Anger over the gang rape of a 10-year-old aboriginal girl has prompted Australia?s new Labor government to make indigenous welfare the focus of a summit of national and state leaders this week.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has promised to close a 17-year average lifespan gap between Aborigines and other Australians, said yesterday indigenous equality would take precedence at Thursday?s summit in Melbourne. ?We believe these are critical areas of great interest and relevance to Australian families,? Rudd told reporters after closed-door talks with senior cabinet members in Canberra.

Rudd?s centre-left government has been under pressure to solve a long-running crisis in indigenous welfare, highlighted last week by the gang rape of a young girl in an aboriginal community on Cape York, the country?s northern tip.

Aborigines are Australia?s most disadvantaged group with many living in third-world conditions in isolated outback settlements. Just 18,000 live in Cape York, an area the size of Germany.

The summit meeting between Labor leaders, now in control across the country since Rudd?s election victory over veteran conservative leader John Howard last month, is expected to lay the ground for coordinated action to improve aboriginal welfare. It will be the first between Rudd and state leaders.

A judge sparked public outrage last week when she found a 10-year-old girl ?probably agreed? to have sex with nine males in the township of Aurukun in 2006, declining jail terms for the men who pleaded guilty to the crime.

Rudd met with aboriginal leaders over the weekend, but ruled out widening a paramilitary-style intervention by troops and police in the outback Northern Territory to stamp out rampant child sexual abuse and alcoholism in indigenous townships.

Aboriginal elders yesterday said as part of Rudd?s drive for racial reconciliation, a planned apology in parliament for past injustices suffered by Aborigines since European settlement should use the words ?evil? and ?cruel? in its text.