… 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inexplicably withdrawn its Little Paradise EIS proposal before the NT EPA (link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.
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
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