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"The data tells us there is no employment gap, no employment gap between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians with a university degree."
That line buried towards the end of the Prime Minister's Closing the Gap speech in Parliament on Tuesday is a little window of hope in an otherwise bleak picture for Indigenous Australians.
Once again the nation has been reminded of the plight of its first people. In critical areas of life expectancy, employment and education, there has been little or no improvement this past year.
That's despite more than $30 billion — directly or indirectly — spent on Indigenous people.
Indigenous leaders are unanimous in the demand for a new direction, more consultation with communities and giving Aboriginal and Islander people greater control over their destinies.
Yet, look more closely and there is another story. It is a story that doesn't grab the headlines.
It is a story where statistics are not destiny. It is a story of success; individuals not waiting for government, not necessarily tied to communal outcomes.
These Indigenous people reject the label "disadvantaged".
'Kids started to see their sense of worth'
Shane Phillips is one who is making a difference.
He admits that for much of his life he was angry and resentful at the treatment of his people — but not anymore.
"I had hatred connected to me all over those years. But I learned something really simple: there's some humility and you have to swallow a little bit of pride, and the more I see the young ones starting to grow, I am growing with them," he said.
Mr Phillips is a leading figure in the Aboriginal community of Redfern in inner Sydney. It is a place with a tough history. There have been riots and clashes with police. It has been a hotbed of crime.
But Mr Phillips has worked with the local cops to establish a program of fitness and mentoring for Indigenous kids and it's getting results.
"Kids started to see their sense of worth and their family and started to see their value in how strong our people really were. We had an 82 per cent drop in robberies. The recidivism rates in other places is going up, in Redfern it is going down," Mr Phillips said.
Reuben Bolt said to make a difference, Indigenous people must change the narrative.
He is an associate professor at the University of New South Wales, in charge of the Nura Gili Indigenous centre.
Dr Bolt has been on his own remarkable journey from a childhood in an Indigenous community to gaining a PhD from the University of Sydney.
Now he guides young Indigenous students on their own paths to success.
"We've got a range of students that've come through many of our degree programs. We had six students graduate medicine a couple of years back, the next year we had eight. So that is getting bigger," Dr Bolt said.
Right now there are about 300 Indigenous students at UNSW and Dr Bolt said their retention rates — those finishing their degrees — were now higher than non-Indigenous students.
They are the vanguard of a rapidly emerging Aboriginal middle class in Australia.
'We just have to change our thinking'
Indigenous academic Marcia Langton has called this "the quiet revolution".
Businessman Troy Rugless counts himself among these professional, often highly paid, Indigenous people who have transformed their own lives.
"I grew up in housing commission. My grandfather's family was part of the Stolen Generation ... We just have to change our thinking, we have to get out and have a go ... we need to break the cycle and become responsible and independent. It gives you choice."
Six years ago Mr Rugless left his job as a fireman and started a small cleaning company. It has grown into a thriving business with offices around the country employing more than 150 people, a quarter of them Indigenous.
PSG Holdings is just one of hundreds of Indigenous-owned ventures tapping into a Federal Government program to award a percentage of Commonwealth projects to black businesses.
Mr Rugless is now bidding for a defence deal that could be the biggest ever signed with an Indigenous company.
"Hopefully we can be pioneers of a business that is eventually listed on the stock exchange, that's my goal," he said.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull used his speech today to shift the focus to celebrating Indigenous success.
"While we must accelerate progress and close the gap, we must also tell the broader story of Indigenous Australia. Not of despondency and deficit, but of a relentless and determined optimism," he said.
"That being an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian means to succeed, to achieve, to have big dreams and high hopes, and to draw strength from your identity as an Indigenous person in this country."
Of the litany of miserable statistics, the imprisonment rate is among the most damning. A quarter of Australia's prison population is Indigenous.
As of 2016 that was around 10,000 people. Right now there are more than 30,000 Indigenous people with university degrees.
As the Prime Minister said in his speech, those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians have closed the gap.
Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, indigenous-policy, federal-government, government-and-politics, community-and-society, australia
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