Only three of the seven key targets to reducing the disadvantage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are on track to be met, a decade after the annual Closing the Gap report was first introduced.
This is a slight improvement on 2016, when the only measure on track was the target to halve the gap in year 12 attainment by 2020.
This year's report card shows halving the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five by 2018, and the goal of getting 95% of all Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025, are now back on track.
The remaining four targets – including closing the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation – look unlikely to be met. Three of those four targets – closing the gap in school attendance and halving the unemployment, school reading and numeracy gaps – are due to run out at the end of this year without ever being met.
This year's report card show progress to improve disadvantage varies widely across the country.
New South Wales is the one state meeting the employment benchmark, and only Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory hit reading and numeracy goals.
All states except the Northern Territory are on track to achieve the early childhood targets, and only South Australia, Western Australia, the NT and the ACT met the numbers for year 12 attainment.
Figures show Indigenous child mortality has dropped by 33% between 1998 and 2015, with overall mortality down 15% in the same period, and fewer Indigenous people are dying from respiratory and kidney disease.
Indigenous health minister Ken Wyatt thinks there is still a long way to go, particularly in terms of life expectancy, but says this is the most promising report card since 2011.
"A couple of simple things have turned it around," he told the ABC. "One is our failure last year, and the other is the work being done on the ground by organisations."
Wyatt rejected suggestions the original targets were too ambitious.
"If you don't set ambitious targets, you never strive to achieve them; the problem with Aboriginal affairs is we've always gone for the lowest common denominator," he said.
"When they signed it [Closing the Gap strategy] it was a signalling of intent to achieve the highest possible benchmark, even if it meant it was going to be challenging."
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd said his goal in 2008 was to set hard targets because "overcoming 210 years of disadvantage is a bloody hard thing".
"And so when people say, 'They are too hard, we're not on track to meet them all,' I say, 'Well, you know, so what?',' Rudd told Sky News on Monday.
"The key thing is, based on what I see in the press reporting today is that, of the seven targets we set, we are on track to realise three of the seven," he said. "But in all of them, what you see is either some improvement, significant improvement, or a lot of improvement if not full realisation of the target.
"So I say today, let's not bash the targets, let's enhance the targets. But we should not water them down and this will require consistency of political commitment, of policy effort and of funding support."
With three targets set to expire, the government plans to "refresh" its Closing the Gap strategy and decide whether targets need to be reworked.
"What I like about the refresh is it gives us a chance to look at the targets, are they the right targets or do we define them, like child mortality, in a slightly different way?" Wyatt said.
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull says the economy is key to closing the gap, and is expected to announce a range of new measures to "turbocharge" the Indigenous business sector when he delivers the Closing the Gap report in parliament on Monday.
The new measures will be in addition to the government's $1 billion Indigenous procurement policy that directs public tenders to Indigenous-owned businesses.
Tuesday marks 10 years since the Rudd government apologised to the Stolen Generation. Opposition leader Bill Shorten has used the anniversary to pledge a $9 million compensation fund over three years for Stolen Generation survivors in the NT and ACT if Labor wins the next election.
Survivors would be offered payments of $75,000 to resolve "unfinished business", including $7,000 for a one-off payment for funeral costs. Other states and territories, bar Victoria, have similar compensation schemes.