Governance arrangements in remote Australia are under constant reform. Recent innovations include 'joined-up government' , mutual responsibility, open tendering for service provision, regionalism, and extraordinary arrangements under 'emergency' interventions. From inside remote settlements looking out to government, reforms such as these have had a fracturing and ballooning effect, resulting in an ever-increasing proliferation of programs, outside agents, funding sources and attendant accountability requirements. Yet inside remote settlements, there is little corresponding progress in building local governance capacity; indeed, of late in the Northern Territory, local Councils have been disbanded. The preoccupation with finding 'solutions' to 'the problem', for government to package and vertically implement, is leading to a build-up of governance at regional and higher levels and an erosion of governance at the local level. Some of the most powerful critiques of such reforms are often legitimised by reference to International development practice in less-developed countries. International experience suggests that in the Northern Territory, the pendulum has swung too far from local to state control. In addition to effective government programs, successful community development requires space for decentralised local governance, underpinned by own-sourced income which is under the discretionary control of locally elected leaders.