00:02Six-month-old Makaide is growing quickly.
00:05Bro, you've put on weight since last Wednesday.
00:08He was born over two and a half kilos, the benchmark for a healthy life.
00:14Makaide is being checked at Waminda, an Aboriginal health organisation
00:18that places an emphasis on birthing on country.
00:21His mum works there too.
00:22It's embedded in our culture, birthing our babies on country, naturally,
00:27and just like a place of belonging for us.
00:32But not all babies come into the world like Makaide.
00:35The gap in birth weight between Indigenous and non-Indigenous babies
00:39has not improved since 2017.
00:42It's like starting a race and you're behind the start line.
00:46So babies are small, they're sick, they're susceptible to illness.
00:49The government recently awarded $44 million
00:52for birthing on country programs, including Waminda.
00:55We need to reconfigure the system that it's connected,
00:59that it's mum and bub centred, but also it's resourced appropriately.
01:04Birth weight and life expectancy are two of the 19 closing the gap targets
01:09that are not on track to be met.
01:11Data shows only four are on target, while four continue to go backwards,
01:15with suicide and adult imprisonment rates worsening.
01:19We're asking governments to think about the urgency of these
01:22and certainly thinking about different solutions working with community.
01:26The government says the data reinforces the need to work together,
01:29while the opposition says it should be a wake-up call.
01:32The ultimate goal? A generation healthy and thriving.
01:36A generation healthy and productive.
01:37And while況 in the last stoke,
01:37we're going to get behind.
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