The Commonwealth policy pivot to Indigenous economic empowerment

  

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

Hamlet Act three, Scene one.

 

According to Senator Lidia Thorpe, the Prime Minister’s speech at Garma last week was an exercise in ‘optics” (link here). An editorial by the National Indigenous Times (link here) headed ‘Economic partnership or political theatre? Government’s Garma plan questioned amid worsening outcomes’ opined:

Yet there is reason to question whether this latest suite of announcements represents real change or another layer of process wrapped in new branding. Closing the Gap targets remain in crisis. Many indicators are worsening, particularly in the Northern Territory where Indigenous incarceration rates are among the highest in the world and child health outcomes lag far behind the national average.

The Prime Minister’s speech at Garma (link here) represents the culmination of the Government’s post referendum pivot to economic empowerment first articulated by the Prime Minister at Garma in his 2024 speech to Garma titled Economic Empowerment for Indigenous Australians (link here). In his 2024 speech he committed his government to take up the challenge to pursue a ‘comprehensive economic policy challenge for Indigenous peoples.’ He announced that the Government was creating a new First Nations economic partnership building on the work of the Coalition of Peaks and the nascent First Nations Economic Empowerment Alliance.

The recent 2025 speech was followed by a more detailed media release outlining the specific details of what is being proposed (link here). The key announcement is the release of the text of the new First Nations Economic Partnership Agreement between the Commonwealth and the Coalition of Peaks and the First Nations Economic Empowerment Alliance (link here). To be clear, this Partnership Agreement is national in scope and represents a new and complementary addition to the institutional framework established in 2020 with the establishment of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.

There are two new elements to the structural architecture of this agreement: the first is the addition of the First Nations Economic Empowerment Alliance (FNEEA)  (link here) as a formal party to the Agreement; the second is the absence of the states and territories from the Agreement (in contrast to the National Agreement on Closing the Gap). I can see arguments both for and against having the states and territories involved, and on balance see the undoubted and direct involvement and engagement of the Commonwealth as a strong positive. There is no reason why the Commonwealth could not engage with relevant states and territories on relevant issues either through the regular meetings of the (so called) National Cabinet, through the Joint Council on Closing the Gap, or through targeted engagement with relevant states and territories as needed.

The key institutional changes foreshadowed in the PM’s speech and the associated media release were the references to making better use of capital and equity in special investment vehicles such as the North Australia Infrastructure Fund (NAIF) and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and ‘ensuring’ these agencies ‘are delivering for First Nations communities across Australia’. Both of these foreshadowed changes remain opaque however as they are subject to detailed development by the parties to the new Partnership Agreement.

I have long been a critic of the NAIF’s failure to allocate resources to infrastructure investment in remote Indigenous communities (link here and link here). The latest review statutory review of the NAIF undertaken by former Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, Dr Lisa Caffery and Professor Peter Yu was delivered two months late (link here) to the Minister for Northern Australia, Madeleine King in February this year and is yet to be publicly released (link here). One might be forgiven for thinking that the report has been warehoused to inform and feed into the new Partnership’s deliberations. On my reckoning it must be published by 1 September (the NAIF legislation requires the minister to table it within fifteen sitting days of receipt). Whether the Review’s yet to be revealed recommendations will emerge unscathed from the further prolongation of partnership review and the possible necessity for legislative amendment are moot.

A second potentially important institutional change is a proposal for the Partnership to consider ways to enhance the work of Indigenous Business Australia and the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation, two key statutory corporations in the Indigenous Australians portfolio with economic development focus. Again, it is not clear what is intended here, although there are suggestions in the publications on the website of the FNEEA that they see potential for the considerable financial assets of the ILSC’s associated Land Fund and the IBA’s very healthy balance sheet to be made more accessible for commercial investment across the Indigenous estate.

For those who wish to dig even deeper, the NIAA FOI log (link here) includes a series of detailed policy recommendations prepared in 2019 by the Indigenous Reference Group to the Ministerial Forum of Northern Australia which canvass the issues of access to capital, land tenure reform, and NAIF reform in considerable detail. In 2019, the IRG was chaired by Professor Peter Yu. I would merely note that the devil is in the detail on these types of suggestions.

In terms of financial announcements, the Prime Minister announced an intention to make available $75m in additional funding for Prescribed Bodies Corporate (PBCs), the entities that are established to legally hold native title. I have long been an advocate of the Commonwealth moving to provide universal core funding for these bodies (link here), yet again it is unclear if the funding will be made available immediately or be delayed while the new Partnership decides on the scope of the reform of the funding model. According to data sourced from the NNTT, in August 2024 there were 280 PBCs (link here). Assuming the $75m is appropriated over three years there will be less than $90k available for each PBC each year in additional funding. This suggests that the prospect of allocating the funds equally across all PBCs will not be feasible, but the deeper take out is that the proposed funding allocation is entirely inadequate. Even were the $75m an annual appropriation, this would remain the case. The Treasurer’s comment (attached to the Prime Minister’s media release) that ‘we’re investing to equip Traditional Owners to leverage their land and sea assets to get better deals and bring jobs and wealth to First Nations communities’ is arguably factually accurate, but simultaneously an over-exaggeration of what is being provided. It will no doubt provide significant and welcome assistance to some native title groups but is not the wide-ranging reform that the Commonwealth’s media spin meisters would have us believe.

On closer examination, the Prime Minister’s announcement of $70m in Clean Energy funding refers to an Expression of Interest process which will feed into the development of a series of funding allocations to yet to be determined Clean Energy projects. The first step initiated on 4 August is to seek expressions of interest from potential project proponents. The available $70m will be allocated over three years (ie around $23m per annum) and the process by which the expressions of interest will be transformed into funding appears quite opaque (link here). What seems most likely is that the Department will allocate the available funds to projects which are already planned or underway. While the amount appears significant, and no doubt the successful applicants will appreciate the assistance, the reality is that this is a sophisticated form of virtue signalling rather than a developed strategy to drive significant impetus to expand existing energy provision frameworks.

The inarguable modesty of the Government’s funding announcements belie the Prime Minster’s rhetoric. Speaking of the significance of Garma, and framing his speech with the gravitas and aspiration accorded to the rites of serious policy contributions, the Prime Minister extolled:

this is a place for ideas, ambition – and accountability. Where we learn from the past, are honest about the present and ‘look up to the future’.

Given this ceremonial tone and rhetorical over-reach, what are we to make of this Prime Ministerial ritual at Garma? What is its purpose? What does it mean?

Perhaps the first point to make is that I am far from alone in expressing a degree of scepticism regarding whether to take the Prime Minister’s announcements at face value. The National Indigenous Times has reported critical comments from a number of prominent Indigenous individuals. As well as Senator Lidia Thorpe, Megan Davis (link here), Wayne Bergman (link here), Katie Kiss (link here), Denise Bowden (link here), all expressed either explicit or implicit reservations about aspects of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous empowerment strategy.

My own scepticism derives from the combination of four quite separate arguments. However, before listing those arguments, it needs to be stated up front that creating the conditions that facilitate improved economic security for Indigenous citizens, especially those who reside in remote Australia must be a key policy objective of Australian Governments.

Economic security is multifaceted and can not be encompasses by focussing solely on metrics such as income, or wealth, or employment status, or wellbeing. These are all useful measures but have complex causation and varying levels of durability and utility. Absolute measures are important, but so too are comparative measures as these play into complex issues such as relative status, degrees of social and political inclusion or exclusion. Further, both absolute and comparative measures of economic wellbeing or status are impacted by the social, political and economic environment within which thy exist. To make an extreme point, a healthy bank balance is no help in a famine. Or to make the same point in a more relevant way, for so long as there is an alcohol and drug epidemic across remote Australia (and I am not referring only to Indigenous people), then the underpinnings of Indigenous economic security will be unachievable (link here).

In turn, it becomes clear that ‘economic empowerment’ may well be a useful shorthand to describe a particular policy agenda, but unless carefully defined, it runs the risk of being utilised for essentially ideological reasons. In particular, there are indications in the FNEEA publications that the implicit policy agenda being developed under this terminological carapace is designed to shift policy priorities away from so called ‘welfare’ or ‘social’ sectors and towards institutional reforms and government funding allocations designed to support and benefit Indigenous access to revenue or profits-based wealth creation activities (commercial projects). Clearly there is a place for a focus on wealth creation and enterprise in any economic strategy, but in my view not at the expense of more basic economic foundations.

The arguments which suggest that the Prime Minister’s policy pivot to Indigenous economic empowerment should not be taken entirely seriously encompass both inherent shortcomings in the strategy itself and importantly what is not there or is under-emphasised.

First, the strategy represents a shift away from focussing on improving and reforming the foundations of economic security (which I would list as comprising education, employment, health / ableness, housing and community order). Each of these five elements are under enormous pressure in remote Australia and as I have argued for almost two decades (link here) these government shortfalls mean remote Australia is approaching a point of systemic breakdown or failure. Shifting policy attention to wealth creation (or economic empowerment) while ignoring essential reforms addressing deep-seated and ongoing government failure in the underlying elements of economic security would be fundamentally flawed policy.

Second, the strategy represents a pathway which can be utilised to reframe the public debate around the closing the gap agenda (yet again) in ways that allow governments to escape the annual reminders of their unwillingness and incapacity to allocate the intellectual and political resources as well as the funding necessary to successfully and substantively close the gap. Short term tactics work in the short term but ultimately don’t deliver strategic reform. The economic empowerment agenda sounds plausible and will buy the government time, and if Treasury can find an acceptable political path forward, it may buy time for another decade. However, eventually such a policy approach will fail because it is not based on rigorous policy analysis, ignores the fundamental drivers of economic security, and is not based on a transparent dialogue with all affected interests.

Third, the strategy creates the preconditions for the systemic co-option of the Indigenous leadership. Negotiations in private, combined with the increasingly parsimonious approach to transparency by the Commonwealth and other governments means that the temptation to ‘buy’ support from the Indigenous leadership for sub-optimal policies will be difficult to resist going forward. While the FNEEA Charter (link here) includes apparently robust individual conflict of interest provisions (see clause 10.5) related to the business of the Alliance, and the Partnership Agreement (link here) similarly includes sections on managing individual conflicts of interest and transparency (see sections 66 to 70), the inherent ‘commercial’ confidentiality involved in some aspects of the Partners’ discussions, the deep-seated reluctance of the Commonwealth to engage the wider public in policy issues, and the ultimate power imbalance between the Commonwealth and the First Nations partners means that there will inevitably be a heightened risk of inappropriate influence being applied either to individuals or to the Partners as a whole. The only effective protection against this is much greater commitment to transparency. For example, all funding to the First Nations Partners should be automatically made public, and the responsible Ministers should be required to make an annual statement to Parliament detailing all significant communications with, and funding decisions taken relating to, the First Nations Economic Empowerment Partnership.

Fourth and finally, the elephant in this policy room is the failure of the Commonwealth to address in any meaningful way the existing and ongoing use, and in some cases misuse, of financial benefits flowing from resource development on Indigenous land. The challenges involved are extraordinarily complex and raise difficult ethical and philosophical questions that cannot be addressed by unilateral government fiat. At a minimum, there is a need for much more robust regulatory oversight, and much more proactive financial literacy education. Most importantly however, there is an urgent need for an ongoing and open discussion around the overarching policy frameworks guiding the use, allocation and distribution of negotiated financial benefits by Indigenous landowners, and the potential alternatives which might be considered to ensure more equitable distributions overall, and greater savings and investment by beneficiaries rather than immediate consumption. The current free-for-all around the distribution and use of financial benefits reflects extremely poorly on the Commonwealth governments of the last thirty years. Any attempt to ‘empower’ Indigenous landowners without addressing the underlying rationales and impacts of these substantial and essentially unregulated financial flows is akin to using a fuel bowser to fight a fire.

Taken together, these four arguments constitute an overwhelming case for a comprehensive reconsideration of the current policy pivot by the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the short-term political calculus strongly favours what I would characterise as a cynical policy framework with enormous opportunity costs, substantial risks (which will be borne by current and future generations of remote Indigenous citizens) and a limited contribution to the longer term public interest.

For an alternative view, I recommend readers take a look at the submission to the upcoming Productivity Round Table by Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) (link here). IBA is a member of FNEEA.

Conclusion

The Albanese Government pivot to Indigenous economic empowerment is in my view deeply flawed policy. It is not based on the rigorous policy analysis necessary to underpin a major shift in policy and political focus. The pivot will raise expectations but not deliver except for a minority of commercially and politically astute Indigenous entrepreneurs. Because institutional reform is so hard, it risks devolving into a focus on picking a slew of individual projects where Indigenous involvement can be facilitated and subsidised. Picking winners is fine until you begin picking losers. The pivot will steal oxygen from the policy discussions necessary to reform the underlying policies constraining the sustainable delivery of the real elements of economic security and thereby avoid the hard discussions with the states and territories who control many of those policy levers. The substantive import of the flawed logic appears to be: why argue about reforming housing provision, education, disability reform, employment, alcohol harm or hyper incarceration when the prospect of universal wealth is within our grasp. Additionally, the pivot portends the overhaul of the closing the gap policy framework by creating a plausible and intuitively attractive alternative policy framework.

The fundamental problem with this policy pivot by the Albanese Government is its role in allowing the Commonwealth to avoid the fundamental and necessary reform challenges in those crucial policy sectors that ensure economic security especially in remote Australia where Australia’s most disadvantaged citizens reside. It is an economic policy in name only; like Rumpelstiltskin, it promises to spin straw into gold.

 

6 August 2025

                                                                                                                                                                

Remote crisis: déjà vu all over again and again and again and again …

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Macbeth, Act two, Scene three

I sat down to write a post that considered the recent media stories regarding the ongoing crime wave in the NT, NAPLAN, Closing the Gap, the extraordinary Indigenous unemployment levels in remote Australia and the ongoing and worsening incarceration crisis in the NT including the hyper-punitive response of the current NT Government. Then I realised that in doing so without the necessary contextualisation, I would be entering the perpetual motion machine that controls and shapes our media cycle and ensures that we never stop and ask how did we get here? I haven’t done the detailed research to write such a post, but my intuition told me that it was more important just now to remind readers of the underlying dynamics and forces which are shaping the outcomes that feed into daily life in remote communities, major towns like Katherine and Tennant Creek, and our daily media diet in south eastern Australia.

One way to do this is to list and link to the previous posts I have written on the theme of remote crisis. Below I list most (but perhaps not all) of the posts I have written on this topic since January 2022. I could have gone back further, but there is already more than enough material to digest. For each post, I have selected a short excerpt which illustrates some of the issues in play. The excerpts do not necessarily encompass the major argument of each post, and are not always the key point, but they do make in my view a contribution to providing the context that assists interested readers in forming a judgment of the underlying issues and causes in play when we read about the latest outrage or tragedy. I have left text bolded where I bolded it in the original post. I do recommend readers dip into at least some of these posts.

 

1.    Energy insecurity in remote Australia 13 January 2022 (link here)

The abstract of a recent academic article states:

Indigenous communities in remote Australia face dangerous temperature extremes. These extremes are associated with increased risk of mortality and ill health. For many households, temperature extremes increase both their reliance on those services that energy provides, and the risk of those services being disconnected. Poor quality housing, low incomes, poor health and energy insecurity associated with prepayment all exacerbate the risk of temperature-related harm … We find that nearly all households (91%) experienced a disconnection from electricity during the 2018–2019 financial year. Almost three quarters of households (74%) were disconnected more than ten times. … A broad suite of interrelated policy responses is required to reduce the frequency, duration and negative effects of disconnection from electricity for remote-living Indigenous residents.

 

2.    See How We Roll 24 January 2022 (link here):

It strikes me that this is, more than any other I have come across recently, an important book for policymakers engaged in shaping policy in the Indigenous domain. It shatters preconceptions regarding the distinction between remote and urban contexts, and makes clear the parallels between disadvantaged Indigenous people and other disadvantaged citizens. Most importantly, it should make policymakers question their assumptions and preconceptions regarding Indigenous life choices, and the potential for policy instruments and measures of various kinds to articulate or engage with the altogether different world views and approaches to living of many Indigenous people.

 

3.    The ongoing social and governance catastrophe in remote Australia 8 May 2022 (link here):

In October 2009, Nicolas Rothwell, writing in The Australian, published a scathing analysis under the title ’The failed state’… Rothwell’s opening sentence sums up his argument: ‘The Northern Territory is a lost cause’. He goes on:

There is, though, a failed state in our midst. That state is not Aboriginal north Australia, where the social fabric is in shreds and tatters. No: it is the jurisdiction largely responsible for entrenching this degree of Indigenous disadvantage: the modern-seeming, self-governing Northern Territory.

I quoted these observations in an earlier post in August 2016 (link here)… I would add however that the responsibility for entrenching Indigenous disadvantage is shared with the Commonwealth.

 

4.    Systemic myopia: Public investment challenges in remote Australia.19 December 2022 (link here):

To sum up, over the past two decades at least, public funding in core capital investments related to essential services, social housing, and community infrastructure has been severely deficient. This has undoubtedly reduced the levels of recurrent funding by governments in remote settings, and also limited the opportunities for local employment, and stronger economic development and progress. It is undoubtedly one of the key contributors to limiting the opportunities available to the rapidly growing youth cohort within communities. While reversing the sustained under-investment is not sufficient to address all the challenges facing residents of remote communities, it is a necessary element in any viable transition to a more stable future for remote communities. The onset of climate change is making addressing these challenges even more urgent.

 

5.    Cataclysm and Crisis 10 December 2022 (link here):

The inability of governments to envisage, understand and put in place effective strategies to address the multiple facets of the economic and social cataclysm facing remote communities amounts to a massive and fundamental failure. This failure is in and of itself a crisis; a crisis of governance capability, a crisis of will power, and ultimately a crisis of government legitimacy.

 

6.    Alice Springs crisis: observations on remote policy. 25 January 2023 (link here):

The Alice Springs hospital has 16 beds in its Intensive Care Unit. Minister Burney mentioned that she was shocked to learn that last night, 14 of those beds were taken by women who had been the victims of violent assaults. This window into the lived experience of too many remote women and their families is more than a warning of the seriousness of the rolling crisis across remote Australia. It is more than a prompt for governments to take action. It is more than an indictment on the quality and legitimacy of our systems of governance across northern Australia. It is damning evidence of the complicity and responsibility for these outcomes of those Australians (myself included) who take an interest in public policy. 

 

7.    The ongoing remote housing debacle 5 March 2023 (link here).  

In conclusion, the policy choices made over the past five years in relation to remote housing are retrograde and will have very real consequences: for taxpayers, for the population of remote Australia, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and most importantly for the residents of these overcrowded and under-maintained houses across remote Australia. Over fifty percent of those individuals are under 25 and the overcrowding will have lifelong consequences for the opportunities that are within their reach.

 

8.    The structural underpinnings of the tragedy in Yuendumu 10 March 2023 (link here):

Yes, at the micro level, individuals on both sides of the cultural divide, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have and had agency. But they were and are operating within an overarching set of institutional structures which have been in place for decades and were either explicitly designed to constrain and control Aboriginal people’s lives, or reflect longstanding and entrenched structures of underfunding that were oblivious to, and independent of the level of need. If we wish to prevent further micro level tragedies, we as a nation must move beyond allocating blame or responsibility at the micro level and also address the macro level issues. Micro and macro are both part of a single social system, one that is responsible for both extensive social and cultural harm, and ongoing mainstream governance failure.

 

9.    Dodge dip and dive: eight ‘data points’ on remote policy 1 May 2023 (link here):

What is clear however is that given the synergistic interactions of multiple policy domains, the current model of policy design and implementation has not worked. This raises the potentially unsettling prospect that, at a fundamental systemic level, governments and policymakers are not incentivised to take the policy decisions that are required to make a substantive difference to the policy challenges that exist. Instead they are incentivised to manage difficult issues, oil squeaky wheels, and engage in a performative ritual designed merely to persuade an electorally significant non-Indigenous constituency (and a less electorally significant, but more animated, Indigenous constituency) that they are doing what is required to address the policy challenges that surface periodically in the public consciousness.

A recent review of a book on Boris Johnson (link here) described his motto for governing as ‘dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge’. As it turns out, this is an extraordinarily apt description of the systemic approach of Australian governments to remote policy challenges.

 

10. The remote community education scandal in the NT 24 September 2023 (link here):

It is time that the Commonwealth accepted that the NT Government is incapable of delivering remote education in a manner consistent with the public and national interest, and in such a way that it actually delivers outcomes. These poor outcomes are feeding directly into the social dysfunction that is endemic in parts of remote Australia, and which I have previously argued is a slow burn catastrophe (link here).

 

11. Looking ahead: the architecture of Indigenous policy in 2050 1 March 2024 (link here)

My advice to First Nations and progressive mainstream interests, and in particular their peak advocacy groups, would be to invest as much as possible in building their capabilities to advocate for Indigenous interests, to focus squarely on the absolute deficits in remote policy outcomes, including education, employment, housing and essential infrastructure, and to pursue a strategy of simultaneously protecting the institutional frameworks that presently exist, while pursing incremental change across the breadth of the public sector. In particular, Indigenous advocacy interests should explore avenues to gain much greater independence from Government funding as it comes with a hidden cost; the silence it implicitly requires reduces the necessary pressure on governments to fix the extraordinary policy problems that exist across the board, and the social and economic catastrophe that exists in remote Australia.

 

12. The ongoing attendance crisis in remote schools 10 September 2024 (link here):

In relation to remote attendance, there is a need for the Commonwealth to step up and acknowledge it for the national crisis it is…. The Commonwealth should work with the states cooperatively on these issues, but devise incentive-based payments to the states and territories rather than indulging in the politically driven negotiation that currently predominate. Robust support to Indigenous community leaders aimed at encouraging and assisting them to raise expectations of parental involvement within their communities are essential. But so too are getting financial resource allocations for schools better targeted, and if necessary increased. Rewarding effective teachers much better and ensuring that the curriculum is focussed on the needs of the least capable cohort of students are both — to use a colloquial expression — ‘no brainers’. This suggests that the adoption of curriculum methodologies (such as Direct Learning) that do not allow any student to fall behind must be a priority.

 

13. Infrastructure shortfalls in Alices Springs town camps 24 December 2024 (link here).

What is particularly clear from the Guide is how exclusionary institutional complacency emerges in myriad instances of quite prosaic neglect: the absence of footpaths, of surveyed lots, of safe play grounds for children, of street signs, of shade and community shelters; in short, this neglect reflects the longstanding and widespread refusal of mainstream institutions such a local governments to see their roles as universal rather than sectional. The details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the impacts are longstanding and have a certain consistency….

The authors and publishers of the Guide to Housing and Infrastructure Standards in Town Camps have made an extraordinarily significant contribution to laying the groundwork for better advocacy for remote Indigenous communities on essential services reform both in Alice Springs, but importantly across northern Australia. They deserve wider recognition and indeed acclamation. What is also clear is that without the efforts of Tangentyere and its community leadership over almost 50 years, the progress made to date on the town camps would not have been possible. Their historically significant work is not yet complete; I only hope that it will not be another fifty years before Aboriginal people in town camps in Alice Springs and beyond are included as fully entitled citizens in the provision of essential services.

 

14. Indigenous hyper-incarceration: a remote problem? 24 January 2025 (link here):

One data point quoted stood out:

As of January, the Northern Territory hit a grim milestone. More than 1% of the territory’s total population is now incarcerated in adult prison.

….

It is the case that the process of colonisation turned the world upside down for Indigenous people across the nation, and the people of remote Australia are generations closer to that social cataclysm.

Mainstream Australia cannot undo those social processes, and the world has moved on for all Australians. However, given the clear evidence of deep dysfunction arising from those social processes that were neither chosen nor desired by Indigenous people, and the impacts those changes inevitably imposed and continues to impose, the nation and its policy elites must be prepared to consider policy options that turn established modes of policy formulation upside down. Not to do so would amount to an extraordinary admission of national policy failure. Indigenous incarceration is just one of the impacts that arise from widespread social and economic dysfunction across remote Australia and woven through pockets of urban and regional Australia.

 

15. Misdirected focus: the case for institutional policy reforms to alcohol supply 18 March 2025 (link here):

The subliminal message from the NIAA then is don’t look to the Commonwealth to drive institutional policy reform, its someone else’s responsibility. See this page on their website too (link here). For what it’s worth, I just don’t buy that argument.

The appendix to the NIAA submission ( #140 at this link) which I strongly recommend readers seek out and read very usefully provides a comprehensive and powerful snapshot of the impacts of alcohol on various sectors. Here are a few data points I have cherry picked from the NIAA submission appendix:

… First Nations people were 4.2 times as likely to die from alcohol-related causes as non-Indigenous Australians. They were also 3.8 times as likely to die from alcoholic liver disease, and 4.7 times as likely to die from mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol use….

AOD are involved in more than half of all police-reported family and domestic violence incidents in Australia, and are likely to be involved in a substantially greater proportion of all family and domestic violence…. For homicides in the period from 1989–90 to 2016–17, 72% of First Nations offenders were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident, as were 71% of First Nations victims…

If Australia was serious about reducing Indigenous incarceration,…  reducing family violence within Indigenous contexts, … improving Indigenous health status, … [and] improving socio-economic status within the Indigenous community, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia was serious about closing the gap, the Commonwealth would step up and lead, and one of its first steps would be to implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

Unfortunately, it is quite clear from a close reading of this report that neither the Government nor the Opposition are serious about any of these issues.

 

16. The Domestic and Family Violence crisis in the NT: a symptom of wider chaos 29 April 2025 (link here):

The Northern Territory is in a state of perpetual governance crisis, where underfunded schools are no longer fit for purpose, jobs are not within reach of young Aboriginal kids, alcohol and drug abuse is rife, as is domestic and family violence, and where violence and mayhem are increasingly spilling into the major towns and cities….

The problems in the NT have been decades in the making and have their roots in the failures of governments at all levels to adequately support the maintenance of a viable social and economic institutional infrastructure in remote communities. Reversing this longstanding policy neglect is not susceptible to some quick fix. In recent years however the systemic dysfunction in remote communities that governments have been prepared to tolerate for decades because they were metaphorically ‘out of sight’ has begun to colonise mainstream Territory cities and towns….

One way or another, remote Australia requires more serious policy attention (as opposed to political froth) from national policymakers. A good first step would be to progressively and incrementally strengthen controls across the board (ie mainstream and Indigenous) over the availability and price of alcohol. But much more than this will be needed to reverse the progressive decline in governance and its silent handmaiden, economic security, that is currently underway and gathering momentum. The alternative to serious reform is progressive decline into systemic chaos not just in remote communities, but across the NT and potentially elsewhere in remote Australia. Unfortunately, it seems things will have to get much worse before the political willpower to reform will emerge either in Canberra or Darwin.

 

1 August 2025

 

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.