Come, I have learned that
fearful commenting
Is leaden servitor to dull
delay;
Delay leads impotent and
snail-paced beggary
Richard III, Act four, Scene four
In early December, I published a post on the absence of the
Annual Reports for the ALC and AINT prior to Estimates. In that post I was
critical of the fact that no formal extension for the delay appeared to have
been granted. There was no statement to the Estimates Committee hearing
advising Committee members and the public that the reports had been delayed and
extensions granted. I have now belatedly discovered that the relevant approvals
were sought and granted and the documents were tabled (link
here and link
here). Those approvals only extended to 30 November, and do not appear to
have been renewed or further extended. The tabled correspondence identifies
resource constraints within the ANAO as the reason for the AINT audit delay,
and staff turnover for the ALC delay. This post suggests that there may be other
issues in play as well.
In December, shortly before the end of 2025, the ANAO
published a report titled Audits of the Financial Statements of Australian
Government Entities for the Period Ended 30 June 2025 (link
here).
The ANAO helpfully note upfront that:
3.1 A financial statements
audit is finalised when the auditor has formed an opinion on the financial
statements, and that opinion has been expressed through a written report….
After providing some high-level data on audit completions,
the ANAO reported:
3.7 There were four entities
for which the 2024–25 financial statements audit had not been finalised by the
ANAO as at 30 November 2025. They were Anindilyakwa Land Council, Northern
Territory Aboriginal Investment Corporation, Aboriginal Investment NT Trust,
and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Further details are included in
Chapter 4.
I don’t propose to pursue the issues around the ASIS audit
apart from noting that there do not appear to be further details in the DFAT
portfolio entry in Chapter 4 nor is ASIS listed in the Report Appendix. Secrecy
prevails in the world of espionage! Presumably the Inspector General of
Intelligence (link here) will
be following through on this issue.
The ANAO report includes an extended analysis of the
timeliness of annual reports (paras 3.11 to 3.24). This indicates that some 20
agencies reports had not been tabled as at 30 November 2025 (para 3.24)
representing 11% of the agency reports requires to be tabled. Of these however
(as indicated above) only four relate to the non-completion of the audit. Three
of the four relate to the entities established by the Aboriginal Land Rights
(Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) administered by the Minister for Indigenous
Australians and funded from appropriations to the Aboriginals Benefit Account
(ABA) established under ALRA. In contrast to the tabled documents seeking and providing
approval for extensions, the ANAO make no comment regarding the cause of the
delays.
In relation to the Northern Territory
Aboriginal Investment Corporation (AINT) and the Aboriginal Investment
NT Trust, there is no information in the ANAO report apart from the advice that
the audit is continuing. There is no indication on its website (link here)
advising the delay in the finalisation of the annual report. The website does
list the contracts entered into in 2024-25 as required by a Senate Order (link
here)
which indicates that the AINT has entered into a contract with CIML (an
investment advisory firm) for the ‘management of Investment Trust’ with an
associated cost of $19,243,073. If this payment is in fact the cost of the
management of the investment trust, which according to the 2023-24 AINT annual
report (page 76) potentially totals $560m (this being the amount expected to be
received from the ABA), then the amount of $19m appears on its face potentially
excessive. It amounts to 3.39 percent of the investment fund (but might
conceivably be for multiple years). When I asked my own AI adviser (Anthropic’s
Claude) about the likely fees typical investment advisers would charge, it
replied:
If the
trust is managed by a genuine institutional investor such as …a government
investment agency; a sovereign wealth fund; a large corporate trustee with
pooled institutional assets, then yes, you'd typically see those lower
institutional rates of 0.10-0.30%, or even lower for very large
mandates.
Assuming a rate of 0.30%, the
annual cost for a fund of $560m would be $1.68m. The listing of both AINT and
the AINT Trust suggests that the ANAO are delving more deeply into these
arrangements. Of course, there may be circumstances of which we are not aware
that explain these payments, and apart from the questions raised above, there
are no indications of issues of concern at this point. However, ina previous
post I expressed my scepticism of the broader context underlying the establishment
of AINT and the implicit assumptions that seem to have taken hold (link
here).
There is one other interesting item included in the AINT Entity Contracts
listing: Yamagigu Consulting were paid $267k for ‘Nation Building Consulting’
for four months work. Yamagigu were the governance advisers chosen by the ALC
when the NIAA required them to appoint a governance adviser following the
termination of the former CEO Mr Hewitt.
Anindilyakwa Land Council
There is no further mention of the ALC in the ANAO report
apart from Appendix One where it is listed and annotated with the words ‘Audit
not yet completed’.
Notwithstanding the parsimonious details, it is possible to
hazard a guess at what may be delaying the audit report for the ALC by
considering the commentary provided related to the audits of the three other NT
land councils.
The ANAO identified seven instances across the whole government
sector of serious legislative non-compliance, which it described in the
following terms (para 3.61):
Significant legislative
breaches include instances of significant potential or actual breaches of the
Constitution; and instances of significant non-compliance with the entity’s
enabling legislation, legislation that the entity is responsible for administering,
and the PGPA Act.
Of these seven, two related to NT land councils (see para
3.62).
In relation to the Northern Land Council: Royalty
Trust Account:
The ANAO identified contracts
where the distribution of royalty monies to traditional owners was not made
within six months, as required under subsections 35(3) and 35(4) of the
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976;
Further details can be found at paragraphs 4.14.71 to 4.14.78.
In relation to the Tiwi land Council: Non-compliance
with the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976. Further
details are available at paras. 4.14.87 to 4.14.94. For reasons that will become
evident, it is worth recounting this issue in full:
4.14.90 The ALRA Act
establishes TLC’s responsibilities for payments in respect of Aboriginal land,
requiring payment of an amount equal to amounts received to, or for the benefit
of, the traditional owners of the land, within six months after that amount is
received through the Royalty Trust Account. Previous audits have identified
non-compliance with this requirement of the ALRA Act.
4.14.91 During the 2023–24
audit, the ANAO identified that a total of $808,000 of royalties had been held
by TLC for more than 6 months. TLC sought advice regarding distribution of the
funds by an alternative mechanism to an identified Aboriginal Corporation who
would then pay the funds to the appropriate traditional owners to assist with
their township leasing rental payments in accordance with Section 35(4B) and
Section 36 of the ALRA Act. These sections of the ALRA Act require that any
funds received by TLC from the Aboriginals Benefits Account must be paid to a
relevant Aboriginal Corporation within six months of receipt.
4.14.92 TLC advised the ANAO
that it has taken all reasonable steps to comply with subsection 35(4B) of the
ALRA Act, which requires payment to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Corporation for the benefit of traditional owners.
4.14.93 As no such corporation
currently exists, TLC sought Ministerial approval under subsection 35(5) for
an alternative payment method. The Minister declined the proposal and did not
issue a determination to enable compliance with subsection 35(4B). [emphasis
added]
4.14.94 During the 2024–25
final audit, the ANAO noted that funds continue to be held in TLC’s land use
funds account. The TLC advised the ANAO that it is awaiting the establishment
and registration of a corporation by the Wulirankuwu clan group with ORIC
before releasing the funds. TLC is providing administrative support to Tiwi
Resources Pty Ltd to assist with progressing this establishment
I found the bolded text above intriguing. While the ANAO
remit does not extend to assessing the actions of Ministers, the factual
recounting of the Minister’s decision not to issue a determination raises legitimate
questions. The obvious question of course is, why did the Minister decide to
allow the legislative breach to continue and be ongoing rather than take the decision
to distribute the funds as provided for in the Act? Did she just fail to
respond, or did she provide the TLC with reasons? If not, why not?
While legislative compliance is important for obvious reasons,
the actual consequences of these breaches on the life opportunities of the
relevant land council constituencies are minimal. However, this may not be the
case in relation to the broad swathe of events over the past few years on
Groote. Nevertheless, I have recounted these two cases because they suggest the
audit strategy being pursued by the ANAO in its financial audits. They point to
a new focus on royalty distributions and the relationships between the land
councils and the corporations that are the beneficiaries of the relevant
section 64(3) payments.
While we do not know just what has given rise to the delays
in the ALC audit, one obvious supposition would be that it relates to the relationship
between the ALC and the key corporations which have received the bulk of the ALC
section 64(3) payments over the past six years or so. I dealt with these issues
in my recent post titled The Angels Weep (link
here). I have long ago formed the view that the ALC (at least under its
former CEO Mr Hewitt) has utilised its financial assistance and cross board appointments
to several corporations to which it is allocating royalty equivalent payments to
exercise effective control over those corporations and have argued that this would
be both a legislative breach and would undermine the accuracy of the ALC
financial statements. The facts supporting the development of my view were
first laid out in the ANAO performance audit of the ALC published in 2023 (link
here).
In this context, it is worth noting that none of the four corporations
that might be said to be at the centre of this ‘effective control’ issue (ARAC,
AAAC, GHAC and Anindilyakwa Leaders Future Fund Aboriginal Corporation) has yet
posted their 2024-25 financial reports on the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous
Corporations website, and thus all four are technically in breach of the CATSI
Act. While I suspect that the Registrar normally gives corporations some leeway
in posting their financial reports, it is of concern that none of them has yet
done so. It is my understanding (though I stand to be corrected) that the ALC
provides assistance to all four corporations with their financial record
keeping, and thus these reporting problems potentially signal deeper issues and
problems within the ALC. This is despite the assistance provided during the last
financial year by governance advisory firm Yamagigu, at considerable cost. Moreover,
AAAC (which owns 70 percent of the proposed Winchelsea mine) has yet to post
its 2023-24 financial report, and the Office of the Registrar has recently announced
that it has initiated an investigation into GHAC, albeit without providing any
background information related to the issues of concern being examined.
Conclusion
The Minister and her agency have spent the last three years
effectively in denial, suggesting by their inaction and their systematic lack
of transparency that the challenges facing the ALC are of little or no
consequence. While the audit of the ALC financial statements may ultimately provide
a thumbs up on the ALC finances for 2024-25, the broader context of continuous
high level staff turnover, the ongoing National Anti-Corruption Investigation,
and the potential misallocation of millions of dollars in royalty equivalent
funds (monies appropriated by the Commonwealth Parliament) over recent years as
I set out in my recent post The Angels Weep, and the delays in audits
and financial reporting to the Parliament as set out in this post, suggest a
deeper malaise characterised by ongoing and increasing financial risk, and the possibility
of wider social consequences that are not visible through the lenses used by governments
and their bureaucracies. In my view, that malaise extends to the absence of
effective regulation by successive ministers and their agency, NIAA.
If I am only half right, there would be a strong case for the
ANAO to initiate a performance audit of the allocation of funds appropriated to
the Aboriginals Benefit Account (ABA) by the Parliament, and for a deeper
Parliamentary inquiry into the administration of the ALC and associated beneficiary
corporations over the past 12 years or so. While I have little doubt that the
NACC will ultimately uncover some egregious behaviours related to the ALC’s
administration, I doubt that the NACC will manage to get their heads around the
myriad social, economic and political complexities that have emerged on Groote
over that period and nor will they focus on the wider policy solutions required
that flow from the issues they uncover.
It is almost twenty years since the last major independent review
of the operations of the ALRA. It is time to have a considered and proactive
examination of the legislation and its fit with contemporary expectations given
its salience in the Northern Territory and its importance to the lives of so
many Indigenous Territorians.
Without ongoing and incremental reform, the risks are that
the rolling crises in ABA allocations will continue until they reach a point
where a future government decides the political cost of the abolition of the
ABA arrangements aimed at benefiting Indigenous Territorians is less than the cost
of the criticism that will continue to flow from a poorly regulated policy
space. The current Commonwealth Government is unlikely to act without proactive
engagement by Indigenous interests across the NT on these issues. Keeping your
head down, and supporting the status quo, is a successful strategy until the
day when the world changes and external forces intervene. That day may not be
imminent, but it will surely arrive at some point in the coming decade or two. Support
for proactive and incremental reform from the Indigenous leadership in the NT
would allow Indigenous interests to shape the extent and speed of reform and would
be preferable to cataclysmic retrograde policy changes without Indigenous input
at some point in the medium term future.
5 January 2026
