The 2025-26 State Budget presents an opportunity for the newly elected WA Government to commit funding and resources that will strengthen future-focused health policies and programs, improve Aboriginal health and wellbeing, and close the gap in health outcomes and life expectancy for Aboriginal people.

This is a chance for the WA Government to act on commitments made under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (the National Agreement) and associated policy and planning documents, such as the WA Aboriginal Empowerment Strategy, the WA Closing the Gap Implementation Plan, and the Closing the Gap Health Sector Strengthening Plan.

Despite these high-level policy and planning documents, the WA Government is falling short of meeting Closing the Gap outcomes and targets, and has not sufficiently embedded the Priority Reforms in its work. Strategies, plans and frameworks with unfunded actions are not sustainable and will fail to realise their stated goals. It is important to ensure that these plans and strategies are fully operationalised, which includes making the required investments.

According to the Priority Reform Two target of the National Agreement, all jurisdictions must ‘increase the amount of government funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs and services going through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled organisations’. The State Commissioning Strategy for Community Services makes a similar recommendation to invest ‘in Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) and over time increase the proportion of services delivered by ACCOs’. These recommendations recognise that when Aboriginal people lead, design and deliver services and programs, improved health and wellbeing outcomes are experienced by the community.

Given the Labor Government’s recent budget surpluses, this is the time to make strategic investments that deliver on existing policy commitments, including the aforementioned National Agreement, the WA Sustainable Health Review (SHR), the WA Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing Framework 2015-2030, the State Commissioning Strategy for Community Services 2022 and the Department of Communities Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation Strategy 2022-2032.

With strategic investment in mind, this Pre-Budget Submission includes costed proposals to address Aboriginal community health needs by addressing critical gaps. These proposals are the result of an extensive consultation process with AHCWA’s Member Services, including a survey to all Member Services, individual meetings if requested by services, and follow up discussions with WA ACCHS CEOs and Clinical Leadership Group.

From these consultations, nine key areas of need were identified which were then strategically divided into three discrete funding proposal areas and six broader advocacy areas that were refined into AHCWA’s key election priority document.

To read AHCWA’s full Pre-Budget Submission, click here.