Writing in 1971 on the cusp of change from the assimilationist years of welfare administration to the era of Indigenous self-management, Charles Rowley (1971a: 362–4) described the myriad mission and government settlements across remote Australia as instrumental in frustrating urbanisation. In his view, these settlements functioned as ‘holding institutions’ serving to prevent the inevitable migration of Aboriginal people to towns and cities (Rowley 1971b: 84). With the benefit of more than 30 years hindsight, during which time Indigenous people have been free from the institutional and legislative shackles that governed their place of residence, Rowley’s proposition is only partially upheld. While migration from the bush to towns and cities has undoubtedly occurred, the overall flow of migration to and from cities has been more or less balanced since the 1970s (Gray 1989; Taylor 2003). Consequently, much of the substantial growth in urban Indigenous population that has been observed in recent decades simply reflects an increase in the enumeration of urban-based Indigenous people. That being so, the more striking and profound observation concerning Indigenous population distribution of the past 30 years (precisely because it does run counter to expectations such as those expressed by Rowley) concerns the growth in size of remote Aboriginal towns alongside the increased dispersion of Aboriginal population to outstations on Aboriginal lands. In effect, there is considerable continuity of non-urban residence despite rising urbanisation (Taylor & Bell 2004).

Some contemporary opinion would lament this continuity of Indigenous rural settlement seeking the means to socially engineer migration to urban areas (Reeves 1998; see also K. Windschuttle, ‘Assimilation already a reality’, The Australian, 1 March 2004). It is interesting to compare such views with the current activities of Federal, State, and Territory governments which appear increasingly prepared to respond to the reality of a growing Indigenous population in remote areas by seeking ways to enhance life chances and life quality in situ. Such efforts are in line with a growing search for more efficient regionalism in Indigenous community governance (Sanders 2004; Smith 2004). This study takes its cue from these policy directions. It addresses the issue of how and whether current social and economic conditions in remote regions can be quantified for the purpose of establishing a baseline against which the impacts of policies designed to improve them might be subsequently measured. Two recent policy initiatives (one from the Council of Australian Governments [COAG], and one from the Northern Territory Government) raise the need for such a question.

As part of its unfolding response to the report of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, COAG agreed in April 2002 to identify up to 10 communities or regions across Australia to serve as trial sites for Indigenous Communities Coordination Pilot (ICCP) projects aimed at effecting whole-of-government cooperative approaches to service delivery with the aim of enhancing social and economic outcomes. These were to be based on a concept of ‘shared responsibility’ between the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments, and communities with the idea of streamlining government processes and supporting some restoration to local Indigenous populations of responsibility for, and control over, decision-making regarding service delivery and general planning for social and economic development.

Because of long-standing discussions between the Northern Territory government and the population of the Wadeye region to the south-west of Darwin around the issue of restoring a more customary mode of regional governance (Thamarrurr), the Wadeye community accepted a proposal to become one of these trial sites. Accordingly, the newly designated Thamarrurr Regional Council entered into a Shared Responsibility Agreement with the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments in June 2003. The first stated aim of this agreement was to establish partnerships and share responsibility for achieving measurable and sustainable improvements for people living in the region. The select emphasis above is to highlight the fundamental role that measurement of improvement was set to play in establishing the efficacy or otherwise of the trial. This has further import as it is also a stated requirement of the regional planning goals set out in the Northern Territory Government’s Stronger Regions Policy which was announced later in the same year (Northern Territory Government 2003c; Smith 2004) with the ultimate goal of establishing up to 20 new regional authorities across the Territory.

Bureaucratic processes established under both of these policy initiatives will serve to identify mutually determined social, economic, and service delivery outcomes, together with the means to achieve them and assumed responsibilities. Significantly, these are to be codified in a negotiated regional development plan, and then subjected to a regular process of evaluation and monitoring against measurable outcomes. Clearly, for the latter to occur, it is necessary at the outset to establish baseline indicators of social and economic conditions against which any subsequent change can be calibrated. This is what the present study seeks to provide for the Thamarrurr Regional Council area. Such a baseline also generates essential input to the identification of priority development issues and assists in the building of capacity for regional governance by enhancing the flow of information and the degree of local knowledge of social and economic circumstances.

Viewed historically, from a Northern Territory perspective, these policy developments signal a conscious effort to move away from a silo mode of planning and development focused on specific sectors such as Asian trade, growth of the Darwin urban area, pastoral management, the mining sector, and the separate servicing of Aboriginal communities, towards an approach which views Territory development as an integrated whole with the strengths and weaknesses of one region (and community) impacting on all others. It is also an equity and efficiency based model, with needs assessment, equalisation of resource allocation, and measured outcomes as the key drivers. For reasons of spatial distribution and historical exclusion, the implications of the Stronger Regions policy, and the lessons that might emerge from the ICCP Thamarrurr trial, will impact most on the estimated 72 per cent of Aboriginal residents of the Northern Territory who have residential ties to Aboriginal lands (Taylor 2003). It is they who now occupy most of the land area outside of the Territory’s urban areas, and it is they who to date have been kept largely outside of formal Territory planning processes.

Partly for this latter reason, the extent to which data of sufficient quantity and quality might exist for the purposes of establishing meaningful baseline profiles for customised areas such as the Thamarrurr region is a moot point. Some indication is available from previous attempts at regional profiling which have been reasonably successful in producing a range of relevant social indicators, though with variability depending on the geographic scale of analysis and on the strength of agency commitment and capacity to generate data from administrative collections (Taylor 1999, 2004; Taylor, Bern & Senior 2000; Taylor & Westbury 2000). What is clear from these efforts, though, is that standard small area statistics as available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in the form of Indigenous community profiles provide only a starting point. Not only do these require ‘ground-truthing’ in terms of cultural match (Morphy 2002), they are also restricted in scope (and sometimes coverage) and raise the need for additional data to be compiled from alternative sources.

Of course, in regard to the ICCP trials and to the Stronger Regions policy, the measurement of outcomes and provision of associated data is a partnership responsibility involving whole-of-government agencies way beyond the ABS alone. Indeed, compared to previous ad hoc attempts at constructing regional profiles, this notion that all partners to regional agreements have some responsibility to inform the process with available data is innovative. Thus, as the officially sanctioned exercise charged with marshalling baseline information for the Thamarrurr ICCP trial, this study serves as a unique test of the capacity of ICCP partners to produce such data. First, it demonstrates what is currently possible at the regional level. Second, it raises the need for awareness of regional social and economic conditions as an essential input to the identification of priority planning issues. Finally, it outlines key policy implications for regional planning development in the Northern Territory. In particular, with the use of regional population projections, it seeks to shift the emphasis in government and community thinking from one of responding reactively to historic needs, to a more proactive approach based on anticipation of future requirements.