The State Government and many Aboriginal leaders believe that success comes from living in a safe and healthy environment, having access to good educational and employment opportunities, and being able to take up and excel in those opportunities.

This belief generates the five principles that underpin regional services reform:

1. Every child lives in a safe environment that nurtures early childhood development.
2. Every child receives an education to equip them to make life choices.
3. All adults can access training and employment or other purposeful occupation.
4. Aboriginal people can maintain links to country, culture and kin.
5. Aboriginal people living remotely have certainty about the State Government’s framework for investing in remote communities.

A long-term outcome of reform is high-functioning regional networks based around towns. Towns have the scale to support better infrastructure, services and governance. Reform is intended to ensure that towns can offer families more educational and economic opportunities, access to quality services, and appropriate accommodation for residents and for those who orbit in and out from across the region to access opportunities and services.

Within those networks, larger remote communities play a key role in ensuring young people can develop and have real choices about their future, as it is in those communities that the greatest numbers of remote residents live, and in which there are schools and health clinics.

On this basis, the State Government will:

• focus its efforts and investment on regional locations that have significant educational and employment opportunities, increasing the likelihood of better outcomes
• progressively work to ensure minimum standards for basic services in larger remote Aboriginal communities
• improve government-funded services in the regions to meet the needs and aspirations of communities, families and children, and support families to succeed
• support Aboriginal families to build the capability of their children wherever they live
• encourage and enable Aboriginal families to move to take up education and employment opportunities if there are none available where they live, while retaining the ability to connect to country, culture and kin
• maximise the economic opportunities that exist for Aboriginal families in the regions, including through public sector jobs and jobs via public sector contracting and procurement.

In concentrating on towns and larger communities, the State Government expects to support fewer communities over time, particularly as migration away from small outstations continues. However, the State Government will not prevent Aboriginal people from living remotely or continuing to access country for cultural purposes.

In taking this approach, the State Government recognises the need for collaboration with Aboriginal communities, leaders and families, the Commonwealth Government, local governments, and service providers. Success will require partnerships in which all partners play their roles, and interact with each other, in a way that is better than how they do things now.

Collaboration must be based on mutual respect, responsibility and accountability, recognising that there are actions only families can take, actions only government can take, and areas in which families and government must work together.

The State Government’s contribution to this collaborative effort can be divided into three areas, which form the next three sections of the roadmap:

1. improved living conditions that enable families to prosper and don’t hold them back
2. supporting families to build their skills, and overcome any barriers to doing so, through improved service design and delivery
3. education, employment and housing opportunities, and support for families to take them up.

Underpinning each area is recognition of the need to ensure Aboriginal people can maintain connection to country, culture and kin.

Regional services reform has an initial focus on the Pilbara and Kimberley, and will apply there first. Over time, reform will be extended to other regions and tailored to the circumstances of those regions. The State Government expects to extend regional services reform to the Goldfields during 2017–18.

The Pilbara and Kimberley were selected as the initial focus for reform as:

• Aboriginal people comprise a significant proportion of the total regional populations
• most of the remote Aboriginal communities and town-based reserves are in these regions
• some communities in these regions have expressed a strong interest in positive change.