Indigenous leaders held “crisis talks” with Scott Morrison last week to demand the government keep its promise to enter into a formal partnership with Indigenous people to determine the Closing the Gap targets.

The Closing the Gap strategy refresh is on the agenda for the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Adelaide on Wednesday.

At the meeting with the prime minister, representatives from key Indigenous bodies said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people felt they had been left out of the process and there was a lack of genuine consultation.

Guardian Australia understands that the Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, was not in the meeting.

The chief executive of the Federation of Victorian Traditional Owner Corporations, Marcus Stewart, described the meeting as “crisis talks”.

“How have we got this far down the track without a genuine partnership being established and Aboriginal people being consulted?” he said. “We don’t want a repeat of the Uluru Statement where they have gone out, they have sought the views of Aboriginal people, and they have decided they don’t like what they heard back.”

The Uluru Statement, which outlined a position on constitutional recognition based on a national Indigenous-led consultation process, was substantially rejected by the Coalition.

Stewart said Morrison “seemed genuine” in his response to concerns raised about how effective the strategy would be without Indigenous community buy-in.

“They have committed to us to develop a genuine partnership, and that’s what we will be hoping comes out of Coag,” Stewart said.

Draft documents from Coag state that governments will commit to a formal partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to finalise the targets and share joint oversight and responsibility for their implementation and monitoring.

Scullion told Guardian Australia he “categorically rejects claims that there has been no consultation” and said that consultation with Indigenous stakeholders had been “extensive”. He said 1,200 people attended 29 roundtables on the strategy.

“Clearly there is an attempt here by certain Labor-aligned Indigenous peak bodies to sabotage the efforts the Coalition government has managed to achieve to date,” he said.

Stewart said the consultation that occurred at the roundtables was directed by the department of prime minister and cabinet, rather than being led by Indigenous voices.

The refresh process began in October 2017, when the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples was invited to address Coag. It held another meeting of Aboriginal delegates in February but the Coalition has been repeatedly accused of ignoring Indigenous voices.

The original timeline suggested the new strategy would be in place before the existing one expired in July 2018, but the deadline has been pushed out to July 2019. An Aboriginal steering committee is expected to be established by the end of January.

As of February 2018 three of the seven Closing the Gap targets were on track. In previous years, only one was reported to be on track. That sudden jump in success is one reason Indigenous organisations have called for oversight of the monitoring of the targets.

A 10-year review of the strategy in February said successive governments had “effectively abandoned” long-term health goals, the core purpose of the bipartisan generation-long strategy, in favour of short-term political outcomes. Last month, the head of the Australian Medical Association said the strategy had “all but unravelled.”

National Congress co-chair Rod Little, who also attended last week’s meeting, said the process began well, but the promises of genuine consultation had not been fulfilled.

He said Congress had only received “sporadic information” about the new targets being proposed by government.

“There’s no clarity,” Little told Guardian Australia. “We understand that governments have to keep things under wraps before it goes to Coag … but we are sort of seeing little bits of information that aren’t really reflecting the positions that have been discussed. I am a bit concerned about that.”

Victoria’s Aboriginal affairs minister, Gavin Jennings, said the Andrews government had “strong concerns” about the approach taken by its federal counterpart.

“The Aboriginal community is telling us that it does not adequately reflect their goals and aspirations for closing the gap,” Jennings said. “Closing the gap is critically important and we will not get there without true partnership with Aboriginal people.”

