A party to the $4 billion agreement alongside both governments and all four land councils — which matters, because the sector is meant to be a deliverer rather than a consultee.

The design intent is sound and is supported by long experience: housing built, maintained and tenanted by community-controlled organisations produces local employment, better maintenance response in places contractors will not travel to, and buildings suited to how people actually live. Remote housing that fails usually fails on maintenance rather than construction, and maintenance is where local capacity matters most.

The sector describes the agreement as a substantial opportunity, which is also an acknowledgement that realising it requires the sector to scale — into construction management, workforce, and the reporting and procurement requirements of a decade-long intergovernmental program.

That scaling is itself a delivery risk, and it is the same one recorded across this database: small operators in thin markets are least able to run large government processes, and a program designed to build their capacity has to be built differently from one that assumes it.