"(There has been) decades of under-supply, under-investment, overcrowding, squalor and neglect," she told reporters during a tour of Alice Springs on Tuesday.
"We are seeing the difference around us but there is more to do."
Labor wants to remodel town camps so they are like any other suburb, with decent road, power, water and sewage infrastructure.
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Ms Gillard will later meet with Aboriginal elders to discuss the next phase of the government's NT intervention.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott recently said he supports a renewed intervention.
Mr Abbott said he hoped Ms Gillard wouldn't confine herself to official openings and to visiting towns that maybe have been cleaned-up especially for her visit.
"I think it's important that she sees the downside of government policy as well as the upside of government policy," he told reporters in Brisbane.
He said Ms Gillard should visit the Aboriginal community of Santa Teresa, 80km from Alice Springs, which he had recently visited.
"The prime minister should also see for herself just how shoddy the strategic indigenous housing program has turned out to be (and) just what an embarrassment some of the work is," he said.
"Frankly this is third-world standard work in what is supposed to be a first-world country."
ALCOHOL PRICES
Meanwhile, an Alice Springs doctor says lifting the price of cheap wine so it's the same as beer could have a dramatic effect on indigenous alcohol abuse and related violence and child neglect.
Dr John Boffa, spokesman for the Peoples Alcohol Action Coalition and a medical officer with the Central Australian Aboriginal Health Congress, said alcohol consumption in the Northern Territory was higher than anywhere else in Australia and it was even higher in central Australia.
Dr Boffa said those buying alcohol sought out the cheapest supplies to get the best value for money.
Limiting the supply of cheap wine would have a huge effect on reducing some of the key alcohol-caused harms including child neglect and violence.
"If we can get rid of cheap wine and shift all the heavy drinkers, particularly young people, to beer, that will make a very big difference," Dr Boffa told ABC Radio.
"We want it (cheap wine) set at the price of beer which is about $1.20 a standard drink.
"When cheap wine is at its cheapest on sale, it's around 25 cents a standard drink."
Dr Boffa said alcohol restrictions in Alice Springs in 2006 got rid of four and five-litre wine casks and two-litre port bottles and restricted cheap wine sales to after 6pm.
He said that produced a massive shift to beer, a fall in consumption and a very significant drop in alcohol-related harm including homicides and manslaughters.
"Over the last 18 months we have seen the reintroduction of very cheap wine through these dreaded cleanskins which have been as cheap as $1.99 a bottle, cheaper than a can of coke," he said.
"Unfortunately, Coles is peddling two-litre casks at $10.99 which is 50-cents a standard drink."
On a similar visit recently Opposition leader Tony Abbott called for a second intervention.
