Investment in caring for country may help close the gaps in education, employment and health

Health services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are expensive. The National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation reported that government Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and hospital service expenditure per person in 2010–11 was $8190 nationally, and as high as $16 110 in the Northern Territory, compared with $4054 per non-Indigenous person.1 Increasing expenditure on health services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is not closing the gap in health outcomes at the rate to which governments have committed