PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has capped off the first day of her Northern Territory tour by handing a large parcel of Aboriginal land back to its traditional owners.
Two of the four land parcels - Finke Gorge National Park and Simpson Desert stage 4 - were some of the earliest claims lodged under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.
Ms Gillard gave the deeds, including two belonging to land parcels in the Hermannsburg area, back to their traditional owners at a ceremony in Alice Springs on Tuesday.
The Finke Gorge National Park will be leased back to the Northern Territory for 99 years for use as a national park.
"Traditional owners will have a strong voice in the future management and operation of the park," Ms Gillard said.
"The Central Land Council and traditional owners are working to design community development projects that can be supported with the income received under park leasing arrangements."
Earlier in the day, the prime minister visited a town camp that was slowly being revitalised with new homes and infrastructure.
Ms Gillard acknowledged town camps had become run down.
"(There has been) decades of under-supply, under-investment, overcrowding, squalor and neglect," she told reporters.
"We are seeing the difference around us but there is more to do."
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott encouraged Ms Gillard to get away from sanitised town camps and visit those that remained decrepit.
"I do hope that while she is there, she won't just confine herself to official openings and to visiting town camps that may well have been cleaned up especially for her visit," he said from Brisbane.
"I think it's important that she sees the downside of government policy as well as the upside of government policy."
Ms Gillard said she wanted to talk with local elders in Alice Springs about what could be done about reducing the harm caused by alcohol.
Dr John Boffa, spokesman for the People's Alcohol Action Coalition and a medical officer with the Central Australian Aboriginal Health Congress, said raising the price of cheap wine so it was the same as beer could reduce child neglect and indigenous violence.
"We want it (cheap wine) set at the price of beer, which is about $1.20 a standard drink," he told ABC Radio.
"If we can get rid of cheap wine and shift all the heavy drinkers, particularly young people, to beer, that will make a very big difference."
Ms Gillard heads to the Gove Peninsula, in the northeastern corner of Arnhem Land, tomorrow.
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