The Australian government has been accused of conducting sham dialogues that were supposed to back its Stronger Futures legislation for the indigenous communities of the Northern Territory.

Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was convinced that Prime Minister Julia Gillard has presided over consultations with Aboriginals that were nothing but fraudulent exercises.

What had transpired, Mr Fraser said on Friday, was "old fashioned white paternalism at its very worst."

Mr Fraser's scathing remarks were made following the publication of a university report, titled 'Listening but not Hearing', critical of the consultations that the Labor-led government had conducted with Aboriginals in the region.

Penned by Larissa Behrendt and Eva Cox, the 144-page report was released Thursday by the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology Sydney with the core assessment that the government lacked sincerity in actually getting the real pulse of the indigenous community in the Northern Territory.

According to The Australian, the Jumbunna report scored the manner that talks were conducted in 2009 and 2011, which the authors described as mere "mechanism for providing information about decisions already made or in the making."

Clearly, no efforts were seen on the part of the government to directly involve the Aboriginals in the whole process, according to Ms Behrendt.

Documents used during the meetings were not translated into Aboriginal languages, supporting critics' claims that misunderstandings could have characterised the entire exercises but the government simply went on with the procedural tasks.

It appeared too that the consultations were undertaken just to lend credibility to the intervention program, the meat of which have been pre-decided by federal authorities, the report said.

Ms Behrendt had lamented in the report that previous initiatives by the national government to uplift the condition of Australia's original settlers have failed due to policies that shrugged off direct involvement from the local community.

"The government's current policies have failed and they will continue to fail for so long as it continues to determine policies without the direct involvement of Aboriginal people in the decision-making process," Ms Behrendt said.

Mr Fraser echoed the report's sentiments that Aboriginals were deliberately excluded from the most significant component of federal authorities' efforts to improve the general situation of the indigenous communities.

"Aboriginals were not involved in the process and have not been involved in the development of policy outcomes ... and things have been presented to them by the government and consultation has consisted of trying to persuade Aboriginals that what government has decided is right," the National Times reported Mr Fraser as saying on Friday.

In a separate interview with The Australian, the Liberal icon faulted the Labor government for deciding unilaterally on the matter.

"People make up their mind in Canberra what's good for Aboriginals and the consultation really consists of trying to persuade them that what they've already decided is good for them. It's the same old paternalism that comes out of Canberra," Mr Fraser said.

The government, however, insisted that the consultations it sponsored were carried out with utmost concern on the welfare of the Aboriginals.

In a statement, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin stressed that the hundreds of dialogue sessions conducted were in-depth and fair.

"Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory have been clear with me that having their kids go to school and get a decent education, having jobs for local people and tackling alcohol abuse are the priority issues for them in building a stronger future," Ms Macklin said.

All provisions embodied in the present form of the Stronger Futures legislation, which had been approved by the House of Representative and currently under scrutiny by the Senate, reflect the insights that were learned during discussions with members of the indigenous community, the minister added.

However, Ian Viner, who served under Mr Fraser as indigenous affairs minister, believes that all the consultations failed in extracting the real outlook of the NT communities, thus rendering the Stronger Futures legislation under Labor a complete farce.

"There's no underlying informed consent by the Aboriginal people for all this massive new legislation that is just continuing the intervention," Mr Viner was quoted by the National Times as saying on the Thursday release of the report.