Achieving the desired outcomes of the Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord within an acceptable timeframe will be challenging.
They all require effective planning and delivery and improved service levels by every infrastructure sector, in particular:
Roads: Unreliable road access restricts the access of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to services and outside markets, reinforcing disadvantage.
Telecommunications: While services to remote parts of Northern Australia have improved substantially over the past decade, poor reliability and service quality in key locations still impede businesses and service providers. The situation is becoming more acute as First Nations businesses embrace e-commerce and cloud-based services, and as health and education services are increasingly delivered remotely.
Transport: While governments across Northern Australia are working to improve physical connectivity for remote communities, the task remains large and expensive, as described in the Transport chapter.
Signed in 2019, the Barkly Regional Deal between the Australian and Northern Territory Governments is a step forward. It includes infrastructure investment to improve living conditions in Tennant Creek and surrounding communities.
However, at current rates of infrastructure investment across Northern Australia, it will be many years before major improvements result in better social and economic outcomes for a majority of remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Current infrastructure funding and financing instruments do not reflect the needs and circumstances of these communities, and local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations may not have the capacity to participate in land use and infrastructure planning.
In addition, unique governance arrangements related to tenure, such as native title and statutory land regimes, require different approaches to infrastructure planning and development. The Australian
Government is currently investigating options for enabling greater economic activity by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities on native title land through leasehold arrangements.