Formidable Challenges Part Two: the pervasive conflicted interests permeating the Winchelsea mine development process

  

Oh, I have ta’en too little care of this.

King Lear, Act three, Scene four

The issues discussed here comprise a critique of the adequacy of the approval processes for the proposed Winchelsea mine (which are laid out in Part One of this Formidable Challenges post) and are in many respects merely an extension and reinforcement of the analysis included in my previous posts on this Blog, in particular my November 2025 post The Angels Weep (link here), my January 2026 post ANAO financial audits and the case for ALRA reform (link here), and my February 2026 post, The rough torrent of occasion (link here).

A central issue raised in the documents listed in Part One of Formidable Challenges relates to the potential for conflict-of-interest arising from the fact that the exploration and mining agreements required by Commonwealth and NT legislation involved negotiation between two parties, the ALC and Winchelsea Mining. The Chair of the ALC was Tony Wurramarrba (now deceased) and the ALC CEO was Mark Hewitt (now terminated). Two of the four Directors of Winchelsea Mining were Tony Wurramarrba and Mark Hewitt ostensibly representing the majority shareholder, the Anindilyakwa Advancement Aboriginal Corporation (AAAC). In other words, the Groote based senior officeholders in both the ALC and Winchelsea Mining were identical. The ALC, whose core statutory function under the ALRA is to protect the interests of traditional owners is required to negotiate the terms of any mining on Anindilyakwa Aboriginal land. Thus, in the negotiations between the ALC and Winchelsea Mining, the two senior officeholders on both sides of the metaphorical negotiating table were Tony Wurramarrba and Mark Hewitt. I have referred to this situation in Part One as the ‘dual roles’ of the two office holders.

The attachments to Document B1 (a DPMC brief to Minister Scullion dated 18 September 2018) include the correspondence from the ALC Chair and ALC CEO dated 15 August 2018 to the Minister outlining inter alia their proposed strategy for managing this potential conflict (paragraphs 16 to 18). Documents A4, a submission from the ALC dated 14 September and appended to the ALC correspondence to the Minister of 14 September and attached to the DPMC brief in Document A1 relate to the consultation processes for the exploration licence application agreement. These various documents contain a detailed account of the arrangements put in place by the ALC ostensibly aimed at ensuring that the ALC Chair and CEO played no role in influencing the ALC’s strategy in negotiating the two agreements, and there are formal statements indicating that the ALC Board was explicitly advised that Mr Wurramarrba and Mr Hewitt represented, and should be treated as representing, Winchelsea Mining in all discussions.

The DPMC brief largely describes in a factual manner the proposed disclosure and non-participation arrangements in relation to the mine consultation processes to be followed by the ALC Chair and CEO laid out in the ALC correspondence. It notes that the ALC engaged external legal advice from Arnold Bloch Liebler (ABL), noted that the ALC had reduced the CEO’s remuneration package (to be reviewed in 12 months) and that the ALC Mining and Environment Manager would assume administrative responsibility of ALC matters related to Winchelsea Mining.  It seems probable that ABL were engaged very late in the consultation process, though neither ALC nor PMC made this clear in their advice to the Minister. The Department expressed a minor concern that it appeared that the ALC had not confirmed that they had been advised of the proposed remuneration the Chair and CEO would receive from Winchelsea Mining and provided suggested correspondence seeking clarification. There was no general expression of concern as to the workability nor the wisdom of the conflict mitigation arrangements proposed by the ALC. As noted in Part One, the released documents do not include the signed copy of the brief nor a copy of the signed letter if it exists. The letter attached to the brief was (inappropriately in my view) excluded from the FOI release on the basis that it was a draft. The fact that the final letter has not been identified or released in response to the FOI request, and nor has a version of the ministerial submission with his annotations suggests that the Minister never sent the letter expressing the PMC concern to the ALC. In turn, this decision suggests that the Minister did not wish to ask for advice that he knew would reveal and document (and thus record his knowledge of) the extent of the financial benefits flowing to the two senior ALC officers from their dual roles.

Part of the implicit justification for the existence of these arrangements (see paragraphs 4 to 8 of the PMC brief) was that the AAAC Rule Book provides for the representation of the ALC Chair and CEO on the Winchelsea Board. This glosses over the fact that the ALC (or at least its key officeholders including Mr Hewitt and perhaps Mr Wurramarrba) assisted in the incorporation of AAAC in December 2017 with the specific purpose of taking over the extant exploration licence applications on Winchelsea Island and surrounding areas. Those officers included this provision in the AAAC Rule Book, thus establishing the potential conflict which they then ostensibly sought to mitigate.

Up until the death of the former Chair and the termination of Mr Hewitt in 2024, the two clans who are the traditional owners of Winchelsea Island and provide the entirety of the Directors of AAAC had no representation on the Winchelsea Mining Board of Directors notwithstanding that the AAAC theoretically controls Winchelsea through its 70 percent majority shareholding. This is yet another instance of the ALC exerting potential (and thus effective) control over a local corporation to which it has also provided s64(3) funding at its discretion.

The ALRA provides that once an exploration agreement is approved, the traditional owners cannot refuse to provide their consent to mining. However, it does require a mining agreement be negotiated by a land council and then approved by the Minister, but his/her ability to refuse consent at the mining lease stage is limited to a determination of inconsistency between the terms of the licence and proposed lease, and/or that the national interest requires refusal (refer s47(3) of ALRA). It follows that the consideration of the application for an Exploration License is in many respects much more consequential than the ministerial consideration of the proposed mining lease.

In the Brief to Minister Scullion in relation to the approval of the Exploration Licence agreement (Document A1, para 9) the Department fails to alert Minister Scullion to the implications of section 47 of ALRA. The brief states

The material provided by the ALC supports the assertion it has complied with its statutory obligations in these matters and the Department recommends you give the consent and approval requested.

Note the ambiguity in this sentence revolving around the words ‘supports the assertion’. The ALC supporting material outlines a rather bizarre consultation/negotiation process, outlining extensive meetings over six months or so in 2017 (see para 7.15) culminating in a majority (and perhaps unanimous) vote by a group of traditional owners of Winchelsea Island approving terms of a proposed exploration licence agreement to be negotiated with Winchelsea Mining which was yet to be established (see para 7.10; the nature of the vote has inexplicably been redacted on personal privacy grounds. This redaction may be intended to hide the small number of traditional owners who provided their consent). This was followed by a confirmatory meeting to confirm the decision of traditional owners at a meeting on 14 September 2018 attended by an un-named PMC officer and un-named Winchelsea Mining representatives (para 7.14). Whoever the Winchelsea representative was, there is no record of any constraint operating to prevent them subsequently identifying to the Chair and to Mr Hewitt any traditional owner who argued against the proposal. This is a significant flaw in the process. The ALC formally approved the exploration agreement on 10 September 2018, eleven months later. The extent to which the Winchelsea traditional owners were ‘as a group’ consulted on the final agreement is left unclear. The Chair and CEO absented themselves from the part of the ALC  meeting which considered the mining agreement and did not vote (see para 4.4). There is no indication that they had been absent from the consultations throughout 2017, and no indication that they had not been involved in Winchelsea’s framing the proposed approach to exploration (a matter that in theory may have been of concern to Winchelsea shareholders).

The issue of the addressing the potential conflict of interest of the ALC Chair and CEO by requiring that they not participate in the final meeting of the whole process has all the markings of being an afterthought. What is clear is that Minister Scullion in providing his approval for the exploration agreement implicitly confirms that he accepted the dual roles of the Chair and CEO on both the ALC and Winchelsea Mining. The Department, by virtue of recommending his approval without raising substantive concerns, did the same. The brief was copied to the Secretary and senior echelons of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and to the Prime Minister’s Office. Based on my experience at senior levels of government over 30 years, I find it difficult to comprehend how in these circumstances such a brief could have been prepared and provided to a Minister, and inconceivable that a Minister who took his responsibilities seriously could have approved it.

The approval of the proposed mining agreement by Minister Wyatt was based on two briefs provided by NIAA in June and July 2021. They were based on consultations undertaken by the ALC extending from November 2020 through to March 2021. Documents B2, B3 and A10 refer.

The issue of conflict of interest (in contrast to the Exploration Agreement process discussed above) is dealt with in detail in the equivalent summary of the consultations outlined in Document A10. See the detailed processes put in place presumably on legal advice (see section 5). While those processes were orders of magnitude more comprehensive than what occurred at the Exploration Agreement phase, they did not relate to the provision of consent, and more importantly were to my mind seriously flawed and inadequate for the following reasons. All of these reasons also operate to undermine the legitimacy and probity of the decision processes on the exploration lease agreement.

First, their effective operation is limited to the formal engagements of the Chair and the CEO of the ALC with issues related to the proposed Winchelsea mine. Second, I understand that the then Chair’s spouse was on the Board of the ALC, and privy to all discussions about the agreement. Third, from 2018 through to 2024, the CEO’s spouse Sophie Liu was employed in the ALC Royalty Development Unit as well as Groote Holdings Aboriginal Corporation and Winchelsea Mining (link here) and was likely privy to agreement related information either formally or informally. Fourth, it seems highly likely that up to three AAAC Directors were also Directors of the ALC during the relevant period yet were not required to declare a potential conflict of interest. ALC Directors in March 2021 included Archie Jaragba, Lionel Jaragba, and Silas Bara all of whom had involvement in AAAC as members and Directors and were also potentially conflicted.

Adding some further heft to my critique, it is worth noting that the ANAO in its May 2023 Performance Audit (link here) was critical of some elements of the consultation processes related to the mine (see paras 3.74-3.76), including poor information on risks, poor record keeping and inadequate processes for updating traditional owners on changes subsequent to their approval. Consistent with its narrow focus on its remit, the ANAO did not consider let alone form a conclusion on the matters I have raised above and below.

Like Minister Scullion, Minister Wyatt implicitly acknowledged and accepted the dual roles for both the ALC Chair and CEO. As with Minister Scullion’s decision, it is difficult to conceive how a Minister charged with the responsibility to be satisfied that the land council has complied with its statutory responsibilities to protect the interests of traditional owners could approve a formal agreement infected with so many potential conflicts.

In relation to both Minister Scullion’s and Minister Wyatt’s approval processes the most fundamental potential conflict of interest went unacknowledged. The mitigations proposed in both cases to deal with the dual roles of the two statutory officeholders, inadequate as they were, applied only to the negotiations of the two agreements which required ministerial approvals. Yet the potential conflicts arising from their dual roles extended well beyond those processes, including to the subsequent approval of section 64(3) payments to Aboriginal corporations directed to mine related investments.

Neither Minister Scullion nor Minister Wyatt appeared to have given any consideration to the ongoing risks involved in these processes. It is unclear if the Department/NIAA ever provided advice to the two Ministers about this matter, but to date there has been no document released which suggested that they did. In any case, it was the Ministers who were ultimately responsible, and who failed to take the remedial action that would have prevented the apparent misallocation of those funds.

In my previous post The Angels Weep, I recounted advice to the Estimates Committee that suggests that in excess of $70m may have been misallocated by the ALC in supporting the proposed mine. The ANAO in its May 2023 Performance Audit of the ALC (link here) identified the risks of actual conflicts of interest arising from these dual roles as being high. It documents funding decisions by the ALC which overtly favoured applications sponsored by the CEO on behalf of GHAC and AAAC, corporations in which he was involved either directly or indirectly and which were focussed on supporting the proposed mine. See paras 4.45-4.50. But the ANAO stepped back from overt criticism of the CEO in relation to those risks perhaps in deference to the fact that both ministers had implicitly approved the dual role arrangements. The ANAO also documented the excessive costs and the potential conflicts of the Chair of the ALC Audit and Risk Committee but stepped back from overt criticism of either the accounting firm involved or the ALC CEO who oversaw the appointments and the apparently excessive payments involved. In my view the ANAO was unduly cautious; it identified the dots, but declined to connect them, an approach that allowed the Minister and NIAA to fudge the import of the ANAO report and thus facilitate the persistence of the status quo ante within the ALC for over a year.

Following the ANAO audit, one might have expected Minister Burney to reconsider the approach adopted by her two predecessors and initiate robust action to improve governance oversight of the ALC. Instead, as documented in many of my previous posts, she prevaricated and fudged the issues and so has Minister McCarthy (who was an Assistant Minister in the portfolio during Minister Burney’s tenure). In my recent post ANAO financial audits and the case for ALRA reform, I suggested the existence of

a deeper malaise characterised by ongoing and increasing financial risk, and the possibility of wider social consequences that are not visible through the lenses used by governments and their bureaucracies. In my view, that malaise extends to the absence of effective regulation by successive ministers and their agency, NIAA. 

The documents now released under FOI serve to reinforce these conclusions, and make crystal clear that former Ministers have made egregiously poor policy decisions that appear at best to amount to maladministration and which are at the root of the governance failures which have pervaded the ALC. The evidence embedded in the documents released so far suggest that PMC and NIAA failed dismally in providing Ministers with both forthright and high-quality advice. It was only after a scathing media story based on information from an ALC whistleblower identified an attempt by Mr Hewitt to be granted a substantial equity share in Winchelsea Mining, that the NIAA (presumably instructed by the Minister) referred the matter to the NACC for investigation. Since October 2024 when Mr Hewitt was terminated, there has been a revolving cascade of changes at the senior levels of the ALC.

As I write this, the ALC Annual Report for 2025 due at the end of October 2025 is not yet available, the AAAC financial reports for 2024 and 2025 have not been published as required by the CATSI Act, and there have been no filings to ASIC by Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd since 2024. ORIC have an investigation underway into GHAC but have not provided any reasons for why they are taking this action. The ALC appear to have stepped away from their commitment to assist these corporations representing traditional owners and which was the rationale they provided to Senate Estimates to justify their intense involvement in the Winchelsea mine proposal. And of course, some two years since complaints were first made to it, the National Anti-Corruption Commission is still considering whether to issue a report in relation to matters related to the operation of the ALC on Groote. Notwithstanding all this, the last two Senate Estimates Hearings have allocated negligible time to ALC issues. 

There are two elephants in the room which no-one with formal oversight responsibilities wishes to acknowledge, let alone discuss. The first is that the problems emanating from the potential conflicts of interest involved not just Mr Hewitt, but the former Chair Mr Wurramarrba, and potentially extended to numerous other individuals beyond those two. Moreover, in terms of their formal decisions, the ALC Board were fully supportive of the strategies being pursued by the Chair and the CEO from the beginning until Mr Hewitt decided, a month before his termination from all roles on the Groote Eylandt, to offer to resign as CEO to allow him to focus on the operations of Winchelsea Mining. In this respect, there are logically two possibilities: that the ALC Board members were effectively manipulated by the architects of the Winchelsea mine proposal to provide the ongoing formal support required; or, the ALC Board was fully committed to the strategy of developing the mine based on their independent and considered assessment, a strategy that they suddenly reversed without explanation at a potential cost in excess of $70m to the traditional owners of Groote. Neither option is attractive to contemplate, but it requires contemplation and consideration if the reforms necessary to ensure the current problems and recent mistakes will not be repeated and the necessary reforms are identified and put in place. My basic point is that the responsibility for whatever adverse findings and adverse outcomes emerge over the next few years cannot be laid solely at the feet of one individual, the former CEO Mr Hewitt. The issues within the ALC extend beyond one individual.

The second, and more significant elephant in the room is that successive Ministers have made egregious policy errors which in my view amount at best to maladministration and which have led to disastrous outcomes for the residents and traditional owners of Groote Eylandt. Again, whether the Ministers were merely incompetent and poorly advised, or were disposed to prioritise political advantage over the public interest is unclear. Without full transparency, concerned citizens and taxpayers cannot form a judgment. Whichever reason applies, citizens and the traditional owners of Groote Eylandt (as well as the wider Australian public) have a right to expect better.

It is significant that it has taken eight years for the documentary evidence of direct ministerial involvement in, and knowledge of, these conflicted roles within a Commonwealth statutory corporation to emerge into the public domain. Remember, this is a statutory corporation with responsibilities for the protection of traditional owner interests and the allocation of millions of dollars in compensatory financial benefits related to existing mining operations. Throughout this period, and continuing to the present day, ministers and governments have deliberately attempted to obfuscate and distract attention. The continuation of efforts to avoid transparency merely serve to raise further questions about what drove the initial decisions and continues to drive the inability to lay myriad unanswered questions to rest.

In my view, the Commonwealth has both an obligation and a long-term incentive to establish a necessarily independent and wide-rangeing investigation process that will allow such a comprehensive consideration to occur. While determining whether corrupt conduct has taken place is important, it is not necessarily the remit of the NACC to expiscate the broader systemic issues that have allowed the significant misallocation of funds appropriated by the Parliament for the benefit of traditional owners, and they may well decide not to do so. If that occurs, at least three years will have been wasted. The establishment and subsequent handling by NIAA of the previous investigation undertaken by Bellchambers Barrett avoided the issues related to the potential misallocation of funds and gave no consideration to the conduct of agencies and ministers; consequently, it was deliberately designed as a diversion, and has undermined the credibility of the recent ministers within the Indigenous Australians portfolio.

In any case, the ongoing failure to address the underlying causes of the myriad policy challenges facing the ALC will mean that the responsibility for the egregious policy errors that have torn the ALC apart and set back the aspirations and life-opportunities available to the Anindilyakwa people will continue to taint the operation of the ALRA, and the legitimacy of governments and their officials.  

The ALC have recently appointed their fourth acting or permanent CEO in less than two years. Without reflecting in any way on the new CEO’s capacity and ability, I believe the structural forces that have been in play, and which likely continue to operate, are such as to make the prospects of him delivering or oversighting sustained reform well-nigh impossible.

For the Commonwealth, and in particular the Minister for Finance who has responsibility for the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA), the continuing challenges facing the ALC represent a test case for the robustness and effectiveness of the whole system of Commonwealth public sector administration. If the ALC were a local government in any jurisdiction in Australia, it would be facing the prospect of an Administrator being appointed. In my view, strong grounds exist for the Prime Minister to request the Minister for Finance to step in and make arrangements for the direct oversight the operations of the ALC for the next three years or so to ensure that there is a sustained return to complete compliance with the ALRA and the PGPA. Such a step would have the additional benefit of providing the Government with an independent perspective on desirable systemic reforms to the financial architecture underpinning the ALRA more generally and create the foundations to underpin the reforms that are required to ensure that the ALRA survives another fifty years. Without robust and decisive action by Canberra, the prospects of the ALC avoiding a governance meltdown over the coming five years will be close to zero. If this occurs, the reputation and legitimacy of the Commonwealth public sector will suffer yet a further body blow.

Whichever course is chosen, the challenges ahead for both the people of Groote Eylandt and the Commonwealth public sector will be formidable.

 

29 March 2026

Alice Springs crisis: observations on remote policy

 

Tis much when sceptres are in children's hands,

But more when envy breeds unkind division:

There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.

Henry VI, Part 1, Act 4, scene 1

 

Yesterday, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, and three Indigenous Labor MPs (Patrick Dodson, Marion Scrymgour, and Malarndirri McCarthy) visited Alice Springs to meet with the NT Government, and local community interests.

 

I am loathe to write too much about the unfolding situation in Alice Springs given the amount to material being published in mainstream media. I don’t propose to set out a comprehensive account or summary, and instead would refer readers to the front page reports in the Australian, the ABC and the Guardian over recent days. Below is a quick snapshot of my posts in relation to alcohol policy in remote Australia over the past year or so. I include them to both provide some deeper background, and more importantly to make the point that for close observers of this policy realm (are there any in Government?) it has been very apparent for a considerable time that business as usual was not sufficient and would eventually lead to disaster. Bad as things are, it is not clear that they will not get worse before they improve.

 

In February 2022, I posted a blog reporting on what amounted to a clear decision by the previous Government not to extend the Stronger Futures legislation related to alcohol (and some other issues such as remote stores licencing which has implications for food security in remote communities). That post was titled The Commonwealth is taking us headlong into a remote policy chasm: but who cares? (Link here).

 

In May 2022, I published a post outlining the ongoing social and governance catastrophe in remote Australia (link here). That post dealt with alcohol issues only tangentially, but reinforced the deep structural and systemic underpinnings of the current crisis.

 

In early June 2022, the NT Government announced its approach to loosening the controls on alcohol regulation across remote communities and town camps. I published a post linking to criticism of this approach, and explored the likely rationale for the NTG decision (link here). I argued that the NTG decision was a cynical exercise in encouraging drinkers to remain in remote communities and out of Darwin and major towns. In the case of Central Australia, the systemic incentives to leave underfunded communities are much greater than mere access to alcohol; hence the current issues in Alice Springs.

 

In August, I published a post titled Alcohol policy reform in remote Australia: a potential roadmap. This post dealt with remote Western Australia (link here), and made the case for the Commonwealth to inject itself into the remote alcohol policy arena.

 

In December 2022, I published a post titled Cataclysm and crisis: the two sides of the policy tragedy engulfing remote northern Australia (link here). That post was headed with a quotation from Hamlet: ‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state’. The post concluded as follows:

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.

The implication that inevitably follows is that the solutions (for they will inevitably be multiple) must go beyond focussing on a single issue (housing, or health or food security or alcohol, or crime, or education, or incarceration, or unemployment or economic development, or land tenure, or dispossession or the impact of colonisation). 

 

I recommend reading those previous posts to obtain an inkling of the systemic underpinnings of the current situation in Alice Springs.

 

Below, I lay out a series of observations that are not getting much critical attention in the current media tumult. They are not intended as a comprehensive analysis of the current situation nor are they in any particular order.

 

First, there have been statements by both Government, the Opposition, and the NT Government seeking to blame their political opponents for the flow on from the decision to allow the Stronger Futures legislation that curtailed access to alcohol across many remote NT Aboriginal communities. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton called on the Government to reinstate the alcohol bans that expired in July last year (link here and link here). Yesterday, the Prime Minister argued (link here) that the Stronger Futures legislation had expired before the first parliamentary session under the new Government (elected in May 2022). While technically correct, the new Labor Government always had the option of moving to reinstate the legislation, or proactively engaging with the NT Government to ensure alcohol controls were not loosened. In the final analysis, the new Government could have announced an intention to reinstate the Stronger Futures legislation in the event that the NT Government failed to legislate in similar terms. The NT Government spent months mischaracterising the Stronger Futures legislation as racially based and thus discriminatory (link here and link here) while ignoring the fact that it was designed as a special measure under the Racial Discrimination Act which allows ostensible discrimination that is designed to benefit the people of a particular race. The Albanese Government, the former Morrison Government, and the Labor NT Government all had the opportunity to ensure that the Stronger Futures legislation continued with a zero or miniscule interregnum. Rewriting history to blame political opponents while seeking to avoid responsibility merely serves to signal that politics continues to play a major role in managing the response of our political elites to the situation in Alice Springs.

 

Second, as my previous posts made clear, the current issues in Alice Springs are (i) symptomatic of underlying structural and systemic policy challenges; and (ii) are constituent elements in a much more geographically expansive crisis that has been ebbing and flowing across remote Australia for decades, and had become significantly worse in the past three to five years. Alcohol abuse is a significant element in this crisis, but it is far from the only factor in play.

 

Third, the media reports on social dysfunction across remote Australia invariably focus on events in particular places and at particular times, but rarely do reporters step back and provide a holistic and coherent narrative that joins the dots both geographically, and in terms of the multiple sectors impacted. Media hype, however accurate, rarely provides the full picture, and is not adequate for policy formulation. Yet increasingly, Governments have abdicated on their responsibility to prepare and publish comprehensive, accurate and and coherent policy relevant analyses across the breadth of public policymaking. Analysis has given way to propaganda and public relations. This abdication of responsibility is particularly costly in relation to remote Australia given the thin levels of public discussion and knowledge of what goes on in remote places and communities.

 

Fourth, in the context of the present tumult around alcohol regulation, and the promulgation of a confusing amalgam of geographically constrained temporary and ongoing policy proposals by both the Federal and the NT Government, no media outlets have asked the PM, the Leader of the Opposition, or the NT Chief Minister, to reveal the level of political donations to their party organisations from interests associated with the alcohol industry. Given the crisis of legitimacy surrounding the quality of governance in relation to these current issues, it seems an obvious question to ask policymakers and politicians: how does the community know that you are not conflicted in proposing policy solutions that should be in the public interest. Political donations are theoretically made public, albeit after a considerable delay. However, there is nothing stopping any of the political players shaping policy in relation to the social crisis rolling out from compiling and publishing in a clear and transparent form the donations received from alcohol industry corporations over say the past three years. The absence of such a transparent statement from policymakers and their political opponents should provide cause for concern in relation to the policy solutions that are being proposed.

 

Fifth, there appears to be a correlation between the substantial pull back and withdrawal of the Commonwealth from the remote policy arena over the past decade and increasing levels of dysfunction. The NT Government does not appear to have the policy and financial capability to make a difference, and nor does it appear to have the political will power. The State Governments of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland are too focussed on managing the complex issues of urban development in their respective major cities to give the particular needs of remote regions the priority they require. The 1967 referendum gave the Commonwealth a legislative and policy remit for Indigenous affairs for a reason, yet the Commonwealth’s role is being incrementally dismantled without any public debate or consideration.

 

Sixth, this morning on ABC Radio National, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney recounted visiting the Alice Springs Hospital last night in the company of Marion Scrymgour, the member for the seat of Lingiari. 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. 

We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to solve these issues. If we are don’t, future historians will write about us and the policies we implemented as no better than those of the perpetrators of colonial violence. Solving these structural and systemic issues, borne of sustained and ongoing exclusion and inequality, is in the public interest and the national interest.

[This post was revised on 29 January to correct a small number of typographical and grammatical errors]

 

Election 2022: policy implications in the Indigenous policy domain.

 

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends

1 Henry IV, Act 3, scene 2.

 

This post is designed to explore a number of the most salient policy implications for Indigenous policy arising from the results of the 2022 election.

 

In his victory speech last night, Anthony Albanese made two significant points. He emphasised the incoming Government’s commitment to implementing the Uluru Statement, and explicitly mentioned Labor’s intention to entrench it in the Constitution. Second he identified Linda Burney as the incoming Indigenous Affairs Minister. Prior to the election, Burney was Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services, as well as Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians. We can assume she will likely be given both posts, which is an extraordinarily heavy workload. If so, it seems likely (but not certain) that Senator Patrick Dodson would take on his former shadow roles as Assistant Minister for Reconciliation and Assistant Minister for Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians.

 

The former Minister Ken Wyatt lost his seat of Hasluck with a swing against him of over 10 percent; a swing consistent with the overall swing against the former Government in WA. This will mean that the Opposition will need to choose a new Shadow Minister who is unlikely to be Indigenous and will not have the benefit of the networks and knowledge of the issues that Wyatt built over his career and as Minister. Somewhat paradoxically, in my view this increases the likelihood that the Opposition will adopt a much more antagonistic and aggressive approach to the Labor Government’s policies in this area since it is always easier to find flaws and seek to knock down a policy rather than find constructive ways to make it work. One of the dynamics that has been in play in recent years has been the propensity for Indigenous MPs on all sides to effectively pull their punches in relation to their opposite numbers.

 

As for Wyatt’s legacy, I struggle to identify major reforms or achievements. The National Agreement on Closing the Gap is potentially an extraordinary vehicle for addressing structural inequity between Indigenous and mainstream Australia, but the Commonwealth Implementation Plan and associated financial commitments have been entirely underwhelming. So too have been the Implementation Plans of the states and territories; yet the Commonwealth seems oblivious to their shortcomings. He continued the push on Indigenous procurement. This is perhaps the former Government’s most tangible success, although I worry that the levels of so-called ‘black cladding’ (link here) are much more significant than is generally realised. He dropped the ball on issues his predecessor prioritised (albeit more rhetorically than substantively) such as school attendance and high sugar drinks in remote stores; did virtually nothing to address the longstanding and worsening housing crisis in remote Australia; made no progress in making native title a more effective instrument for Indigenous economic and social development; and actively continued the Commonwealth retreat from Indigenous social policy across the board in favour of the states and territories. This record is a 180 degree turn from the expectations of the Australian people when they voted overwhelmingly to give the Commonwealth concurrent responsibilities with the states in relation to Aboriginal affairs in the 1967 Referendum.

 

On the Voice and constitutional recognition, Wyatt procrastinated and prevaricated, clearly lacking influence and backing within the Government at the most senior levels. It was only during the recent election campaign that the Prime Minister finally came clean, five long years after the Uluru Statement was delivered, and explicitly ruled out any intention of entrenching the Voice in the Constitution (link here).

 

For Labor, while the commitment to action on the Uluru Statement is welcome, there is an enormous amount of work to be done to build broad based momentum across the community and to design and sequence the detailed proposals. My view is that Labor would be wise to ‘ride the wave’ that brought it to government and push forward towards a referendum within six months. For an alternative view, see this article in The Conversation (link here). Designing the legislation for a Voice and establishing the proposed Makarrata Commission will not be straightforward, and will require detailed consultation and engagement with both First Nations and the wider community. While these processes do not need to be finalised before a referendum, the Government would be wise to have developed and published a clear outline of how it sees the Voice and the Makarrata Commission operating before the referendum takes place.

 

There will never be  a perfect or risk free time to take this issue forward to a referendum. Currently, there is a sense of hope and optimism in the community on these issues, and the fact that six of the states and territories have Labor Governments will mean that any state based opposition campaigns will have less legitimacy and more limited access to resources. Delay adds risk, both because the new Government’s policy agenda becomes more crowded and complex, and as it allows further time for opponents to organise.

 

Notwithstanding the strategic importance of a constitutionally recognised Voice to Parliament, the administration of the Indigenous Australians portfolio is about more than one issue.

 

Last week, on 18 May 2022, Mike Keating posted a short article on the Pearls and Irritations web site  (link here) pointing out the implications across the policy spectrum of the inevitable ongoing constraints on policy reform arising from the current mismatch between the Government’s underlying revenue base and the expenditure needs and expectations of the community. In particular, he laid out in the starkest terms the extraordinary magnitude and regressive nature of the most recent tax reforms proposed by the former Government and legislated with Labor support. His analysis is in my view absolutely correct. His proposed solution is for the Government to initiate a number of independent reviews to lay out the problem and develop a reform agenda acceptable to the community. He notes that this will take time and will delay the initiation of essential reforms (or worse still require the incremental unwinding of previous reforms such as the NDIS). This issue will impact every policy sector, but given the extent of Indigenous disadvantage and need, particularly in remote Australia, the consequences in the Indigenous policy space are likely to be dire. Mike Keatings rational logic is persuasive, but ignores the decades of policy exclusion meted out to Indigenous citizens. A determined Government would find a way through.

 

Nevertheless, having won a first term, the ‘hard heads’ within the new Labor Government will be focussed above all else on setting up the political strategy and narrative for the next election in around three years. This will involve a forensic focus on delivering their commitments, but also a strong push for fiscal discipline that will enable Labor to point to progress in clawing back the substantial deficit they have inherited. In this context, proposals for additional public investment will be rigorously scrutinised and those without a strong political rationale will likely be deferred or sidelined. Given the comparatively weak political influence of Indigenous interests, there is a strong likelihood that the new Government will focus primarily on delivering the Uluru Statement to the exclusion of other priorities across the Indigenous policy domain. Such an outcome would in my view be both a policy and political mistake. It would make the job of the yet to be established Voice to Parliament harder, decrease First Nations citizens already low  trust in governments, and exacerbate the negative economic, social and health outcomes that have enduring impacts on the life opportunities of so many First Nations citizens.

 

One lesson to be drawn from the experience of Minister Wyatt in the former Government is that an Indigenous Minister can be sidelined or ignored if he is unable to point to significant and sustained political pressure being applied. Ministers in every portfolio are always under incredible pressure to hold fast to the Government’s narrative, and Indigenous ministers are no exception. Indeed, there is an incentive for Prime Ministers and Governments to use Indigenous ministers as a protective heat shield against pressure from the Indigenous community, rather than as a portal to better engagement with First Nations. The fact that a Government has appointed an experienced and competent Indigenous leader as a Minister does not preclude the necessity for Indigenous interests to implement robust lobbying and advocacy on key issues.

 

In these circumstances, it is in my view incumbent on the national Indigenous leadership to work together to develop a five or ten year set of policy priorities that focus on multiple objectives simultaneously. Their chosen priorities should refine, prioritise and sequence core policy aspirations; extend beyond Indigenous specific policy and program measures to include mainstream measures that will benefit First Nations citizens; and identify structural changes that do not require substantial fiscal investments. Importantly, they should invest in strengthening Indigenous interests’ capability to exert coordinated political pressure in sustained and targeted ways across all jurisdictions of the federation.

 

The fracturing of the major parties primary votes, the emergence of a third force in the electorate comprised of green and teal voters, and the resultant changes to the composition of Parliament reinforces the importance of distinguishing between a Voice to Parliament and the need for Indigenous interests to also build a capability to lobby and influence governments at both national and state/territory levels. More succinctly: Governments are not Parliaments; yet both are crucial in policy advocacy. Neither a Voice to Parliament nor a Peak Body focussed on Governments will be entirely effective on its own, and ideally Indigenous advocacy in each forum will work off similar and broadly coordinated policy agendas.

 

The new Labor Government appears set on delivering the major and long overdue structural reforms laid out in the Uluru Statement for the Heart. These reforms will simultaneously deliver on the aspirations of First Nations and accrue significant benefits for the wider Australian community derived from more inclusive treatment of First Nations. However, in the Indigenous policy domain, the new Government faces numerous significant challenges ahead including addressing structural exclusion, income and wealth inequalities; disparities in health and housing opportunities; over-representation in the criminal justice system; extraordinary levels of out of home care for indigenous children; and extraordinarily low levels of educational outcomes (to name just some of the more pressing issues). The failure to effectively resource and implement the pathbreaking National Agreement on Closing the Gap and to make substantive progress to close the enormous social, economic and health disparities between Indigenous and mainstream citizens remains a weeping sore on our nation’s body politic.

 

Notwithstanding the commitments made to date by the new Government, it will need to find a way to widen its policy agenda and focus policy attention on the structural constraints impacting the most disadvantaged segments of the Australian community. The new Government will do a better job of delivering on First Nations aspirations if it is honest with the Indigenous and mainstream communities about the policy trade-offs it makes, focusses attention on implementation as well as policy rhetoric, and is pushed hard and held to account by Indigenous interests and their allies.

Addendum 23 May 2022

A reader has pointed to the possibility that incoming Senator Jacinta Price (link here) might be appointed Shadow Minister. On reflection, this seems a strong possibility. I also commend Jon Altman's comment on this post to readers.