Darryl Wright has worked to improve the health of his community for decades.
The chief executive of Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation in Airds, in Sydney's south-west, has brought the organisation out of financial ruin and turned it into a critical health service.
Tharawal sees about 5,000 patients every year, mostly Indigenous, providing specialists in almost every field including dental, childcare, social and emotional wellbeing.
Seventy-year-old Mr Wright, a Dunghutti man from NSW's Mid-North Coast, also wants to build aged care facilities onsite and transform two old trains into a barista-training cafe for young people.
"We got it covered from the day you're born until the day you die," he said.
Earlier this month, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet acknowledged successive governments had failed to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Mr Perrottet has promised to fly the Aboriginal flag permanently on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
He also wants Goat Island remediated and handed back to the local Indigenous community, and plans to have a new Aboriginal cultural space in the CBD.
In 2020, all governments committed to 17 new Closing the Gap targets to improve the lives of Indigenous people, after the previous scheme failed.
Its report card showed just three of the new targets were on track to being met.
For NSW, its implementation plan, developed with the Coalition of Aboriginal Peak Organisations, showed most of its 17 targets were not on track to being met. Those targets include reducing incarceration, and increasing school attendance and life expectancy.
Mr Perrottet has vowed to commit his entire Cabinet to have an obligation to close the gap in their respective portfolios under a new section of their ministerial charter.
"Part of that change is empowering all ministers to have buy-in to that responsibility," he said.
"I want all ministers to be Indigenous Affairs in their own right."
He plans on visiting Indigenous communities across the state in the coming months, after a recent visit to Coonamble in the state's west.
Community leaders welcome the announcement but say it needs to be followed up with concrete support.
Tharawal is largely government-supported, its high immunisation rates and regular health checks demonstrate how community-led initiatives work.
But Mr Wright said it was critical those in power build closer relationships with Aboriginal communities to see improvement.
"It'd be great for the Premier to come and to see what we actually do," he said.
"It's good to talk on television, and promote that sort of stuff but nothing further happens."
It is a sentiment shared by Gamilaroi and Yuin woman Julie Williams.
She's lived in the Western Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt most of her life.
Her work with Just Reinvest NSW — which works with communities to reduce Indigenous imprisonment — is largely funded by philanthropists.
The community-led initiative, which also operates in the regional towns of Moree and Bourke, provides a better understanding of why young people find themselves behind bars.
"I have the lived experience with my own struggles, with my own daughter not being able to find that appropriate service for a long length of time," Ms Williams said.
"I think with their lived experience they know what's not working."
In NSW, more than 40 per cent of young people in prison are Indigenous, according to the Department of Communities and Justice.
Ms Williams said early intervention and support for families is needed to help tackle high incarceration rates.
She's working with police to try and repair relations.
"It's always not been a good relationship out here but [we're trying] to make it a better one."
But she said government simply meeting with community would go a long way.
"It's having those yarns with community and other young people – the ones with the lived experience – and they tell you what's not working, they would tell what would work better," she said.
"I think they'll learn that community knows what the solutions are, it's about them coming out here and listening."
June Riemer said incarceration rates are particularly high because many Indigenous people in prison across the state live with a disability, mostly undiagnosed.
The Gumbaynggirr and Dunghutti woman is the deputy chief executive of the First Peoples Disability Network (FPDN) created in 2010 to advocate on behalf of Indigenous people living with disability.
"It's not just a wheelchair, we're talking psychosocial disability, autism, the whole range," Ms Riemer said.
"But in regard to our mob, the intergenerational trauma that our mob have suffered for many years and many generations now impacts on all our families and impacts on their health."
Nationally, FPDN says about 45 per cent of Indigenous people live with disability.
There is no specific data on the number of Indigenous people living with disability in Australian prisons, but UNSW criminologist Eileen Baldry suggests it could be as high as 60 per cent.
Ms Riemer said the network's first 10 years went without government support and most of its programs are unfunded. She said projects need long-term funding.
"A lot of our community, they do live in poverty because they're all supporting each other," she said.
"So what happens with a person with disability, they never really get the educational outcomes to allow them to have a better life."
She said if the Premier is true to his words he needs to "get out and live on country and listen, and really hear".
"People know what needs to be done in community, they've been doing this work a long time – generally free," she said.
"Unless you do that whole of person, whole of community support and understanding what the needs are of the community you won't change the system."
