The Closing the Gap strategy was established in 2008 with the aim of achieving health parity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2030 but “effectively abandoned” its long-term goals in favour of short-term political demands within five years, a damning review has found.

The 10-year review, released by the non-government Close the Gap campaign on Thursday, said that a decade of tumultuous political and bureaucratic change had “all but halted the steady progress hoped for by First Peoples” and resulted instead in the “target practice” of annual reporting on seven key indicators, only one of which is on track.

It said the concept of closing the gap had been adopted as a way to reset the relationship between government and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to focus on partnership and resolving underlying systemic issues such as racism, access to housing and other key social determinants of health, but that those principles were only “partially and incoherently” adopted in practice.

Viewing Indigenous health spending as part of a 25-year program “was effectively abandoned after five-years”, it said, with a $530m cut to Indigenous affairs in the 2014 budget.

“In practice, the Closing the Gap strategy persists in name only with the Closing the Gap targets being used to measure ‘national progress’ being pursued by fragmented jurisdictional efforts, with no national leadership,” the report said. “It is almost a full retreat ... The nation is now in a situation where the Closing the Gap targets will measure nothing but the collective failure of Australian governments to work together and to stay the course.”

The report’s release comes as Coag is preparing to discuss the planned “refresh” of the Closing the Gap strategy, which will include new targets covering the next 10 years. Indigenous delegates met in Canberra on Thursday before the first ministers’ meeting on Friday.



The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, will give the annual Closing the Gap statement next week.

The review criticised the refresh process, saying it “lacked clarity and appears to be promoting an agenda based on views within government that have involved virtually no engagement with First Peoples in their development”.

The Turnbull government’s rejection of the Uluru statement, it said, was “emblematic of the gap between the rhetoric of partnership and the reality” in Indigenous affairs.

It also called for national leadership and outcome-oriented funding for the strategy, saying: “Without a recommitment to such ‘architecture’, the nation is now in a situation where the Closing the Gap targets will measure nothing but the collective failure of Australian governments to work together and to stay the course.”

It said that the existing targets should be maintained but complemented by factors like expenditure targets and targets on building capacity in the Aboriginal community-controlled health sector.

The Close the Gap campaign is a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous health organisations co-chaired by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, June Oscar.

It will be unveiled at a breakfast in Canberra on Thursday. Turnbull, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, and the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, are scheduled to attend.

Oscar told Guardian Australia the review showed the first 10 years of the Closing the Gap strategy had been a “missed opportunity”.

“It is absolutely critical that we look at the underlying issues … I don’t think we can afford to look at the symptoms separately,” she said.

She said there was goodwill from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to help design a strategy for the next 10 years that did not repeat past mistakes.

“I think that we cannot afford to let that happen,” Oscar said. “The issues are so serious and the need is just so great that we cannot afford to see the refresh process lose this opportunity to get it right.”