A report released on Thursday by former governor Kate Warner and law professor Tim McCormack is a step forward, and has been welcomed by all sides.

Yet at its heart it only provides recommendations. The hard work will be in delivering tangible outcomes.

For many in the Aboriginal community, this includes land handbacks, which is where much of the conflict could arise.

Most Tasmanians will not be impacted if the areas referenced in the Pathway to Truth-Telling and Treaty report are indeed handed over to the Aboriginal community.

It's those who share a connection with those places, however, that the government will need to win over.

The fear of being locked out of somewhere that your family may have visited for generations, that you consider part of your way of life, is one that will be felt by people across our region.

It will be related to past experience of land handbacks, and also government decisions that have closed or limited access to recreation areas, such as in the Arthur-Pieman.

And the feeling will inevitably explode, as it so often has in Tasmania, into a debate over who is and who isn't Aboriginal.

Lost in that argument but perhaps more pertinent is the question of why land should be given to those who are Indigenous but not descended from the tribe that lived in a particular area before European arrival.

We know it's a consequence of the devastation that colonisation wrought on the first peoples of Tasmania that they lost their tribal identities.

But does that mean that those who might trace their ancestry back to lands in the South, for example, should have claim to an area in the North-West and West coasts with which they may have little connection?

Land handbacks are seen, understandably, as critical to achieving a treaty and reconciliation more broadly.

If they are on the agenda for this government, then it has much work to do in finding a path that does not merely create more conflict but helps to heal old wounds.