Attempting similar intervention to the Northern Territory in another state will be a mistake unless the federal government learns how to better communicate with indigenous people, Aboriginal advocate Pat Anderson says.

Yesterday the chairwoman of the NT intervention taskforce Sue Gordon said it had done its job.

A year ago today former Prime Minister John Howard and his indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough launched the move in 73 remote indigenous communities to stop child sexual abuse and improve health and safety.

"It's achieved what it set out to do," Dr Gordon told ABC radio.

But Ms Anderson, who co-authored the report, Little Children Are Sacred, says the federal government must refine its manner of communication before a similar intervention is attempted anywhere else in Australia.

"There needs to be a rethink, a rearrangement, of how the federal government is going to negotiate with Aboriginal people," Ms Anderson told the ABC's Lateline program.

"There has to be a whole other set of relationships because what's happened in the past hasn't worked.

"To just do another blanket intervention like what happened in the NT -- I would not suggest that.

"This government has to find a new way, a new set of rules to negotiate with us."

'family unit'

Ms Anderson also said the next step in the NT should be to return power to the family unit.

"I think it's really important to once again empower families and give back some power and authority to families and to households, and therefore to communities, so people can be better able to make their own decisions and make their own life choices," she said.

"When we went around and spoke to people, people felt disempowered -- the decisions about how they would live were being taken further and further away from them.

"They were, in fact, becoming observers about what was happening in their life, with little power or control over that."