal Australians (and I sincerely hope and believe it is not) it is not doing it any better than it is doing anything else such as bringing down electricity prices.

The PC data paints a revealing picture. There are 17 targets which are motherhood statements couched in the peculiar language of Australian bureaucrats. Target 1 is: ‘Everyone enjoys long and healthy lives’. Mysteriously, the data that might explain the gap in life expectancy between indigenous and non-indigenous people is still ‘under development’ including rates of smoking, alcohol and drug use, obesity, dietary factors, and physical activity.

Yet this data is readily available elsewhere. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in 2018-19, 43 per cent of indigenous Australians smoked compared with 15 per cent of non-indigenous Australians who smoked in 2017-18. The death rate from lung cancer is more than double in indigenous populations (66 per 100,000) compared with non-indigenous populations (25 per 100,000). Obviously, the sooner indigenous people stop smoking the quicker the gap will be closed. This is not evidence of genocide. It is evidence of the fact that it is difficult to give up smoking.

Most of the data presented for Target 1 focuses on infant and child mortality. It shows that in 2017-2021, the leading cause of death for indigenous children aged 1 to 14 years was land transport accidents. They died at a rate of 3.7 per 100,000 children, a slight increase compared with 2014-2018. It’s a sad reflection on the fact that in many remote communities, royalties from mining are used to buy cars that are frequently crashed and replaced when the next lot of royalties are paid. Many crashes involve dangerous driving and unlicensed drivers including underage drivers.

If you work through the targets there is a failure to document the most obvious contributors to disadvantage. For example, Target 2 is ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are born healthy and strong’ but the proportion of mothers who smoke or consume alcohol during pregnancy is ‘under development’.

Target 10 is ‘Adults are not overrepresented in the criminal justice system’ which it seeks to achieve not by reducing criminal behaviour but by reducing the rate of incarceration by at least 15 per cent.

Target 13 is that ‘By 2031, the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children is reduced at least by 50 per cent, as progress towards zero’ but no data has been added since the baseline year of 2018-19 when 8.4 per cent of indigenous females aged 15 years and over experienced domestic physical or threatened physical harm.

The Closing the Gap Agreement is between all Australian governments and the Coalition of Peaks, which includes all the national, state and territory non-government Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak bodies and statutory authorities responsible for Closing the Gap.

They are not starved of funding. In 2015‑16, the most recent report from the PC, the estimated expenditure per person was $44,886 for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, around twice the rate for non‑indigenous Australians ($22,356).

The government’s claim that somehow an unelected indigenous Voice to parliament will stop people smoking or crashing cars seems unlikely.

One area where the gap is growing rapidly is in land rights. This is covered in Target 15 which states innocuously, ‘People maintain a distinctive cultural, spiritual, physical and economic relationship with their land and waters’. What that turns out to mean is that there is a commitment that between 2020 and 2030 there will be a 15 per cent increase in the land and sea controlled by Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders under Native Title. Why 15 per cent? There is no explanation. The PC simply states that, ‘A high or increasing area is desirable’. No doubt.

In 2022, Native Title already covered 4,138,356 square kms of Australia and 91,111 square kms of sea country. By 2030, it is intended to rise to 4,498,431 square kms of land and 103,790 square kms of sea country. That’s an area of land bigger than India or Argentina. So 3.2 per cent of the population of Australia will control more than 58 per cent of its landmass and more than 1 per cent of its exclusive economic zone. Not bad. But do those Native Title holders want to be dictated to by an unelected Voice? That seems unlikely.

The reality is that nothing in the Closing the Gap data shows the slightest evidence of genocide. It is despicable that the ABC allows its journalist to make this statement without correction or clarification. But it’s their ABC. They do what they want. We just pay for it.