In intent, if not yet in effect, [recent shifts in Commonwealth Government policy] amount to a counter-revolutionary program, aiming to roll back the policy architecture put in place to guide the growth of remote communities a generation ago. This book constitutes, in tightly argued form, that counter-revolutionrs"s late-coming manifesto. Sometimes new eyes are best and Helen Hughes, a development economist of international distinction, turns her unsentimental gaze on remote Australia with startling effect. She makes mincemeat of the incongruities in existing arrangements and chronicles the tragedy of good intentions that has produced todayrs"s pattern of corruption and maladministration. But the most intriguing aspect of her slender book is its tone. Hughes is angry. She still has the capacity for outrage that has long since leached from the grief-stricken groves of academe, where the puzzling failure of remote Australia to thrive is regarded as one of those depressingly inevitable consequences of colonial history. Hughes believes the 90,000 Aborigines, most of them very young, who live today in 1200 or so communities and outstations across the countryrs"s centre and north can, and should, have a future.

They can be educated, have meaningful jobs and wide choices while still preserving the core elements of their traditional culture. But for this vision to be within reach, the present context must be described with pitiless accuracy. This is the task Lands of Shame seeks to accomplish. It is nothing less than a report card on indigenous communities, drawn from personal experience and published sources. Inevitably, there are shortcomings in a survey of so broad a field. Central Australia gets sketchy coverage and Hughes is oddly unimpressed by the heroic efforts of Glendle Schrader, creator of a large Aboriginal-owned business network. She is more at home in the Top End, where she has formed a special connection with the remote homeland of Baniyala, in the Yolngu cultural area of northeast Arnhem Land. As a result, she provides a detailed, and devastating, account of the education policies in this region.

hellip; There are similar Kafkaesque snapshots of remote area health, employment and housing programs. They pave the way for some bracing conclusions. - Nicholas Rothwell, The Weekend Australian Review, June 30-July 1, 2007.