Indigenous leaders appeal to Turnbull for engagement amid crisisThe Pulse Live: Stephanie Peatling blogs from Parliament
Malcolm Turnbull has vowed to be guided by the "wisdom, the ingenuity, the insights" of Indigenous people to tackle profound disadvantage after a report confirmed the nation is not on track to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2030.
In his first major address on Indigenous affairs, the Prime Minister conceded that the annual Closing the Gap report showed that much more work was needed to meet six agreed health, education and employment targets but said respect was the key to progress. 
Mr Turnbull renewed a commitment to a "new future" for Indigenous Australia and pledged to partner and engage with communities, which leaders say will lead to more effective policies.
"I will honour that commitment not by delivering to Indigenous Australians, but by working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and their communities across Australia," he told Parliament.
"Our task must be to engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in a partnership that is based on mutual respect."
The Prime Minister began his address in the language of Canberra's Indigenous Ngunnawal people, a move that Close the Gap campaign co-chair Jackie Huggins said "gave us all heart".
The report revealed mixed progress towards meeting targets set in 2008, with the goals of halving the gap in child mortality and year 12 attainment by 2018 on track to be met, but uneven results in other areas.
In the lead up to the report, several prominent Aboriginal leaders have expressed frustration and anger that their voices were neither being respected nor heard.
In his response, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said multicultural success was not complete until Aboriginal inequality was addressed.
"We cannot just be the best multicultural nation in the world but we should be the nation best also at empowering and respecting its first peoples.
"One day we'll be able to talk of one country and mean it. One day we'll be able to say racism is a relic of the past, that the fair go is truly colour blind," he said.
Labor is supporting calls by Indigenous leaders to add a new target on closing the incarceration gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, with Mr Shorten saying: "It is wrong that an Aboriginal man of 18 is more likely to go to jail than to go to university."
As widely predicted, there is mixed progress towards the seven targets to address Indigenous disadvantage in health and education.
In health, the gap in child mortality is on track to halve by 2018, with Indigenous child death rates decreasing 33 per cent between 1998 and 2014. The life expectancy gap shows little improvement, although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner and Close the Gap campaign co-chair Mick Gooda says this won't show up in statistics for several years.
In reading and numeracy for years three, five, seven and nine students, only half of these categories are on track for achieving national minimum standards.
After the early childhood education target failed and expired in 2013, the government has renewed a commitment to seeing 95 per cent of four-year-olds enrolled by 2025.
A new target created in 2014, to equalise school attendance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, shows that while 83.5 per cent of Aboriginal students are attending school on any given day, this is almost ten percentage points behind Australia generally and progress needs to accelerate.
The greatest success in education has been found in year 12 completion, with 58.5 per cent of Indigenous students finishing school, up from 45.4 per cent in 2008. Over the last ten years, there has been a 70 per cent increase in higher education participation.
Indigenous employment has fallen since the strategy began, from 53.8 per cent in 2008 to 47.5 per cent in 2012-13. The target is not on track but people will be hopeful of progress when new data becomes available in   April.
Following the tabling of the report and the addresses by Mr Turnbull and Mr Shorten, Indigenous leaders welcomed progress and the "resetting" of the conversation around engagement but said it must be backed up with substantive change.
"Both leaders talked about this new relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the Prime Minister quoted extensively in saying, 'Do things with us not to us'. Bill Shorten said exactly the same thing," Mr Gooda said.
"We have heard these words before. We take them with good heart but there's got to be a carrying-out of that new relationship so I think we're entitled to be a little bit cynical about it until it starts happening."
Close the Gap co-chair Jackie Huggins said she "looked forward to starting a new chapter for our people because things cannot progress as they have over the decades".
"We feel that it's our generation now that has to close the gap, our generation that has that opportunity and given half the chance we'll be able to do that."
Leaders reiterated their calls to address unreliable funding for programs and the high Aboriginal incarceration rate.
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