ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the accumulation of land transfers to indigenous title has served to create a new geography of rural and regional Australia and how this, in turn, has stimulated debate about the viability and future direction of indigenous modes of rural occupance. A spatial conundrum has therefore developed in indigenous regional development, land rights bestow a legitimate interest in residence away from the mainstream economy and institutions. The task of generating social indicators for the indigenous estate awaits the matching of census and administrative data with land tenure boundaries. Policy has emphasised the pursuit of market engagement with programs introduced to enhance labour mobility, increase home ownership, enact welfare to work reform, and encourage more individualised, as opposed to communal, articulation with government services. Interestingly, a change of government in the Northern Territory in 2012 reflected the voting patterns of constituencies on the indigenous estate who demanded devolution of local government responsibilities and a return to localism.
