Australia's elected Indigenous leaders have called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to intervene to save remote indigenous communities from closure.
The elected representative body for Indigenous people, the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, has written to Mr Abbott to urge him to take the issue to the next Council of Australian Governments meeting of federal, state and territory leaders.
The call follows West Australian Premier Colin Barnett's warning earlier this month that the state would not be able to afford to provide services to as many as 150 "unviable" indigenous communities in his state.
Western Australia has accepted a one-off payment of $90 million from the Abbott Government to take responsibility for the delivery of municipal and essential services such as power, water and rubbish collection to its indigenous communities.
South Australia's Labor administration, which rejected a Commonwealth offer of $10 million to take over basic service delivery to its communities, has warned 4000 indigenous people in 60 locations stand to lose services when the Commonwealth ceases funding for these services next July.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion argues that the delivery of such services is a state and local government responsibility, which the former Labor federal government had also sought to transfer to states.
Senator Scullion said any community closures were a matter for the states, adding that Western Australia had been discussing the closure of communities with the Commonwealth for several years, long before it accepted responsibility for essential service delivery.
In their letter to the Prime Minister, Congress co-chairs Kirstie Parker and Les Malezer said Western Australia was effectively threatening to discriminate against Aboriginal people by denying them services which were provided to non-indigenous residents.
The national government held ultimate responsibility for protecting the rights of Indigenous people, the letter said.
Ms Parker said the the threats of closure had "opened a flood gate of concern amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples."
Across the country, families in "hundreds" of communities could be forced to move away from their traditional lands and into regional centres, Ms Parker said.
"While jurisdictions quibble about who is responsible for what, our peoples are vulnerable, under threat and in distress," she said.
Ms Parker said the fate of these communities could not be left "to the whims of different jurisdictions," and the Commonwealth, states and territories needed to work together to develop a long-term solution to address remote infrastructure and services.
Responding to Ms Parker's comments, Senator Scullion said it was "unfortunate that Congress is adding to the confusion," noting that no states had announced decisions to cease services to remote communities.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, said what was needed was a national conversation about remote communities, which included indigenous people and which considered the value to the nation of people living in remote areas.
He said state governments needed to understand that they received Commonwealth funding to provide services to all of their citizens, including their Indigenous people.
He said in a state as vast and sparsely populated as Western Australia, all communities were subsidised "to one extent or another."
"I challenge the WA government to tell me how many shires outside of the Perth metropolitan area are viable – I guarantee you there's not many," he said.
He said he had some sympathy for Premier Barnett's concerns about social problems such as violence, neglect and abuse in some remote communities, but said governments needed to work with Indigenous people to find solutions to these problems, rather than simply "relocating dysfunction."
