The Howard government's review did not recommend abolishing ATSIC

Programmes will be mainstreamed but arrangements will be established to ensure that there is a major policy role for the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

This will not result in less money for Indigenous affairs. It will in fact result in more resources being focused on challenging areas of Indigenous need.

We will raise the whole issue of service delivery and coordination at a grassroots level at the next COAG meeting.

The COAG trials in this area have been encouraging and have taught us a number of lessons, and I look forward to close cooperation with the states.

This is an area where surely we can put aside political differences.

The regional councils will have a role in the interim as we establish different mechanisms at a local level through consultation with communities and with local government and with state governments.

But as part of the announcement and as part of the legislation, they will disappear by the 30th of June 2005.

That, of course, does not in any way preclude processes whereby Indigenous people themselves will in different areas, according to their own priorities, elect bodies and people to represent them, and the government will in the course of consulting different sections of the community, be very keen to consult any bodies that may emerge from that process.

We have had reservations, and I've expressed them on a number of occasions on behalf of the government, about the operation of ATSIC.

We wanted however to allow the Collins, Hannaford, Huggins' examination to go forward and to give ourselves appropriate and adequate time to examine it.

But as a result of it, we've come to a very firm conclusion that ATSIC should be abolished and that it should not be replaced, and that programmes should be mainstreamed and that we should renew our commitment to the challenges of improving outcomes for Indigenous people in so many of those key areas.

The casual reader could be forgiven for thinking that this was a well considered response to recommendations flowing from the government-initiated and appointed review of ATSIC which, incidentally, cost the Commission $1 million.