Ian Thorpe: Close the Gap speech

Ian Thorpe has launched an attack on indigenous disadvantage, delivering an emotive speech in London in which he described Aboriginal living conditions as Australia's "dirty little secret".

He told an international audience that included South Africa's Desmond Tutu and former British prime minister Tony Blair that Aboriginal people had been neglected and patronised.

Taking aim at the Northern Territory intervention, he said it was unlikely to provide any lasting benefit "because it tries to push and punish them, to take over their lives, rather than work with them".

"Australia's grim record on health care for indigenous people is by far the worst of any developed nation," the Olympic swimmer said in the speech on July 9, at a summit on sport-led social change.

"Developed? How can a country be developed when it leaves so many of its children behind? Australia has not provided its citizens with an equal opportunity for primary health care, education, housing, employment, let alone recognition and a life of dignity."

Thorpe, who with Olympic athlete Cathy Freeman is the face of a campaign to "close the gap" in Aboriginal health, said he was disgusted to think he once believed sufficient money was directed at Aborigines who were suffering from "gross neglect".

"Like many people in Australia, I was completely unaware of the huge gap in health and education outcomes, let alone the differences of life expectancy," he said. "I, as many had, made an assumption; Australia is a rich country, don't we throw a lot of money at that problem? It disgusts me to speak those words now, but that was what I thought."

He said despite witnessing poverty overseas, he found disadvantage most confronting in Aboriginal communities where 93 per cent of people were illiterate and 80 per cent of children had hearing impairments from infections neglected from infancy, where malnourished mothers gave birth to underweight babies and diabetes affected one in two adults.

He said a commitment to the first Australians was "well within the means of my country, and this is what I find inexcusable. I am talking about an issue with a solution. For Australia to heal its wounds that have been weeping for 200 years we must not ignore the issue, we must start the healing."