A crisis in managing remote Australia's fragile ecosystems due to a lack of any integrated national strategy.

Abandoned outback a 'failed state' | The Australian

Victoria Laurie | September 13, 2008

REMOTE Australia is a failed state that is becoming a threat to national security and vulnerable to possible invasion because of government inaction and ineptitude, a major report to be released next week has found.

As the global power base shifts to India, China and Southeast Asia, Australians are retreating to the southeast and southwest corners of the country, leaving sparsely populated vast tracts of land to their north vulnerable to a "perfect storm" of social, economic and ecological crises.

In a wide-ranging critique that applies to 85 per cent of the continent's landmass, 28 prominent Australians have warned the nation's vast income-generating resource zones could end up being "contested", as crumbling infrastructure and declining populations turn remote Australia into a largely unsettled wilderness.

They criticise an "expeditionary" attitude in which transient workers fly in to Australia's arid and tropical regions, extracting wealth that is not reinvested in local communities already crippled by lack of resources and poor governance.

Remote Focus: Revitalising Remote Australia, to be released on Monday, describes the coming crises arising out of the failure of all levels of government to deliver basic services and halt the flight of non-indigenous people to more settled areas.

It calls for a national commitment to urgently address:

* Ineffective and erratic service delivery throughout remote Australia.

* The issue of "white flight", in which trained and educated white Australians are abandoning remote parts of the country due to social tensions and lack of basic services.

* The drift of a rapidly expanding indigenous population into remote towns, where they remain outside the mainstream economy but rely increasingly on scant welfare services.

* A crisis in managing remote Australia's fragile ecosystems due to a lack of any integrated national strategy.

The paper, to be released by Northern Territory-based think tank Desert Knowledge Australia and described as a national search for ideas and options for remote Australia, was drawn up by politicians, business figures, remote area consultants and former advisers to Liberal and Labor governments.

They include Desert Knowledge chairman and former Reconciliation Australia head Fred Chaney, former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold, former West Australian governor and indigenous affairs adviser to the Carpenter government John Sanderson, West Australian under-treasurer Tim Marney and former ATSIC chief executive Bill Gray.

Mr Chaney said the crisis in remote indigenous communities was a symptom of much wider governance problems affecting all people in remote Australia.

"You wouldn't have needed a Northern Territory intervention if it was working properly," Mr Chaney said.

"You have to ask whether the structures are appropriate. It's not a blame game. We're asking for a national understanding that the bulk of the Australian mainland is not governed effectively. If we agree on that, what do we need to do about it?"

According to the report, "it could be argued that our tenure of remote Australia under the present regime is largely expeditionary (fly-in, fly-out or relatively short-term residence) in nature, which means that the vast resource zones could end up being contested, by virtue of the land being considered 'unsettled'."

Lieutenant General Sanderson, a former army chief, said that did not necessarily mean military invasion, but greater movements of people and foreign capital into remote Australia.

National security made it imperative to maintain infrastructure and people in the northern regions.

"Nature abhors a vacuum and so much of it is empty," General Sanderson said.

The document has been sent to all governments and Opposition leaders.