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Eighteen years ago, the year Racheal Dungay and Trevor Dates’s eldest daughter, Skye, was born, the Rudd government pledged to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation.

That goal is not on track. According to the latest data on the federal Closing the Gap goals, released this month, First Nations males born in 2020-2022 are expected to live up to 71.9 years and females up to 75.6 years – a gap of 8.8 years and 8.1 years respectively from non-Indigenous children born at the same time.

Of the 17 targets, just four are on track to be met.

But the Dungay-Dates family are determined to see their four children thrive.

“I want them to think big, and believe in their dreams,” Dungay says. “Anything you want you can do it, because in this life nothing is going to get handed to you.”

Skye’s dream is to become a midwife.

“I always wanted to be one, I just love babies and kids and everything,” Skye says. She hopes to begin her studies later this year.

Elder brother Worimi wants to joint the police force. He plans to apply to the police academy after completing a Tafe program for Aboriginal young people seeking a pathway on to the force, and hopes to eventually join the elite tactical response unit.

“I was doing the [Tafe course] in Sydney, at Redfern, but I got really homesick so I came home to do the one near Newcastle to be near family, and I completed that despite being mad behind [on] my assessments,” he says.

“I’ve always grew up wanting to be a leader … and a role model for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal kids too. My mum was raising me to be a leader, be a role model and now my little brother wants to join the police.”

Skye and Worimi’s plans will make them among the 47% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to have completed a tertiary qualification (an improvement on 2016 levels but not on track for a target of 70% by 2031) and 58% of Indigenous young people (again an improvement but not on track for 67% by 2031) in employment, education or training.

It’s a significant change within Dungay and Dates’ lifetimes, they say.

Dates wasn’t able to finish high school, but encourages his children to take advantage of all opportunities. “Life’s too short. At the end of the day – you got to go and make something of yourself because you don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring,” he says.

Speaking from their home on the New South Wales Central Coast, the couple have worked hard to ground their children in love and security. After starting their family in their late teens, they say they were determined to build the stability they craved in their own childhoods.

Dungay says the early years were “a struggle” but once Worimi was born, things had to change. “It was a real wakeup call,” she says. “It’s no longer about me, it was about my kids and that comes with a lot of weight. As a mum, my kids give me purpose. They are my strength.”

Dates’s mother was a member of the Stolen Generations and watched the National Apology in 2008, the speech that was the launchpad for the Closing the Gap policy.

They’ve since seen the local school become a more culturally safe learning environment, creating a space for Aboriginal students to study and listen to music.

“There’s been a lot of massive, massive change. Many years ago, there was none of that,” Dates says.

Their own work has contributed. Dungay established the Ngarra Aboriginal Corporation after a career in the community and mental health sector, to help support families in crisis in a culturally responsive, trauma-informed way.

“I want to do something that’s going to be very different and unique,” she says. “A lot of state and federal government look at closing the gap but for me, I wanted to fill the gap.”

Dates credits Dungay as the driving force behind Ngarra and says its programs, which range from perpetrator-focused domestic violence reduction to alcohol and drug recovery to employment support, are already having an impact.

“The men love it, some of them completed the program and are now in full-time work,” he says.

Close the Gap: ‘the people’s movement’

The statistics in four target areas – rates of juvenile detention, removal through child protection, adult incarceration, and deaths due to suicide – are worsening, according to an update on Closing the Gap targets provided by the Productivity Commission this month. The suicide rate in 2024 was the highest since 2016, the baseline year, the report said.

The Coalition of Peaks, the steering committee tasked with co-designing the targets, has called for greater investment in the Aboriginal community-controlled sector to improve these outcomes.

Investment in Aboriginal-controlled and led solutions was always the aim of the policy, says former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner Tom Calma.

Calma’s 2006 report, handed to the Howard government, was the basis for the policy. It showed that First Nations people died 17 years younger than non-Indigenous people.

“In other countries, like New Zealand, Canada and the US, it was only six to seven years with their First Peoples and the rest of the population,” the Kungarakan and Iwaidja man says.

After more than a decade of conservative leadership, when Calma says there was little desire for change, the 2007 federal election campaign was an opportunity to lobby for a reckoning. Indigenous and non-Indigenous community leaders, organisations and public figures joined forces, culminating in more than 40,000 Australians sending letters to their politicians and local government, demanding a plan to fix the life expectancy gap.

“Close the Gap is the people’s movement … Closing the Gap was the government’s response which then led into the national agreement.”

The Close the Gap campaign maintains an annual “shadow report”, which independently tracks progress against the targets and consistently raises concerns about the pace of change and progress. It has calling for structural change to reshape the relationships between governments and First Nations people, grounded in human rights, shared power and self-determination.

“You’ve got to be able to set targets that are realistic and achievable, but you have to monitor and evaluate them and progressively realise advancement,” he says. “That’s what we were never doing. It’s just a bit of a scattergun approach.”

The Dungay-Dates family aren’t waiting for governments to catch up – they are determined to push ahead for their community and their children to achieve their best future.

“We were born to fight every day, being First Nations people,” says Dates. “You still fight [even] with all the opportunities, but it’s come a long way.”