Observers this side of the ditch will permit, perhaps, an ironic smile at the terminology being used in Australia to broach the "devastating" revelations of last week's Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report.
All the talk is about "closing the gap" between Aborigines and other Australians which, this latest report makes clear, almost all the Government's initiatives and policies have failed to do.
In certain respects, in fact, those gaps have widened.
"Closing the gaps" was, of course, the label given in this country to a series of policies aimed at assisting socially-disadvantaged ethnic groups - particularly Maori, but also various Pacific Islanders - adopted by Helen Clark's Labour-led government in 1999, but disavowed at least in name shortly thereafter following heavy criticism of the "special treatment" and "social apartheid" some argued was inherent in the approach.
Whatever terminology is used, the situation in Australia is dire, particularly with respect to health, education, employment and child protection.
The report, which measures and compares 50 indicators of disadvantage, found there had been no improvement in 80% of the economic and social categories since 2003.
Lowlights include: Aboriginal children are six times as likely to be abused as non-indigenous Australians, an increase on 2003 when they were four times as likely to be abused (the rates of substantiated notifications for child abuse or neglect for indigenous children have more than doubled since 1999-2000); Aboriginal people are 13 times more likely to end up in prison; indigenous victims of domestic violence are hospitalised at a rate 34 times that of other Australians; the gap between the indigenous and non-indigenous workforce has remained constant; and there have been no improvements in indigenous literacy and numeracy.
Small wonder Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd found it "devastating".
He said the findings of the report were "unacceptable" and required "decisive action"; the country must "redouble and treble our efforts to make an impact".
Fighting talk, but what exactly is proposed and is it likely to make a difference given the extensive efforts expended to date?
Certainly, the blame game played in the wake of the report's release by Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin is not the answer.
Describing it as an indictment of the Howard years is a nonsense, given the long gestation period and intergenerational nature of the problems now facing the indigenous population.
And in terms of decisive action, arguably it was the Howard government that responded in just such a way with its controversial "intervention" in June 2007.
This was a radical initiative both criticised and welcomed at the time that saw camouflaged soldiers, health officials and welfare advisers move into "assist" Aborigine communities in the Northern Territory.
Central to such moves was the income management scheme which dictated how welfare payments could be spent - a targeted attempt to reduce a destructive alcohol-sodden dependency culture.
There are anecdotal reflections on the effects both positive and negative of the intervention, but in terms of this latest report, the jury is out: statistics available cover only the early stages, and in some cases the intervention may have led to additional reporting of problems.
The philosophical and political arguments remain.
One of the shortcomings of the approach is that it was conceived as an emergency measure with concomitant resources.
But the problem is one of a dysfunctional society, the ills of which will not be assuaged in the space of a year or two.
At a deeper socio-legalistic level, the intervention required a suspension of anti-discrimination legislation and a return to long-discredited paternalism - which invites the question of whether one form of dependency is simply being replaced by another, albeit in the short-term much less apparently destructive.
The beginnings of a solution, some say, lie in education, and a move by Ms Macklin to stop welfare payments to those parents whose children wag school, has been applauded.
But, as experience in this country shows, it may take more than getting tough on truants to improve the educational statistics and close the many gaps that exist between indigenous and non-indigenous lifestyles and achievement.
The Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report underscores just how urgent in Australia that challenge has now become.
