His comments come a day after indigenous leader Noel Pearson urged the federal government to go ahead to programs that tie key areas such as school attendance to welfare payments, saying radical reform is needed to address disadvantage in health, welfare dependency and education.
Mr Robb on Thursday defended the government's controversial Welfare to Work legislation in the House of Representatives against Labor claims it does nothing for the Northern Territory indigenous populations.
He said it would address the "insidious problems of passive welfare".
Mr Robb asked Labor's Warren Snowdon, whose seat takes in most of NT, whether he has learned any lessons from the effects of passive welfare on the indigenous community.
Mr Snowdon said most of his indigenous constituents live in "gross poverty", and face problems including a lack of job opportunities, a lack of housing, poor health and a lack of access to education and training.
He said the Welfare to Work legislation does not address any of these areas.
But Mr Robb said passive welfare has destroyed a 25,000-year-old culture in the space of 35 years in Mr Snowdon's electorate.
"Have we learnt no lessons at all? This legislation for the Member for Lingiari's benefit and all those opposite is designed to address the insidious problems of passive welfare," he said.
On Wednesday, Mr Pearson told the National Press Club in Canberra that new and different rules on welfare are wanted and needed.
"We want the ability to opt in and once in, we want the freedom and responsibility to make the hard changes necessary," he said.
"If at the end of the day all that is offered to us is tinkering, we will see failure and what's worse, we will see the perpetuation of the so-called Aboriginal problem for as long as we fail to deal with it."
He pointed out that a pilot program in a WA indigenous community that allowed Centrelink to cancel payments to those who didn’t attend a meeting to explain why their children had missed school had reduced truancy rates.
The program was recently halted, however school attendance rose from 54 percent to 80 percent in its first two months.
Pearson backs welfare-for-attendance program
Mr Pearson said it would not be racially discriminatory to have different rules applying to those communities who choose to be treated differently.
He said mainstream welfare reform would not solve indigenous problems and laws and programs must be changed where necessary to allow the balance of responsibility to shift to the communities themselves.
"I don't think that indigenous misery should continue and be perpetuated simply because governments want to treat everybody completely in the same way," he said.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone said she can see his point, but questioned the validity of creating two levels of welfare delivery.
"Having said that ... I share Noel Pearson's concern for families - indigenous and non-indigenous - where a pay cheque or welfare cheque is not properly managed and the kids don't get the care they should. But I think there's a range of ways we can address that without treating one category of people differently," she said.
Labor's deputy leader Jenny Macklin said while school attendance is a big issue, it is illegal to take people's family payments away from them.