Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has flagged a more engaged relationship with indigenous Australians and believes constitutional recognition will unify Australia.
"The problem ... between white Australia and Aboriginal Australia is not lack of good will, or lack of money but lack of engagement," he said at Nhulunbuy in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory on day six of the federal election campaign.
A proposal for a referendum to recognise Aboriginal Australians in the constitution will be ready in the first 12 months of the coalition's first parliamentary term.
"Indigenous recognition won't be changing our constitution but completing it," he told the Garma annual cultural festival on Saturday.
"Until this is done our country won't be whole."
The referendum would be a great unifying moment for the country that would surpass the 1967 referendum and the apology to the stolen generations.
Mr Abbott says Aboriginal leader and former ALP party president Warren Mundine will head up a prime ministerial advisory council that will meet with him monthly, if he wins the election.
He wants the council to ensure indigenous programmes achieve real, positive change in the lives of Aboriginal people.
"Warren... I want us to walk down this path together as brothers," he said.
"I do want to make sure that the decisions of any government I lead are fully informed by people who ... have live an Aboriginal life."
Yolngu elder Galarrwuy Yunupingu told Mr Abbott it was time to wake up the issue of Aboriginal land rights from the dead.
Mr Mundine said that it was Aboriginal people's "soul and economic future."
Mr Abbott said Aboriginal land should be both a "spiritual and economic asset".
Nhulunbuy will be the first Aboriginal community he will spend a week in as prime minister if he wins the election.
"I know there will be people who say you can't do that, you're goofing off, you're not doing your job," he said.
"The fact is if these places are home to the first Australians why shouldn't they be home to the prime minister of our country?"
He reiterated his plan to move the indigenous affairs department into the department of prime minister and cabinet and send senior bureaucrats to spend a week in an Aboriginal community.
Labor's senate candidate for the NT Nova Peris listened to Mr Abbott's address at the festival and quickly disappeared at the end.
She told AAP she wanted to give it some more thought before making a public comment.
The coalition hopes it can unseat Indigenous Health Minister Warren Snowdon whose seat of Lingiari hangs by a a slim 3.7 per cent.
