Abstract: What is called ‘Central Australia’ is a substantial part of that two thirds of the continent known as the Outback, home to more than half a million people. The demographic profile is dynamic; a rapidly growing Indigenous population that is also highly mobile, contrasted with a non-Indigenous population that is continuing to reduce in some areas and expand in others, particularly as a consequence of mining activity. The region suffers from dysfunctional governance for a range of reasons, including: ineffective cooperation between jurisdictions; the failure of fiscal federalism to ensure the proper allocation of funding to remote and rural regions; little local decision-making or devolved financial power and authority; and, lack of sustained public investment in services, infrastructure and public administration. The sparse, patchy and mobile populations of the remote regions have little political voice or capacity to influence markets (except in the niche market of cultural tourism and arts and crafts). The outback, its peoples and its governance are overlooked too much of the time – with increasingly significant consequences; consequences that are beginning to demand the attention of the wider public and governments. It is only times of almost irreparable crisis that command attention.