Guest Post: Jon Altman on AINT and the ABA

 

This is the first Guest Post I have published on A Walking Shadow, so a short introductory explanation is in order.

Jon Altman is widely recognised as one of Australia’s pre-eminent scholars on Indigenous policy. I won’t seek to categorise him further as his prodigious output over many decades defies simple categorization. He is an Emeritus Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) within the ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy. He is also a Director of Karrkad Kanjdji Trust (link here) which operates across Arnhem Land with a diverse focus on supporting ‘healthy country’.

Just one of his abiding interests has been the policy issues around land, culture, traditional use of land resources, land rights, native title, Indigenous economic development, royalties, mining on Indigenous land, and the Aboriginals Benefit Account in the NT.

I first met Jon when I was working for the Central Land Council and he was researching his 1983 book Aborigines and Mining Royalties in the Northern Territory, and subsequently worked closely with him on the Review he chaired at the request of the then Government published in 1985 as the Report on the Review of the Aboriginals Benefit Trust Account (and Related Financial Matters) in the Northern Territory Land Rights Legislation. Since then, we have collaborated formally and informally on various projects and publications related to these wide-ranging issues. A long-winded way of saying that we share a longstanding interest in the policy issues which underpin the financial architecture of the NT Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, legislation that an academic historian at the ANU described in a seminar last week as the ‘highwater mark of Australian land rights legislation’.

When I published my post yesterday on AINT titled Confusion Abounds (link here), Jon sent me the short paper he had written on the same subject. While our two papers were written independently, they cover much of the same ground, albeit from somewhat different perspectives. In many ways they are serendipitously complementary. Bearing in mind Shakespeare’s observation in Hamlet (V ii): ‘There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will’, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Hence my offer to Jon to publish his short article on this Blog, an offer I am extremely pleased he has agreed to accept. He has asked me to make clear that the views expressed are his alone and arise from his role as an independent academic.  The text below comprises Jon’s paper.

 

Jon Altman: How is NTAIC/AINT travelling three years on?

The ABA or Aboriginals Benefit Account is an institution established by ALRA in 1976 whereby the equivalents of royalties raised from mineral extraction on Aboriginal-owned land in the NT is reserved for Aboriginal, not just landowner, use.

The ABA has a history dating back to 1952 and an earlier fund the Aborigines (Benefits from Mining) Trust Fund or ABTF. This progressive arrangement was initiated by then Minister for Interior Paul Hasluck, the royalties were generated from mining on Aboriginal reserves.

Since 1978, in accord with ALRA, these payments were principally applied in four ways: a proportion (usually 40%) was paid to administer land councils, 30% was paid to the traditional owners of the land where a particular mine was operating, and the balance was either paid as grants to or for Aboriginal people (via incorporated organisations) in the NT.

For some unclear reason never properly explained, from 1978 payments out of the ABA were levied a mining withholding tax set at 20% of the base tax rate, a current impost of 4%. This amendment to tax law was imposed after land rights law was passed.

A summary table that I have compiled of the income and expenditure of the ABA 1978-79 to 24-25, a period of some 46 years, indicates that an estimated $5.3 billion in MREs have been paid to the ABA from consolidated revenue, with an additional $512 million earned in interest giving the ABA a total income of $5.9 billion. Note that MREs are then reduced by 4% through the levying of the mining withholding tax.

Of this amount a total of $1.58 billion (30%) has been paid to traditional owner organisations in areas affected by mining as required by law. $1.6 billion (30%) has been paid to the four NT land councils to claim and then administer Aboriginal-owned land that now covers 50% of terrestrial NT; and $928 million has been paid in grants to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT. This last amount constitutes about 15.7% of total ABA income as grants have generally been paid from interest income to avoid the MWT. The balance was held in reserve and by the end of the 2021-22 financial year this totaled $1.4 billion.

This arrangement has prevailed for much of the last 50 years since the passage of ALRA with two exceptions.

In 2007, ALRA was amended to allow the leasing of townships for 99 years with lease payments to be made to organisations representing traditional owners of townships. Since 2007-08 $108 million has been paid to the traditional owners of a handful of townships that have adopted these arrangements. The $108 million is to be repaid with $28 million (26%) returned to the ABA to date.

In 2021, ALRA was again amended with the establishment of the NT Aboriginal Investment Corporation or NTAIC that has subsequently been renamed Aboriginal Investments NT or AINT.

This new arrangement has had a long gestation.

The original statutory arrangements under ALRA legislated for the establishment of an ABA Advisory Committee that would make grant recommendations to be approved by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

A review of the ABA completed in 1984 that I chaired criticized these arrangements as paternalistic and counter to the principle of self-determination and recommended that in five years’ time, that is by 1989, the ABA Advisory Committee be delegated full granting powers.

This proposition was revisited from 2016 in negotiations between Ministers Scullion and then Wyatt and the four Aboriginal land councils and incorporated in amendments to ALRA in 2021.

However, and there is always a however, what eventuated has been somewhat different from what was envisioned in 1984.

In establishing NTAIC as a corporate Commonwealth entity, the amendments did not guarantee the new body a future flow of MREs but rather made it a one-off allocation of $680 million. This amount represented 49% of the $1.4 billion the ABA held in reserve in 2021-22.

In effect, the government with the support of the four NT land councils was establishing a new body that would take over by and large the somewhat cumbersome granting functions of the ABA. I say be and large because the ABA still holds $800 million (at 30 June 2025) that the Minister for Indigenous Australians can allocate at her discretion.

And the board of the new authority includes two independent members nominated by land councils and two members nominated by government, with the other eight being representatives (at two each) of the four land councils.

The new authority is subject to scrutiny under the the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act) established to ensure a coherent system of governance and accountability for public resources, with an emphasis on planning, performance and reporting.

This indicates that whether MREs raised on Aboriginal owned lands are public as argued by government or private as argued by Aboriginal interests, an issue that was hotly debated in 1984 when the ABA was reviewed, has been resolved in favour of the government’s position.

It is early days, just three years on from the operationalization of NTAIC in April 2023 it is difficult to make any definitive judgments on how effectively the new arrangements are operating and whether they are superior to the old arrangements.

NTAIC has published two annual reports for 2022-23 and 2023-24 and AINT somewhat belatedly a report for 2024-25 that was published on its website and then removed.

Arguably, the new arrangements are just in the ‘bedding down’ phase and AINT is proceeding cautiously given its operations under the PGPA Act carapace.

But in my opinion, there are already some worrying signs, some of which I predicted in my critical submission to a parliamentary committee that briefly scrutinized the amendments bill in late 2021 (link here).

The AINT (let’s stick to its most recent name) website provides quite a few documents: annual reports for 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 (for a time) and three corporate plans (the latest for 2025-2029). There is also the Strategic Investment Plan required before $500 million was released from the ABA and to invest; and a summary of all grants made by NTAIC then AINT to 31 March 2026, with many being legacy grants from the ABA.

I have scrutinized these documents that aim to ensure a high degree of transparency and accountability.

The central message is that AINT is ‘Backing Aboriginal led development through innovative investment’.

Simultaneously, there are two broad objects that are not necessarily compatible: to deliver self-management and economic self-sufficiency to Aboriginal people living in the NT; and to ensure the social and cultural wellbeing of Aboriginal people living in the NT.

Note that these objects refer to Aboriginal people living in the NT not traditional owners of land or Aboriginal people (and one assumes Torres Strait Islanders) born in and of the NT.

These are AINT’s interpretation of ALRA’s requirement that s64 (4) grants are applied to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT.

As noted earlier, prior to the amendment of ALRA $928 million has been allocated as grants since 1978-79 and in recent years have totaled in the region of $60 million (2020-21) growing to $97.7 million in 2023-24.

To deliver on these goals AINT’s strategy is to make three types of grants – community quick response grants (up to $20,000 each), community impact and innovation grants and business grants – alongside in a Future Fund.

When ALRA was amended and NTAIC was created as a corporate Commonwealth entity it was allocated $680 million from the ABA, $60 million per annum for three years to maintain grants more or less at existing levels (in recent years) and $500 million for a Future Fund that would generate annual sustainable allocations in perpetuity from which to make grants.

The publicly available information on AINT’s grant making is difficult to interpret.

Audited financial statements verified by the ANAO indicate that no grants were made in 2022-23, $9.1 million in 2023-24, and $19 million in 2024-25.

But a 26-page document on the AINT website that lists NTAIC grants made between 2022 and 2025 (actually to 31 March 2026) tells a somewhat different story.

It shows that 30 quick response grants with a total value of $310,171 were approved; 15 community impact and innovation grants totaling $11.86 million; and 83 business grants totaling $8 million. Additionally, 131 grants totaling $38.7 million are listed as approved under NTAIC’s grants program guidelines 2022-2025 are listed (with 4 double-counted). On can only assume that most of these grants were made under the ABA rather than NTAIC/AINT banner?

This list matches, more or less, the message of the headline summary (link here): 250+organisations supported with grants totaling $60.3 million. This total figure over three years to 31 March 2026 (at an average of $20 million per annum) is significantly less than the 64 (4) grants made in each year since 2021-22.

I make just a few comments about immediate issues of concern.

First, to date, the granting operations of AINT appear expensive: in 2023-24 $9.2 million was granted with wages and salaries and directors’ annual fees totaling $5 million; in 2024-25, the ratio was better at $19 million in grants at a cost of $6.2 million. Admittedly these figures are inclusive of activities beyond grant making undertaken by AINT, but it is noteworthy that prior to the amendment of ALRA in 2021 these costs were borne by government not the ABA. Apparent independence comes at a real cost.

Second, much of the published strategic investment and corporate planning of AINT including its ‘theory of change’ seems to over-promise: AINT might articulate a vision to ‘back Aboriginal led development through innovative investment’ but it is far from clear what resources it will have at its disposal to do this, especially as its risk-averse goal is to earn a minimum 3% (+CPI) on its Future Fund of $500 million: even a doubling of this rate of return will only provide $30 million per annum, less than granted by the ABA in recent years. I suspect with such lofty goals expectations will be increasingly difficult for the AINT board of directors to manage.

Third, and perhaps most worrying, is the relationship between AINT and the ABA. When the ABA review of 1984 recommended Aboriginal-led independence for the ABA’s granting function it envisioned that MREs would continue to flow to be applied to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT. The current arrangements fall way short of that historical proposal. Not only does the Minister currently control a larger financial pool than AINT, but her pool will grow with annual injections of MREs, while the AINT pool has no guarantee of growth irrespective of how much resource extraction occurs on Aboriginal-owned land in the NT.

It strikes me that the immediate struggle to gain some Aboriginal control of some ABA funds has been successful. One could argue optimistically that ‘from little things big things grow’ and with time AINT will persuade future governments to transfer a greater proportion of MREs to AINT on an ongoing basis. Less optimistically one might argue that some of the structural shortcomings in the ALRA amendments foreshadowed in 2021 will undermine any attempt to productively deploy a share of MREs ‘to or for the benefit [and unquestionable need] of Aboriginal people in the NT’. It beggars belief that during five years of negotiation to amend ALRA between 2016 and 2021 some of these fundamental problems were not considered and resolved.

 

JCA 8 April 2026