The traditional owners of Uluru have been let down by Australia in the deal that saw the return of the iconic rock to them, the Indigenous Affairs Minister says.
Monday marks the 30th anniversary of the federal government handing back the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
"By and large the rock looks the same and, tragically, so does (the) Mutitjulu (community)," Nigel Scullion told several hundred people celebrating the anniversary at Uluru on Sunday night.
He said that on October 26, 1985, the government returned to the Anangu people what had always belonged to them and signed a 99-year lease to jointly manage the park.
"The implicit part of the agreement is that Anangu people do better because of the things that would come here; they would have jobs, they would have a better life, they would have more choices," Mr Scullion said.
"The deal isn't complete; those opportunities have never been provided in the way they should have been.
"We need to make that change and we need to make that now."
He said 254 of about 450 community members were on the dole, despite the fact the Ayers Rock Resort, 20 minutes away, welcomed 300,000 visitors a year.
"We can't accept that there's 254 people in Mutitjulu on the dole," he told AAP. "We can't just accept glibly pretty low intergenerational levels of literacy and numeracy.
"We can't simply look at that and say it's ok.
"This should be a reminder to us all to refocus our efforts (across Australia)."
There are 250 indigenous people employed by the resort, a record number in Australia, but only five are from the community closest to Uluru, Mr Scullion said.
Efforts to create work in tourism for the local people needed to be redoubled, he said.
Earlier on Sunday his sentiments were echoed by Sammy Wilson, the chairman of the board of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.
Mr Wilson said, through an interpreter, there was a lot of interest in the national park but the Anangu people seemed to be missing out.
He criticised the federal government for directing most of its funding to the Ayers Rock Resort.
"It seems like a big vacuum cleaner is sucking everything away," Mr Wilson said. "This place (Uluru) is our culture here, but it's ending up over there (at the resort); it should be here."
