[5] While ATSIC's existence was always subject to the oversight of governments who represent all Australians, ATSIC was a group of elected individuals whose main goal was the oversights that related to Indigenous Australians, who include the many Aboriginal peoples of Australia as well as Torres Strait Islander peoples, of the Torres Strait Islands (part of Queensland).

[citation needed] Mick Gooda succeeded Tom Calma to become ATSIC's final Chief Executive Officer.

[8] In 2001, ATSIC became embroiled in controversy over litigation surrounding its chairperson Geoff Clark, relating to his alleged participation in several rapes in the 1970s and 1980s, after being named by four women.

[9] Soon after this, the government under then Prime Minister John Howard began to remove some of ATSIC's fiscal powers, which were transferred to a new independent organisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (ATSIS).

The report, authored by John Hannaford, Jackie Huggins and Bob Collins, was titled In the Hands of the Regions: A New ATSIC Report of the Review of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission,[10] and it recommended reforms which gave greater control of ATSIC to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at a regional level.

[9] The government's plan was to abolish ATSIC and all of its regional and state structures, and return funding for Indigenous programs to the relevant line departments.

Labor's view was that ATSIC itself should be abolished, but many of the regional and state sub-organisations should be retained, to continue to give Indigenous people a voice in their own affairs and within their own communities.

[citation needed] Howard announced the agency's abolition on 15 April 2004, saying that "the experiment in elected representation for Indigenous people has been a failure".