Around 20 per cent of Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population live in remote or discrete communities. Despite large expenditures by all governments, outcomes and opportunities in communities remain behind the rest of the state.

The Queensland Government asked the Commission to examine how the resources devoted to service delivery in remote and discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island communities can be best used to meet the needs of those communities.

We found that the system requires fundamental reform to work for communities and for government. To make material progress, the service delivery system needs change to provide the right incentives and better focus on economic and community development.

This final report sets out a reform proposal to enable the Queensland Government and communities to achieve real, long lasting and sustainable change. It includes a substantial and ambitious package of reforms—structural, service delivery and economic—to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to develop ways to improve outcomes for themselves. This will also require effective implementation to establish and embed this new approach.