Despite massive and continuing government public expenditures, there is little evidence that Australia is succeeding in its avowed goal of 'closing the gap' between the life experiences of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Under the rubric of closing the gap, Australian governments have tightened their grip on Indigenous peoples - the Northern Territory intervention being the most explicit manifestation of government's inability or unwillingness to allow Aboriginal people to determine their own futures.

Indigenous Australians now formally own 1.7 million square kilometres of land, or nearly a quarter of the continent.  Between what they own outright, and land over which they have some significant management control, Indigenous people have specific stewardship and economic interests in almost 50 per cent of the country north of the 26^th parallel.

This generational transfer of assets back into Indigenous control would seem to offer the potential to dramatically improve livelihood opportunities and social outcomes for the most marginalised populations in Australia.

Yet growing development pressures - particularly in remote central and northern Australia - are narrowing the options available to Indigenous communities at precisely the same time as they appear to be gaining more control over their country. There is a major disparity between the magnitude of land management responsibilities now vested with Indigenous communities across the north, and the resources and expertise available to perform this critical role.

Without the capacity and the tools to articulate a resilient future on country, Indigenous communities are forced into a reactive, default position of negotiating unenforceable 'community benefit agreements' - often developed through biased consultation processes, and in some cases under threat of expropriation - that permit industrial developments on their lands. These promised benefits seldom materialise, and in any event should be available to Indigenous Australians as a right of citizenship, not in exchange for access to traditional lands.

In the meantime, government does a mostly woeful job of even the most basic service delivery to Indigenous communities, yet its expenditures in this area crowd out market capital that could be invested in much better outcomes for Indigenous people, including in ways for them to capitalise on the lands now under their putative control.

A resilient future for Australia's Indigenous people will not come about through more intervention and industrial expansion, or from pursuing narrowly defined targets that are mostly designed to assimilate Indigenous people at the expense of their culture and country. Indigenous people need to be given the time and space - and the tools - to articulate a future of their own design. Emerging developments in information democracy and social finance can offer meaningful assistance in replacing the suffering of politics, to paraphrase Peter Sutton, with a resilient future for Indigenous Australians. 

Ian Gill is the founding CEO of Ecotrust Australia.