A rethink is needed in providing housing in remote Aboriginal communities that lack employment opportunities, former Labor minister Gary Johns says.
Dr Johns argues, in a paper to be released Thursday and obtained by The Australian, that policymakers have failed to acknowledge the link between housing and employment.
The president of the Bennelong Society said funding spent on community housing in remote areas has been "generous and well-targeted" but the properties have been destroyed.
He said housing should not be provided where there are no jobs and people cannot pay rent or repay a mortgage.
"The ultimate solution to Aboriginal housing in remote areas is jobs," he writes in the paper for the Menzies Research Centre.
"But an honest assessment of employment prospects in remote areas is that they are bleak."
He said people need to realise that if they are no jobs in their town they have to move to where there is employment or they will be trapped in poverty.
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