"Indigenous employment within the local businesses, because how often do you see an Aboriginal person in any of the houses down here?" Armajun Aboriginal Health Service board chairwoman Lyn Lackay said.

"Not often, and that is very important is to get some of our Aboriginal kids or anyone in particular, into trade skills and retail."

Armajun drug and alcohol team member Michael Duncan saw a need for more supports and facilities to aid locals facing substance abuse and/or homelessness.

"I reckon a men's shelter. We need one badly," he said. “I think the nearest one is probably Moree, but you can’t get them in there.” 

Lyn said there was interest in expanding health services beyond the current Armajun model.

“What we’d like to do here for Armajun is set up our own medical centre,” she said.

“We’ve got this here, but we’d like to look at our own building and maybe supports around that.”

Inverell 2016 NAIDOC Week committee chairman Kelvin Brown’s first concern was attention toward averting suicide within the Aboriginal community. 

He asked for greater scrutiny by politicians into what he understood to be the tragedy’s rising statistics. 

“If all the statistics are saying at the moment that Indigenous suicides are on the rise, one: why? Two: what are we going to do about it and what resources are available to assist in bring that suicide rate down?,” he said.

“Obviously, like a lot of other issues of mental health in the communities, you can't get rid of it completely, but you can try and minimise it to the best of your ability.”