If we called them towns, would they be treated differently?

The WA government has said it will "close" up to 150 remote Aboriginal communities. Really? Just close them down like they were a shop going out of business?  Now, I get that Colin is premier of a bloody large state with a very dispersed population. I should hope he knew that before he took on the job. I'm sure it is difficult and expensive to provide services to all those remote people, but that doesn't mean you can just close down a few inconveniently remote communities. Anyone in rural Australia could name a few remote towns of small populations that are difficult and expensive to maintain. Over the last 10 years, Victoria has had to run pipelines to most of the north west of the state and provide treated water to umpteen small towns. Did they propose that Noradjuha had to be closed down and the 10 or so households move into Horsham or Nati? Of course not. Noradajuha still has water, mail delivery, garbage collection, a school bus run.

Aboriginal communities typically have schools, general stores, health centres, not to mention homes. Maybe a police station, footy ground, community hall. That sounds an awful lot like a town to me. But by calling them Aboriginal communities (which in and of itself there is nothing wrong with, and maybe the residents even prefer it), it conjures up in the mind of your average ignorant Australian of people living in dirt and humpies. And maybe some do and they like it. Good on them. But I suspect it is a strategy on behalf of the government to separate these homes of indigenous people from what most Australians call towns and try and avoid the appropriate outrage. Because really, our governments support a lot of expensive to maintain stuff. Most of it is for much richer people, organisations, communities and companies than some  isolated communities that already do in tough in myriad ways. Indigenous people do want to live in remote communities for social, family, cultural and health reasons amongst others. Suddenly making them homeless and trying to herd them into slightly larger, still very remote communities may look like it saves a small amount in services, but is going to cost a huge amount in trauma to these people and in managing the high risk of arising social and health problems. And like the NT intervention, when would governments ever risk doing these things to nice white people?