Though disappointed by the early performance of the Northern Land Council, Coombs did not write off the Northern Territory land councils. Rather, he saw that they were indispensable to the implementation of land rights policies and that getting back the land was a continuing stimulus to the political inventiveness of Aboriginal people. Political innovation was proceeding on two levels: the territorial and the institutional. Land was the traditional basis of Aboriginal political life, and so the outstation movement was the context for renewing Aboriginal political traditions. People were returning to their own portions of country, rather than living in missions and settlements on other people's country, and they were managing their day to day existence in small groups of familiars, rather than in large strife-torn aggregations. In their engagement with government, new political structures, including land councils and ‘communities’, were essential to regaining land and to managing the services of a more sedentary, cash-based way of life.

What was the cultural basis of these new structures? In November 1981, Stanley Scrutton offered Coombs an opportunity to consider this question at length and in detail. Scrutton had been elected chair of the Central Land Council in December 1980; now he formally requested the ANU to let the CLC have Coombs conduct a management review.

The Central Land Council had first been convened in June 1974, on the recommendation of Justice Woodward's first report on land rights. At its beginnings, the CLC had been serviced by staff of the DAA's Alice Springs office.