Governance Update: ALC and related corporations

 

… we have done but greenly

In hugger-mugger to inter him.

Hamlet Act four, Scene five.

 

In a recent post updating developments on Groote (link here), I noted that Groote Holdings Aboriginal Corporation GHAC) had inexplicably withdrawn its Little Paradise EIS proposal before the NT EPA (link here). I also commented on the termination of the former CEO, Mr Mark Hewitt, in October 2024 and canvassed the possibility that his termination payment which appeared to have been approved by Minister McCarthy included amounts linked to his executive roles with GHAC and Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd (which is 70 percent owned by the Anindilyakwa Advancement Aboriginal Corporation (AAAC).

Subsequent governance developments included the resignation of Mr Hewitt from his role on GHAC on 1 November 2024, and from his role as CEO and Director of Winchelsea Mining (date unknown). In April 2025, following a selection process managed by Indigenous owned recruitment agency Pipeline Talent based in Canberra, the ALC announced the appointment of a new CEO, Matthew Bonson (link here). A Gurindji, Jawoyn and Torres Strait Islander man, Mr Bonson is a former ALP member of the NT Legislative Assembly and Minister (link here). According to the National Indigenous Times (link here), he took up the CEO role on 29 April 2025.

In February 2025, the ALC approved an updated set of Ministerially approved Board Rules which lay out the processes which apply to the operation of the ALC Board and its meetings (link here). A new requirement which arose from the recommendations of the Bellchambers Barret review was that the Board appoint an Independent Board Adviser (section 16). The Board appointed Yamagigu Consulting, an Indigenous owned advisory corporation linked to Deloittes to act as the Board Adviser and to develop a new governance framework in consultation with the NIAA (link here).

Eight months on from the termination of Mr Hewitt as CEO of the ALC, there is still a cloak of secrecy around the detailed operations of the ALC and NIAA’s somewhat ambiguous and entwined relationship with the implementation of the post ANAO audit governance reform agenda. As yet, there is no publicly available information on the outcome of the Yamagigu work on a new governance framework; perhaps this will be rolled out once the NACC hands down its report into the investigation of the NIAA referral of Mr Hewitt. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly clear that the operations of the ALC and the associated corporations entrusted with implementing and progressing the ALC’s high level strategic agenda for Groote (including the proposed Winchelsea mine) have begun to stall and falter.

Groote Holdings Aboriginal Corporation (GHAC) is responsible for the Little Paradise development and the Aquaculture projects which have been significant recipients of section 64(3) funding from the ALC. According to GHAC’s submissions to the NT EPA, the Little Paradise project is designed to provide considerable logistical and base camp support for the proposed manganese mine being developed on the adjacent Winchelsea Island by Winchelsea Mining whereas all recent descriptions refer to community training facilities and the like.

For reasons that are unclear, GHAC was unable to lodge its 2024 financial statements and hold its AGM in a timely manner. On 12 March 2025, ORIC granted an extension to the required date of 30 November for the AGM (bizarrely and presumably in error the new date was 31 January, predating the letter). The GHAC Directors Report and the GHAC financial statements for the year to June 2024 were signed off on 16 December 2024 but not uploaded to the ORIC website until March 2025. The financial statements, in a section titled “Events after reporting date’ confirm that the former Managing Director of GHAC Mark Hewitt resigned on 1 November 2024 and the newly appointed Acting Chief Operating Officer, Mr Lino Bruno undertook a review of ongoing projects which led to the role of Chief Operating Officer being made redundant. Mr Bruno is listed on the Winchelsea Mining web site as the manager of Marine Services for Winchelsea Mining. According to GHAC ‘s reports to the NT EPA, the Operations Manager was Xiaoli Liu and thus following the decision to make the position redundant she was presumably entitled to a payout. Ms Liu is Mr Hewitt’s spouse. The timing and focus of these developments suggest that a redundancy payment for Ms Liu may have been part of the termination arrangements for the ALC CEO discussed at the 16 October Board meeting and according ot th Senate Estimates brief released under FOI (link here) apparently approved by the Minister in early 2025.

Anindilyakwa Advancement Aboriginal Corporation (AAC) is the majority owner (70 percent) of Winchelsea Mining. According to the ORIC website, AAAC missed the statutory deadline for both the 2023 and 2024 AGMs. A November 2024 letter from ORIC refused to allow a request for an extension of he 2023 AGM, and a March 2025 letter agreed to an extension of the 2024 AGM (strangely with the same date error as in the GHAC letter discussed above). ORIC have not published the correspondence requesting the extension, so the reasons provided to ORIC by AAAC remain unknown. Nor is it known whether AAAC have in fact held the relevant AGM’s.

Unlike GHAC, AAAC is yet to lodge its 2024 financial statements and thus remains in breach of the requirements of the CATSI Act. It is unclear what action, if any, has been taken by ORIC to address this non-compliance. The AAAC’s 2023 financial statements show that in the 2022 and 2023 financial years, the ALC provided $12.7m to AAAC in section 64(3) payments for the project design, feasibility and environmental studies required in relation to the proposed mine. The Winchelsea Mining web site (link here) includes a series of undated photographs of the completed GHAC workers basecamp at Little Paradise thus providing further confirmation of the centrality of Little Paradise and GHAC to the proposed mine. As I mentioned in a recent post, in July 2024 the NT EPA requested additional information on an extensive list of issues form Winchelsea Mining and has asked for an updated EIS to be submitted within two years.

ALC CEO: status

On 18 July an anonymous comment was added to a recent post on this blog stating: “looks like ALC have lost another CEO. resigning after 3 months is surely a sign of issues”. I endeavoured to confirm this development and have been advised by a reliable source that the newly appointed CEO, Matt Bonson, has resigned after a disagreement with the Board. I have however been unable to formally confirm Mr Bonson’s departure. There is nothing on the ALC web site, nor has the Minister made any announcement. I have messaged the ALC but have not received a response. I spoke to an adviser in the Minister’s Office on 25 July seeking a comment from the Minister but have so far not received one.

Given the silence, it seems highly likely that Mr Bonson has in fact resigned. If correct, this suggests that the instability inside the ALC continues and is likely worsening. The overwhelming silence and lack of transparency from both the ALC and the NIAA in itself is a sign of a deep and ongoing management crisis. It is worth noting that the existence of the Board Adviser appears to have been of little use in resolving whatever disagreements were in play in the lead up to the resignation.  

There seem to me to be two possible generic reasons for the short tenure of the new CEO. First, perhaps the recruitment process was flawed or there was some level of interference in the process. There is no evidence on the public record that this in fact occurred. Alternatively (or perhaps additionally) the expectations of Council members (and their families) for access to resources or financial benefits may have exceeded the preparedness of the new CEO to approve or facilitate. Available information on the public record suggests the previous management regime at the ALC was prepared to facilitate an extraordinarily generous allocation of resources from various sources to ensure the maintenance of broad support for the ALC’s wider agenda. Such an approach would almost certainly have raised expectations amongst Board members regarding what is normal and their due. It is also possible that there were multiple informal arrangements in place that a new incumbent would not have been aware of or would not have been prepared to continue.

While there is no definitive proof in the public domain, the pervasive conflicts of interest which existed and the persistent criticism emerging regarding the way the ALC operated under the former CEO adds weight to the possibility that expectations of generous access to financial and other resources reached high levels within the Council’s membership. The fact that notwithstanding their extremely light regulatory oversight, the NIAA were ultimately prepared to refer the former CEO to the NACC also suggests financial expectations may have been and may continue to be excessive. The fact that the Council publicly supported the former CEO right up until the NIAA attended the Board meeting of 16 October 2024 and likely directly intervened to force the CEO’s resignation (perhaps based on intelligence shared by the NACC or perhaps by the increasing accretion of worrisome media stories alleging various forms of misfeasance against the former CEO) suggests that the Council and its members were deeply conflicted. It is salient that the NIAA appear to have directed their complaint to the NACC only against the former CEO and not against the Council as a whole notwithstanding that the Council signed off on virtually all arrangements that facilitated any potential wrongdoing. In other words, it appears that the NIAA were operating on the assumption that the Council was co-opted by the former CEO.

In these circumstances the fact that the new CEO has decided to resign is of particular concern. It suggests that the ALC is at risk of reverting to modes of operation that predated the CEO’s termination. I argued in a previous post (link here) that the facts as we know them are consistent with the NIAA in effect coercing the ALC into terminating the former CEO. If this was in fact the case, then the risk of reversion to former expectations and modes of operation are even more likely to eventuate.

Of course, my analysis is constrained by the fact that there is a complete lack of transparency on the part of both the NIAA and the ALC. I may not have adequate information, and this in turn may mean that my conclusions are wrong. In my defence, all I can say is that I am doing the best I can in the circumstances and the analysis I have put forward is consistent with the facts as we know them. Moreover, why is it that the Minister, the NIAA and the ALC are so determined to provide zero information about the activities and operations of a Commonwealth agency established by statute to protect the interests of traditional owners on Groote Eylandt? It seems to me that it is just as likely that I am underestimating the risks and damage to the public interest as overestimating the risks in relation to the ALC’s effectiveness and probity.

It is my considered view that the most important issue here is not whether the former CEO engaged in corrupt conduct, or whether he breached his legislative responsibility. The most important issue by far relates to whether the ALC can effectively undertake its statutory remit. I have absolutely no confidence that the ALC as presently constituted, and operating under a management culture developed over a decade by a person the NIAA has referred to the NACC, has this capability. The former CEO of the ALC clearly bears some responsibility, but the primary responsibility must fall on the Minister and her predecessors who have allowed the ALC to operate in ways which are inconsistent with the intent of the legislation governing statutory corporations in this space, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA). Responsibility also falls on the Parliament and its committees, in particular the relevant Senate Estimates Committee which has since the publication of the ANAO report on Groote in May 2023 failed miserably to interrogate the issues in play despite considerable evidence being presented to them.

The result has been that the ALC has overseen an ongoing process which privileges the high risk ownership and development of a small mine built on the redirection of substantial section 64(3) royalty equivalents to a narrow constituency of beneficiaries (including select traditional owners, consultants and potential employees who may or may not be Indigenous, and the non-Indigenous co-owners of the Winchelsea mining company) over investments in social, educational, cultural and environmental capabilities across the wider Anindilyakwa community. The reality is that this is not just about whether an economic resource should be developed, it is about whether scarce and finite royalty equivalent payments explicitly designed to compensate local Aboriginal people for the impacts of extensive manganese mining on Groote should be allocated away from Anindilyakwa people to benefit the coalition of largely non-Anindilyakwa interests mentioned above.

In Shakespeare’s time, the word ‘hugger-mugger’ meant ‘secretly, stealthily or furtively’. In more modern usage, it has come to mean disorderly or sloppy. Synonyms include ‘chaotic, cluttered, jumbled, and confused’. The ongoing strategy of the Minister, NIAA and the ALC to avoid informed public discussion about the developments on Groote over the past decade are unashamedly and synergistically hugger-mugger in both senses of the term. The losers will inevitably be the wider Anindilyakwa community on Groote, including future generations, and the public interest more generally.

 27 July 2025

A spokesperson for Minister Malarndirri McCarthy has provided the following comment:

The Minister has been informed by the Anindilyakwa Land Council that Mr Bonson has resigned from his position.

28 July 2025

The Yoorrook Justice Commission Final Report: Reaction and implications

 

A wretched soul bruised with adversity,

We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;

But were we burdened with like weight of pain,

As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.

Comedy of Errors, Act two, Scene one.

The Final report of the Yoorrook Justice Commission, the Victorian Royal Commission into systemic injustice against the State’s First Peoples has this week handed down its third and final report: Yoorrook: Truth Be Told (link here). The terms of reference can be found in Appendix One; the 148 recommendations from all three reports are spelt out in Appendix Two of the final report.

In this post, I don’t propose to attempt to summarise or even distil the broad arguments nor the recommendations in any comprehensive way. Rather I wish to take as my starting point two articles in The Australian in recent days (both of which are unfortunately behind a paywall) which were scathingly critical of the report, its methods and findings. On July 4, Henry Ergas wrote an article headlined ‘Yoorrook inquiry’s ‘truth-telling’ is an egregious fraud’ (link here). This was followed the next day by a Janet Albrechtson article titled ‘Tell the truth: we’re a single sovereign country’ (link here).

Ergas’s argument was to attack the Yoorrook Commission for adopting flawed historical analysis:

Cavalierly dismissing conventional evidentiary standards, it replaces them by what it calls ‘a profound assertion of First Peoples’ ongoing sovereignty over their stories, knowledge and futures. In its proceedings, it frankly states: ‘truth telling was not about debate’ — and indeed there was none. Nor was there any testing of evidence, presentation of contrary views or attempt to engage with critics. Comfortably ensconced in the realm of naked assertion, the commission found truth because it knew it.

He proceeds from this rhetorical platform to excoriate the commission for its discussion of genocide, for inciting ‘unvarnished arrogance’, and for encouraging further demands from Indigenous interests that are increasingly extreme and poorly founded. After questioning why it is that the ‘enormous ongoing transfers’ of land, royalties and public subsidies have failed to alleviate entrenched Indigenous disadvantage, he argues the report has ignored the possibility that these transfers are enriching a privileged elite while condemning entire communities to hope-destroying social pathologies.

Albrechtson using vigorous language zeroes in on a series of targets that constitute a comprehensive list of ‘woke’ or extreme left concerns (though she doesn’t use these terms): cultural safety, genocide, decolonisation of the education curriculum, recompensing publicly funded Indigenous staff for the ‘colonial load’ they carry, while blaming ‘ivory tower academics’ for inventing the concept. The core of her argument is the report’s failure to address or accept the following proposition:

After five decades of failed policies demanding separate rights with no mention of responsibility, this report demands that we formally and permanently cement victimhood into Australian law. … This report ….is a badge of shame…

The shame, in Albrechtson’s view, extends to the Andrews Government for commissioning the report and framing its terms of reference around systemic injustice, to the many elites who have ‘indulged a separatist project’ that leaves children to mull over ‘actionable cultural rights’ rather than their rights to physical and mental safety and extends to judges who ‘indulge themselves in undermining High Court authority’ when they announce that Indigenous sovereignty has not been ceded [in acknowledgements of Indigenous elders and country].

For Albrechtson, the issue of sovereignty is at the core of her argument. She argues that the Commission’s claims that Indigenous sovereignty was exercised before the arrival of the British and was never lawfully acquired by the British under international law, is both wrong and underpins the ‘entire edifice of separatism’ asserted by the Yoorrook Commission. In her argument, the 1979 High Court decision in Coe v Commonwealth is authoritative and not subject to question. She then argues that the ‘fundamental falsehood’ of Indigenous sovereignty drives a series of deeply flawed separatist demands that are both undesirable (she uses the term ‘unhelpful daydreaming’) and politically infeasible (‘taxpayers will surely baulk at having to fund this divided Australia’). This leads to the inexorable conclusion:

The ultimate tragedy of this report is that none of this political extremism is conducive to social cohesion.

The arguments advanced by both Ergas and Albrechtson are, in my view, intellectually flawed and compromised by their own ideological preconceptions. Ergas sets up a strawman built on principles derived from classical historiography to bolster his argument that the Commission’s processes could not amount to ‘truth-telling’ and thus should not be seen as credible. Yet the perspectives of those affected by government policies, whether those documented and considered by the recent royal commission into disability, or the royal commission into the robodebt fiasco, have not been criticised for their illegitimacy. Clearly the perspectives of citizens (whether right or wrong, refutable or irrefutable) matter in a democracy and it seems to me that governments have the right to establish a royal commission which inter alia seeks to ascertain and interrogate those perspectives.

Nevertheless, there is a distinction between the views and perspectives of citizens on policy matters generally and the need for objective criteria and rigorous analysis in determining effective policy. For example, The Australian has been an active participant in the debate on the nation’s ‘cost of living’ crisis driven in large measure by citizens with young families facing ever increasing house prices and high mortgage repayments. However determining appropriate policy responses requires consideration of broader macroeconomic factors, medium and longer term implications, impacts on other segments of the community, and indeed a broader comparative assessment of what is meant by ‘crisis’ in one of the top twenty wealthiest economies on the planet (link here), none of which detract form the legitimacy of the views of families under financial pressure. In other words, contra Ergas, I would argue that the Yoorrook Commission’s high-level narrative should not be dismissed as without value or as intellectually compromised; it is akin to an expression of widely shared concern. It serves some purposes very well, but not necessarily all purposes. For example, the concept of Indigenous ‘truth telling’ is clearly also a rhetorically or ideologically loaded term aimed at building or sustaining group solidarity and a sense of shared interests. Importantly it gives Indigenous citizens a sense that their voice extends beyond their own domain into the wider community and that voice is seen both symbolically and substantively as legitimate. Like advocacy from any interest group, it is not however necessarily a detailed roadmap for optimal policy reform in the public interest.

Albrechtson’s focus on the Australian legal system’s forthright refusal to recognise the existence of Indigenous sovereignty within Australian law is tendentious insofar as it ignores the possibility that forms of Indigenous sovereignty continue to exist within the Indigenous domain albeit without legal recognition at law. A parallel might be the example of native title: our legal system held that it didn’t exist (eg In the Milirrpum Case) until the High Court changed course and determined in Mabo No.2 that it could be recognised under various conditions. Once determined, native title over a tract of country is legally acknowledged to have always existed.

Moreover, while the focus on legal determinations is convenient, there are real world indications that Australian Governments have at times voluntarily diminished or compromised Australian sovereignty to achieve wider policy aims. The increasing encroachment of international trade agreements and trading rules is one case in point; the headlong expansion of the US presence in Australia (including arrangements that ostensibly enable the Australian Government to not be advised when the US brings nuclear weapons into Australia) are cases in point. In our 2019 Policy Insights paper Overcoming Indigenous Exclusion (link here), Neil Westbury and I provided an extended discussion on these issues, along with an analysis of the concept of shared sovereignty, a term used in The Uluru Statement from the Heart.

In other words, the High Court’s categorical legal assertion of absolute sovereignty is not necessarily inconsistent with the existence of coexisting forms of sovereign powers within the Indigenous domain, albeit only recognised by those Indigenous citizens who choose to do so. Nor is it inconsistent with the potential for the Australian Parliament to effectively delegate elements of the Crown’s sovereign powers. The possibility of future legal recognition of the exercise of such authority is both possible (but clearly not certain) and a matter which is legitimately able to be advocated for by Indigenous citizens.

The Yoorrook Commission was in my view entitled to reflect the views of those Indigenous citizens who aspire to see such reforms, and to recommend reforms consistent with those views. In this account, the oft-cited statement that Indigenous lands were never ceded can be interpreted both as a claim to the continued existence of an Indigenous sovereign status, and simultaneously as an argument for formal recognition of such status (on terms yet to be negotiated).

Albrechtson is on stronger ground in my view in relation to her concerns regarding what she terms ‘separatist demands’. It is not that I agree with her febrile rhetoric on the issue of separatism, rather it strikes me that the Yoorrook Commission has failed to contextualise and adequately account for the reality of the daily existence of Victoria’s Indigenous people.

Indigenous Victorians invariably lead modern lives, live in modern housing, drive cars or use public transport, use roads, and access government provided services such as garbage disposal, sports facilities, communications networks. They routinely engage in commercial behaviour either as consumers in private markets or as entrepreneurs. I could go on at length. As Noel Pearson has observed we all have layered identities, and Indigenous citizens are no different. While Indigenous citizens are inextricably entwined and interconnected with mainstream Australia, their Indigenous identity is crucially important. It would be misguided and morally unjustified for the nation to seek to erase that element of their identity, just as it would be inappropriate for the nation to seek to erase elements of non-Indigenous citizens’ identity. While Indigenous citizens are not separate, neither are they assimilated or uniformly mainstream. Unfortunately, the Yoorrook Commmission in my view gives inadequate attention to this reality, thus skewing the emphasis of its recommendations towards emphasising separateness over interconnectedness.

Of course, these issues are devilishly complex. Since colonisation occurred, Indigenous citizens have experienced violence, coercion, social and economic and cultural exclusion. These experiences have led to (or accompanied) loss of languages, poor health, discrimination and more. These consequences are in many respects ongoing and inter-generational and raise serious issues regarding how Governments (with their much-vaunted sovereign powers) should respond, how any such response should be framed, and what policies might be adopted to address those consequences. These are the issues that are encompassed by the term systemic injustice, the core element in the terms of reference of the Yoorrook Commission.

Where I part ways with Albrechtson in relation to separatist policy approaches is that it seems both morally unjustified and practically unwise to seek to prevent or avoid any open discussion with Indigenous interests about systemic injustice and its consequences. Her argument frames Indigenous concerns as politically extremist and then argues that such extremism undermines social cohesion. In turn, this justifies silencing this type of public policy advocacy. My view is that ongoing exclusion (structural and tangible) leads unsurprisingly to frustration and ultimately to more extreme views, and the politically astute remedy is to engage and include Indigenous interests in an open and transparent way regarding the way forward.

In essence, I am arguing for dialogue and mutual deliberation rather than unilateral silencing and suppression of legitimate perspectives which are the source of ongoing and widespread pain, trauma and social dysfunction. I am not arguing that Indigenous citizens deserve a blank cheque nor for a process that raises expectations that will never be met. Arguably the current approaches of Labor Governments in establishing what are effectively one-sided pre-treaty processes such as the Yoorrook Justice Commission (or the Morrison Government in establishing a Senior Advisory Group on the Voice Referendum) raise the expectations of Indigenous interests beyond what our political system is currently prepared to deliver. To the extent that this is the case, it is my view that the approach is misguided.

In relation to systemic injustice affecting Indigenous citizens, and given the reality of layered identities, the question of whether governments should focus specific policies and programs on those who identify as Indigenous or instead focus on wider need encompassing both mainstream and Indigenous constituencies comes to the fore. This will not always be a clean binary choice; often it will be clear which side of the line the answer falls, but in many cases, there will be legitimate arguments that the public interest will best be served with a dual approach. In many cases, the appropriate answer may be unclear.

My own perspective on how the nation should build on the work of the Yoorrook Commission and address these issues of systemic injustice can be summarised in seven propositions:

First, whether policies relevant to Indigenous citizens should be focussed on past events or present consequences is a legitimate subject for policy dialogue, debate and consideration. Given the reality of finite fiscal capacity within governments, there will always be trade-offs involved.

Second, whether particular policies should be designed as mainstream or Indigenous specific is a legitimate subject for policy dialogue, debate and consideration.

Third, the design of policies to address systemic injustice impacting Indigenous citizens should involve both mainstream interests and Indigenous interests and should focus primarily on the public interest broadly defined. To be clear, I am suggesting (perhaps controversially) that responsibility for resolving these issues and designing reforms should be shared between mainstream and Indigenous Australians, and therefore must be resolved by negotiation, not fiat.

Fourth, the usual processes of policy development for these high-level Indigenous policy frameworks have not worked and should be reconfigured to ensure a level of deep transparency. In my view, the existing practices of governments operating behind closed doors, and engaging with selected interlocutors in private will not find the compromises necessary to ensure durable solutions. We should not expect Indigenous interests to spend years developing policy proposals (four years in the case of Yoorrook) only for Governments to exercise a unilateral veto on whether to implement what has been proposed.

Fifth, governments, mainstream interests, and Indigenous interests should accept that the likelihood of a once only grand bargain (treaty) that solves all the issues encompassed by the existence of systemic injustice is a chimera. What will be required is a general commitment to a process that incorporates and engages with both the wider mainstream community and Indigenous communities as well as the interests that are most directly affected on both sides. This will take time but once initiated will engender trust and reduce the likelihood of backsliding by future governments. It also will allow for the iterative accretion of policy successes in relation to the more straightforward issues thus building the capability and experience necessary on all sides for addressing the hardest issues.

Sixth, the Commonwealth must be engaged in any such process, even where state-based processes are identified and set in motion. Our federal structure is too entwined for one level of government to resolve these issues on its own. Moreover, the Commonwealth has a responsibility, arising from the powers granted to it by the 1967 referendum. This suggests too that the Commonwealth lead agency should be a central agency (other than NIAA) able to take a holistic perspective of Commonwealth interests.

Seventh, it strikes me that the Coalition of Peaks and the framework established by the National Agreement on Closing the Gap should comprise the starting point for engaging with Indigenous interests in establishing such an ongoing process, although there might be grounds for expanding and modifying that framework to ensure greater inclusiveness. There is no reason why Indigenous interests could not reform their internal processes to enhance their negotiation capability themselves without government action.

Conclusion

I am sceptical that the Victorian Government has the capacity to engage substantively with the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s 148 recommendations, nor with the evident pain and concern that pervades the Victorian Aboriginal community. Without Commonwealth leadership and impetus, the most likely result will be the creation of further process, further delay and ultimately stagnation leading to irrelevance.

The process to date has clearly been worthwhile for Victorian Aboriginal interests, but to take the Commission’s work to a new level, there will be a need for Aboriginal interests to synthesise and prioritise the policy reforms that will have most impact and consider carefully their strategies going forward.

The lesson I draw from The Australian is that their aggressively critical perspective is a forerunner of what is to come and lays down a roadmap that more conservative interests will use to seek to suppress and prevent the greater social, economic and cultural inclusion of Indigenous interests.

The lesson from the Voice referendum for both mainstream and Indigenous interests is that strategic considerations, preparedness to compromise, and a unified and professional advocacy capability will be crucial in grasping the opportunities that flow from the work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

Finally, the stark choices facing both the Victorian Government and Indigenous interests in taking the Yoorrook Commission report forward are either win/win or lose/lose. There is no halfway house. Whichever outcome is chosen will have long term national implications, and shape not just Victoria, but the nation as a whole for generations to come.

 

11 July 2025

Addendum:

A reader brought to my attention the Victorian Government's response to the Yoorrook Commission's  second report (link here) which provides a template for the likely response to this third report.

FOI updates on the ALC and Groote Eylandt

In natures infinite book of secrecy

A little I can read.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act one, Scene two.

 

FOI revelations. The NIAA FOI log contains two recently released documents that expand the information available in the public domain albeit only at the margin. I have also had access to documents released in response to a third FOI but not yet made available on the Disclosure Log. In this post, bolded text has been added by me to emphasise matters of particular salience to the arguments made here. The highlights below were highlighted in the documents provided by NIAA.

Request One FOI/2425/039 dated 30 January 2025 (link here).    This request sought the NIAA’s proposed response to a series of questions on notice from Senator Pocock in late 2024 (which had presumably been delayed in the Minister’s Office and not seen the light of day when the request was made). Once made available, it revealed that the NIAA’s Group Manager Integrity had attended the ALC Board meeting on 16 October 2024 ‘to support Board discussion regarding Mr Hewitt’s employment arrangements.’  The ALC terminated the CEO’s employment at that meeting. NIAA failed to respond substantively to the Senator’s request for information on what legal or policy advice had been provided to the ALC Board by the NIAA attendee.

Request Two FOI/2425/065 dated 14 April 2025 (link here).  This request relating to the February 2025 Senate Estimates hearings (link here) sought All briefs prepared by the agency for the Minister, her staff, senior staff of NIAA, and other Ministers or portfolio agencies which relate to the governance and operations of the Anindilyakwa Land Council, associated corporations in receipt of royalty equivalent payments, the proposed Winchelsea mine, the 2023 ANAO Audit of the ALC; the National Anti-Corruption Commission investigations in relation to Groote Eylandt matters; and/or Groote Eylandt generally."

The response comprised two documents prepared in February 2025. The first document included the following dot points under Key Talking Points:

·       The Ministerial response to the petition was tabled on 29 February 2024. The response states that the Minister has referred the issues raised in the petition and media articles to the NIAA’s Integrity Group for review and referral to relevant Commonwealth and Territory agencies if required.

·       The NIAA received some information that was subsequently referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

·       As part of NIAA’s response, the NIAA commissioned an independent review of the ALC’s responses to the issues and recommendations of the ANAO audit.

In a section headed ‘If asked: What is NIAA doing to address the concerns in relation to ALC governance?’, the brief discussed the Bellchambers Barrett Review, referring to it as ‘independent’, and confirming that that the Group Manager Integrity had determined the scope and composition the review. 

The brief then states:

• The ALC CEO and Board fully cooperated with this independent review….

• In my capacity as NIAA Integrity Group Manager, I accompanied the independent reviewer to Groote Eylandt on 27 and 28 May 2024 to gather additional evidence and meet with the ALC Board and management.

• On 24 Sepember [sic] 2024, I also attended Groote Eylandt to provide the newly elected ALC board members a walkthrough of the issues review report.

• On 15 and 16 October 2024, I attended Groote Eylandt to work with the board members to support their next steps in progressing the governance arrangements of the ALC board.

A second document was the brief prepared for the NIAA CEO.

The CEO brief confirms that the ALC has engaged Yamagigu Consulting to act as Independent Adviser to the ALC Board and to develop a governance framework in consultation with the NIAA. Yamagigu is associated with Deloitte Australia.

The CEO Brief states:

·       The August 2024 Bellchambers Barrett review concluded that while significant progress has been made by ALC since May 2023 across the ANAO’s 15 recommendations, none had been fully implemented.

·       The Minister wrote to the ALC Board on 29 August 2024 to advise she was extremely disappointed to read the review’s conclusion.

In a section headed Former Chief Executive Officer Mark Hewitt, the Brief notes:

• The ALC Board terminated the employment of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Hewitt on 16 October 2024 ….  

• The termination payment made to Mr Hewit [sic] was in accordance with his contract of employment and provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009.

o If asked: Did the Minister approve the termination payment?

o [placeholder - brief was provided to the Minister for approval in February 2025].

• The CEO’s tenure had been a matter for the ALC’s Board.

• The NIAA is aware of public concerns that Mr Hewitt allegedly misused royalties and directed funds into a mining company in which he is a director.

• The NIAA referred the former CEO to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) in July May* 2024. [*Correction made by NIAA FOI Team]

Request Three FOI 2425/066 dated 19 May 2025. This request sought briefing notes and associated file notes and records related to the attendance by NIAA officers at the ALC Board meeting in mid-October 2024 and all records of communications with the Minister or her Office in relation to the attendance at the ALC meeting or in relation to discussions with Mr Hewitt. Six documents were identified as being within the scope of the request. Access to three (documents 1, 2 and 4) was refused in full on the basis that they were legal advice that was subject to legal professional privilege. The remaining documents were released in part. Extensive sections were redacted on the basis of personal privacy exemptions.

Document 3 was an email to either the Minister’s Office or senior NIAA officers dated 18 October 2024 advising inter alia that the ALC had terminated the CEO and had appointed the ALC’s Chief Financial Officer Colin Wakefield as interim CEO.

Document 5 is an email trail dated 5 November 2024 beginning with a request for a brief to support a meeting between the Minister and the ALC the following day. NIAA’s Group Manager Integrity provided a series of talking points under the heading Update on ALC CEO status. After listing the date of the termination, the appointment of an interim CEO and the ALCs intention to appoint a recruitment firm, the brief stated:

·       As part of the termination process, Mark has resigned from the positions of Executive Director Groote Holdings Aboriginal Corporation (GHAC) and CEO of Winchelsea Mining

·       The Boards of GHAC and Winchelsea are considering next steps following Mark Hewitt’s termination, including engagement of an independent advisor to assess current operations and the required way forward.

Document 6 is a NIAA brief to the Minister dated 25 October 2024 responding to the ALC Chair’s correspondence dated 16 October advising that the Board had terminated their CEO. Under a heading Key Points, the NIAA noted that the Chair had advised that the CEO had been terminated ‘on notice’ by the ALC and that the ALC Board had been considering Mr Hewitt’s position for some time. The brief then stated:

5. It is understood ALC will be submitting a supplementary budget request shortly to cover Mr Hewitt’s final entitlements.

 

Commentary on FOI documents released:

What jumps off the page in the documents provided in response to Request One is the determined effort by both the Minister and NIAA to keep the Minister at arm’s length from whatever is going on. This signals, in turn, either prior knowledge of misfeasance within the ALC, a statutory corporation in the Minister’s portfolio for which she is responsible, or an appreciation that the events unravelling on Groote and within the ALC were in some way potential political time bombs.

At least two other issues arise from the Request One documents. First, the close involvement of the NIAA in the Bellchambers Barrett Review – which as I have pointed out previously was focussed solely on the ANAO recommendations and not on the detailed issues identified - (including collecting evidence) and the ‘cooperation of the ALC CEO and Board’ raise serious questions regarding the Review’s independence.

The second issue concerns the reason for the Group Manager’s attendance at the Board meeting. In the response to Senator Pocock’s questions, it was stated that it was ‘to support Board discussion regarding Mr Hewitt’s employment arrangements.’ In the Estimates brief, it was ‘to work with the board members to support their next steps in progressing the governance arrangements of the ALC board’.

The visit took place in the context of a series of previous events: the prior visits to Groote by the Group Manager; a letter from the Minister to the ALC expressing her ‘extreme disappointment’ in relation to the poor ALC response to the Review that her agency had been involved in developing for months; the referral by the NIAA of the former CEO to the NACC four months previously. The visit coincided with the NACC attendance at the ALC Office on Groote to obtain evidence. Given NACC protocols to allow it to work with Commonwealth agencies on investigations, it is possible that the NIAA had been provided with progress reports by the NACC. The differences in the explanations set down in the two documents, although nuanced and not definitive, point to something more than NIAA engaging in a purely passive support role. Why else would legal advice have been necessary (bearing in mind that the ALC employs its own legal advisers)?

The complete absence of any preparatory briefing (except perhaps the emailed legal advice), as well as the absence of any file notes recording the ‘support’ offered by the NIAA officer suggests a deliberate effort to avoid future scrutiny and serves to reinforce the sensitivity (and potential irregularity) of the discussions. This is the bureaucratic equivalent of a police officer turning off his/her bodycam prior to engaging with a person of interest.

The Request One CEO Brief (document two) confirms that notwithstanding NIAA’s awareness of allegations that ‘Mr Hewitt allegedly misused royalties and directed funds into a mining company in which he is a director’, and their decision to refer the CEO to the NACC presumably in relation to at least these allegations, the ALC decided to pay Mr Hewitt an unspecified termination payment and the Minister appears to have been asked to approve that payment in February 2025. This strikes me as unusual insofar as if it was entirely consistent with the CEO’s land council employment contract and assuming that the contract which has never been made public adheres to standard employment practice), there would have been no need to obtain the Minister’s approval. On the other hand, if the ALC proposed to pay any amount related to his termination as CEO of GHAC and/or Co-CEO of Winchelsea Mining, the ALC may well have found it necessary or convenient to seek ministerial approval for an expansion of its section 64(1) operational budget approval or for an approval under section 36 of the ALRA (link here). I have previously argued that the former CEO’s simultaneous roles constituted misfeasance insofar as the ALC CEO salary set by the Remuneration Tribunal is for a full-time position, and it seems unlikely that the Tribunal’s approval was sought and granted for the CEO to engage in additional paid employment.

The fact that the document 5 of Request Three makes clear that the Mr Hewitt resigned from his roles on Winchelsea and GHAC ‘as part of the termination process’ adds to the likelihood that the Minister was made aware of and agreed to termination payments for Mr Hewitt linked to a notice period for these roles. Importantly, the apparent willingness of the ALC to intrude financially into the internal affairs of GHAC and AAAC/Winchelsea Mining (apparently with the tacit assent of the NIAA)  also reinforces the argument I have made on numerous occasions that the ALC exercises effective control over these corporations through the allocation of section 64(3) payments and is thus in effect allocating royalty equivalent funds to itself in contravention of the intent of the ALRA.

The CEO Brief also confirms that NIAA’s referral to the NACC was in May 2024, a year after the ANAO report was issued. The allegations mentioned above that likely formed the basis for the NIAA referral of the then CEO to the NACC were two of numerous concerns described in the ANAO performance audit over a year before the referral. Why then did it take a year for the Minister and NIAA to make the referral? And what changed to persuade them to act in May 2024?

As I have long argued in my posts on this blog, there appears to have been a deliberate and sustained attempt by NIAA and the last two Ministers to ignore and downplay the concerns raised by the hundreds of signatories to the February 2024 petition to Parliament and the numerous serious issues raised by the ANAO report. Whether intentional or not, it amounts to complicit behaviour with respect to these issues. As mentioned above the tactic adopted was to establish a review that focussed solely on the ANAO recommendations, and to ignore the myriad concerns and red flags raised in the detail of the 2023 ANAO report. What is less clear is why this policy of regulatory neglect was pursued.

I have long taken the view that not only were there shortcomings in the ALC’s management processes, but that the NIAA and its ministers have failed in their role as the ‘regulator’ oversighting the operations of the ALC and particularly its royalty and royalty equivalent distributions.

The unexplained termination of the ALC’s CEO in October 2024, the determined efforts of all involved to downplay those events, the complete absence of any justification or rationale form the ALC, and the secrecy imposed until now on the termination payments made to him notwithstanding the concerns that were significant enough to underpin a yearlong investigation by the NACC, suggests that there is much more to this than is currently available on the public record.

One hypothesis that is consistent with the facts as we know them is that the Government decided (utterly belatedly) that the ALC should terminate the CEO to set up a situation where a potentially adverse NACC report could be defended with the blithe response that the individual responsible for whatever egregious flaws are determined to have existed has already been dealt with. Persuading the ALC would be simple: the Minister had the leverage of only partially approving the ALC’s budget for 2024/25 as well as numerous ways in which to make the land council’s ongoing operations difficult. Persuading the former CEO (and his spouse) to depart quietly would be trickier. The offer of generous termination payments would assist, but other inducements are also conceivable. In this scenario, the ongoing silence of the terminated CEO would be more securely achieved if the termination payments were accompanied by a formal non-disclosure agreement.

Concluding comment

In my view, the pervasive veil of secrecy that has been thrown over this whole episode would be necessary only if the decisions taken were not able to be justified according to law and were not able to meet the so-called ‘pub test’. The fact that questions from Senator David Pocock have been ignored or answered with misleading diversions serves to emphasise the determination of the Commonwealth to avoid public scrutiny. The fact that the veil of secrecy remains substantially in place merely reinforces doubts regarding the appropriateness and propriety of the actions (and inactions) of ministers and the NIAA related to the oversight of the ALC over the past decade.

The issues and concerns raised by the ANAO and by the concerned community members who signed the 2024 petition to Parliament are yet to be addressed in any rigorous and comprehensive way. The fact that the NACC is investigating unspecified matters without any transparency in relation to the focus of its investigation is no substitute for an open, transparent and rigorous examination of what has transpired.

Unfortunately, the reluctance to initiate such a forensic and strategic review appears to be an essential element of the Commonwealth’s approach to the operations of the ALC (and also reinforces the likelihood that the hypothesis outlined above is in play). This means that we are reliant on the efficacy of the various accountability institutions with a role on Groote to ensure that the systemic issues that allowed the imbroglio on Groote to emerge and to flourish are identified, and curtailed. I don’t see the NACC as the institution best placed to address these systemic issues (though I hope they at least go some of the way to doing so).

The ANAO in my view should step up. It could undertake a follow up report to its 2023 performance audit. It might also take a long close look at the issue of the effective control by the ALC over the corporations involved in the Winchelsea mine and the Little Paradise infrastructure hub, and which are in receipt of ongoing and significant flows of royalty equivalents. A decision to qualify the annual financial statements of the ALC (and the concomitant ramifications of such a decision) would go a long way to addressing the systemic defects in the current sector wide administration of the ABA and ALRA.

 

25 June 2025