Indigenous suicide rate rose to 33.9 per 100,000 in 2024, Closing the Gap data shows

On 29 July 2026 the Productivity Commission published its Closing the Gap Annual Data Compilation, the official scorecard against the National Agreement signed by every Australian government. Of the 19 socioeconomic targets assessed, one has been met, three are on track, five are improving but not on track, two show no change from baseline, and four are worsening. One of the four moving in the wrong direction is the target on suicide among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The Commission's dashboard, last updated on 18 March 2026, records an age-standardised suicide rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of 33.9 per 100,000 in 2024, against a 2018 baseline of 23.6 per 100,000. The figure covers New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory combined. The Commission's own assessment reads: "Nationally, based on progress from the baseline, the target is worsening. This assessment is provided with a high level of confidence." The target itself asks for a significant and sustained reduction towards zero.

The flagship health target is faring better on paper and worse in the evidence available. Target 1 commits governments to closing the life expectancy gap by 2031. The most recent figures on the dashboard are for 2020 to 2022: 71.9 years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males and 75.6 for females, against 80.6 and 83.8 for non-Indigenous Australians. That is a gap of 8.8 years for males and 8.1 for females, narrowed from 11.4 and 9.6 at the 2005 to 2007 baseline. The Commission finds the target "shows improvement but is not on track to be met for males or females", and adds that the assessment "should be used with caution as it is based on a limited number of data points."

Those life expectancy numbers come from the Australian Bureau of Statistics life tables released on 29 November 2023. In other words, the central health promise of the National Agreement is still being scored against a reference period that ended in 2022, while the suicide target is scored to 2024. The same ABS release shows the gap is not one national number: 6.8 years for males in New South Wales, 12.3 in Western Australia and 13.5 in the Northern Territory.

A second health target has simply not moved. Target 2 seeks to lift the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies born at a healthy birthweight to 91 per cent by 2031. It was 88.8 per cent at the 2017 baseline and 88.9 per cent in 2023. The Commission records "no change from the baseline" and attaches a low level of confidence to that finding.

The official numbers do not sit neatly together. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, updating its suicide monitoring pages on 12 August 2026, reports 2023 age-standardised rates of 48.5 per 100,000 for First Nations males and 13.8 for First Nations females, roughly 2.9 and 2.6 times the corresponding non-Indigenous rates. Its data covers six jurisdictions holding about 96 per cent of the First Nations population. The Institute also records suicide as 5.2 per cent of all First Nations deaths in 2023, rising to about one in five deaths among those aged under 45. These figures are reported by sex and for a different year, so they cannot be read straight across to the Commission's single combined rate, and neither agency publishes a reconciliation of the two.

The ABS Causes of Death release for 2024, published on 14 November 2025, puts national suicide deaths at 3,307, with a median age at death of 46.0 years and 76.5 per cent of those who died being male. It identifies suicide as the leading cause of premature death in Australia, accounting for 107,327 potential years of life lost. For Indigenous mortality the ABS confines its analysis to five jurisdictions.

The caveat that runs through all of this is identification. The AIHW noted on 23 June 2026 that changes in how Indigenous status is recorded make comparisons over time unreliable, and the Commission attaches the same warning to the life expectancy series. That means part of any measured rise could reflect better recording of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status on death certificates rather than more deaths. Neither body has published an estimate of how much.

What is not yet known is whether the 2024 suicide figure marks a turn or a continuation, since the Commission's series rests on a small number of annual points. Nor is it known when the ABS will publish life tables for a reference period after 2022, which is the only way the 2031 life expectancy target can be honestly tracked. No government has published a costed response to the four worsening targets since the compilation was released.