Extensive research was conducted as early as 2010 to identify West Australian remote Aboriginal communities considered unsustainable, a leaked document held by the State Government shows.

The Government has resisted calls to accelerate consultation with Indigenous communities, arguing it has no framework in place for deciding which communities would close.

However, a document prepared by the Federal Government in 2010, titled "Priority Investment Communities - WA", categorised 192 of 287 remote settlements as unsustainable.

The document was circulated to the WA Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 2011.

The majority of those assessed as unsustainable are in the Kimberley, with 160 in the region, including Koorabye, Djugerari, Kadjina, Wurrenranginy, and Molly Springs.

The document names 14 unsustainable communities in the Pilbara, 11 in the Goldfields, four in the Midwest and three in the Wheatbelt.

The WA Government's plan to shut up to 150 of the state's remote communities has attracted widespread criticism, including fears it will lead to dispossession and homelessness, but also the backing of Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

WA Premier Colin Barnett made the announcement last year, after it was revealed the Federal Government was cutting off funding for key infrastructure in the townships.

Loading...

Government denies assessment framework in place

Earlier this month, the ABC asked Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier if there was a framework in place to make a decision on which communities would lose essential services.

He said, emphatically, there was not.

"The Federal Government removed the funding," he said.

"It's a perfect time, as a Government to actually look at the sustainability of all those communities.

"But to assume that, as I have said, there's a line in the sand, a pre-determined criteria for the sustainability of those communities is naive in the extreme and it is false."

The leaked 2010 document clearly shows that 192 communities had already been judged to be on the wrong side of that line.

It distinguished between those communities considered viable enough to continue to receive funding and support, and those considered unsustainable.

The document classifies communities into four categories.

The first is "Town-based" which the document describes as "town-based communities [which] generally have access to services and facilities in (an) adjacent town".

Mardiwah Loop and Red Hill near Halls Creek are among 36 communities listed under this heading.

The second, "Category A", contains "communities where the preconditions for sustainable development exist".

There are 24 communities in this category including Kalumburu and Warmun in the Kimberley.

The third, "Category B", includes "communities where many preconditions for growth exist and residents have access to most key services and limited opportunities".

A total of 35 communities are listed in this grouping, including Balgo, Mindibungu, and Mulan around Halls Creek.

By far the biggest group is listed in "Category C" - 192 communities which have been classified in the document as unsustainable - where "there are constraints to sustainable development and opportunities for future growth are limited".

No Commonwealth plan to shut down communities

While the current debate centres around the Government's plan to close communities by withdrawing essential services, that does not appear to have been the intention in 2010.

The document indicates Category C communities were not being targeted for withdrawal of services or closure but instead earmarked for only investment limited to "sustaining existing assets and services".

The document does not make clear what that "limited" investment would entail.

Unsustainable community populations in the hundreds

WA Premier Colin Barnett has repeatedly said many of the communities have less than a handful of people in them.

According to figures provided by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs last year, of the 12,113 Aboriginal people currently living in 274 communities in WA, 1,309 Aboriginal people are in 174 of the smallest.

Across 115 of those communities, there are 507 people in total, or an average of 4.4 people per community.

While many of the Category C communities listed in the 2010 document are shown to have very few people, some have many more.

Those with larger populations, based on the 2008 Census, include Kiwirrkurra, with 165 people, Warralong with 155, Burringurrah with 150, Jameson/Mantamaru with 115, Karaluni with 106, and Tjuntjuntjara with 102.

Of the 192 communities judged to be unsustainable, 52 had 20 or more people, and 84 had 10 or more people in them.

There were 27 with less than five people listed as residing there and 55 had no population listed.

Child safety concerns absent in Federal Government review

Since November, the Premier has emphasised his concerns about the safety of children in communities, suggesting that was a key element driving the Government's push to close remote communities.

"Those communities, 273 of them, are not sustainable into the future, they cannot look anyone in the face and guarantee the safety of little boys and girls," he told Parliament last week.

He caused an uproar when he produced statistics for the Kimberley showing that 39 children between 10 and 14 had gonorrhoea.

"How many cases of gonorrhoea in the wider community," he said, referring to non-Indigenous children in the same age group.

"None. None. Not a single case.

"And do you think that I, as Premier, or the Health Minister as Deputy Premier, are going to sit by and let those children be abused? You are wrong."

But in categorising 192 communities as unsustainable, 2010 internal document makes no mention of safety, sexual abuse or child neglect as a criteria for assessing sustainability.

Funding cut final stage of 10-year Federal plan

The Government has rejected calls for immediate consultation on the basis that the Federal Government only pulled the funding last year, after what the then Housing Minister Bill Marmion described as an "ultimatum" from the Federal Government.

It has been portrayed as a sudden and unexpected loss, but the funding cut was the final stage of state-federal negotiations that began more than a decade ago.

The National Framework of Principles for Government Service Delivery to Indigenous Australians was endorsed by state and Commonwealth governments in 2004.

It was followed by a detailed Bilateral Agreement on Indigenous Affairs between the WA and Commonwealth governments in 2006.

That agreement set out the principles and process through which the WA Government would assume responsibility for housing and essential services in those communities by 2008.

"The Governments acknowledge that continuous improvement is needed in coordinating and integrating the provision of housing, infrastructure, essential and municipal services for Indigenous people in order to reduce duplication of services and promote resource efficiency," the agreement said.

There was a clear plan for WA to take over all essential services to all Indigenous communities by June 30, 2008, by creating "one level of service delivery".

"This should be the Western Australian Government and local governments respectively for services that they would normally provide to comparable non-Indigenous communities," the agreement said.

Discussions about that transition dragged on for another six years, and came to a head in September 2014 when the Federal Government reached, or forced, an agreement with WA to assume control, offering a one-off $90 million payment to cover essential services during a two-year transition.

Multiple information sources to be used: State Government

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Peter Collier said the document was developed by the Federal Government and provided to the WA Department of Indigenous Affairs in 2011.

He said population, housing and infrastructure would be "among many criteria used to assess the health and viability of remote communities in Western Australia."

The Cabinet sub-committee developing the implementation framework would "use multiple sources of information as it builds a framework for consultation".

He said the State Government would identify priority locations for investment to support improved outcomes for Aboriginal people.

Those outcomes would focus on promoting opportunities and enabling access to education, employment, quality health services, housing and improved community safety.