MP Victor Dominello was in Wollongong to announce a new initiative, called 'Local Decision Making', which aims to grow the decision-making powers for the region's traditional owners.
Mr Dominello said the program would make communities stronger.
"Communities will take control of government services and enhance their governance capacity, management skills and decision-making authority," he said.
Illawarra Regional Partnership Agreement Chairperson Darrell Brown said the partnership would benefit everyone.
"The great thing about it is the government won't be telling us what to do. We'll be telling the government what we need and they'll hopefully be delivering for us," he said.
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He said the move had been a long-time coming.
"I've been around the government that long and I've seen a lot changes and policy changes and stuff like that. Now we've actually got the opportunity to influence what's going to happen in the future and we're really looking forward to it, the community is just ecstatic."
Mr Dominello said the key to the program's success would lie with regular independent reporting to ensure it delivered results.
"There's going to be challenges and teething problems," he said.
"[But] as long as we're upfront, we're open, we're honest and we say 'look, we need to fix this here, we need to fine-tune this there', then we'll stick the path so we avoid the trainwreck reports."
