Governance is not simply for service delivery - important as that is. Governance arrangements in remote Australia need to facilitate Indigenous development grounded in Indigenous cultural systems. Indigenous aspirations for their own development may be quite diverse, and governance systems need to facilitate and support such diverse models, suited to local contexts. Successful governance systems for remote Australia will inevitably provide an intercultural space in which the key characteristics of Indigenous governance intersect effectively with non-Indigenous systems to enable Indigenous-driven development to flourish. This means governance must be adaptive, deliberative and negotiated, rather than imposed.