Proactive disengagement: where to next for the ALC and Groote Eylandt?

 

I conjure you by that which you profess—

Howe’er you come to know it—answer me.

Though you untie the winds and let them fight…

… Even till destruction sicken,

answer me to what I ask you.

Macbeth Act four, Scene one.

 

Three weeks ago, on 16 October, the NIAA and NACC visited Groote and according to media reports met with the Anindilyakwa Land Council (ALC). Following the visit, the ALC board decided to dismiss their longstanding CEO, Mark Hewitt (link here). This follows an ABC news article on 10 July (link here) which quoted a spokesman for the NACC as confirming that it had received a referral from the NIAA and was assessing the referral. It appears (but is not certain) that the NIAA referral followed the May Senate Estimates hearings where Senator David Pocock questioned the ALC CEO about his dual roles as ALC CEO and as a Director of Winchelsea Mining, and summed up by commenting that Mr Hewitt’s dual roles were a "pretty egregious conflict of interest". According to the 10 July ABC news article, the Estimates Committee was advised that some $16m in royalty [equivalents] were directed to supporting the proposed Winchelsea mine.

Following the CEO’s dismissal, there appears to have been a conspiracy of silence from all involved. The ALC website has expunged all mention of Mr Hewitt but provides no explanation for the Board’s decision. The NACC continues its policy of complete silence until the results of its investigations are published. Minister Malarndirri McCarthy appears to have issued no media statement apart from her comments to the ABC (link here):

"I received a letter from the ALC chair informing me that at its meeting on October 16, the ALC board resolved to terminate the employment of the ALC CEO," Senator McCarthy said in a statement.

"Without the trust of the Anindilyakwa people and other key stakeholders, the ALC cannot properly achieve its mission of serving and advocating for the interests of the Anindilyakwa people."

All we can take from this is that the ALC Board lost trust in the CEO, but on what basis? The question is important because it goes to the nature of the issues that were of concern to the NACC and perhaps NIAA, and thus to the steps that need to be taken to remedy those issues.

Ever since the ANAO report into the ALC was published on 31 May 2023, the Government, Indigenous Australians Ministers Burney and subsequently McCarthy, and the NIAA have sought to downplay the issues which the ANAO report raised (for example by always focusing on the recommendations of the ANAO report rather than the myriad critical findings embedded throughout the report). They have also sought to slow down any proactive engagement, and thus avoid taking action to ensure the ALC was fulfilling its statutory obligations. In doing so, the Government has allowed the ALC, heavily influenced by its former CEO, to continue to pursue policies which are demonstrably at odds with normal standards of accountability, and which inevitably disadvantage the land council’s constituency, the traditional owners of the Groote archipelago.

To facilitate this proactive disengagement, the Government has adopted a strategy of intentional non-transparency. When interrogated, it invariably resorted to obfuscation, opacity and has hidden behind justifications which do not stack up under close scrutiny.

By deliberately not saying anything except when it has no choice, it has sought to minimise media attention by starving the issue of oxygen notwithstanding the fact that every time an ALC rock is turned over, a scorpion emerges. It has deliberately ignored the multiple concerns raised by numerous individuals including the 235 signatories to the Parliamentary petition tabled in February 2024, the issues raised in the SMH by Nick McKenzie and in the Saturday Paper by Ben Abbatangelo & Rachel Hoffman, and by me in two detailed letters to the ministers. This strategy has only worked because the Opposition has similarly adopted a studied position of policy insouciance. The Opposition Shadow Minister, Senator Jacinta Price has simultaneously argued for greater accountability of the land councils, unsuccessfully moving to establish a parliamentary inquiry into land council accountability, but failing to pursue in any substantive way the egregious issues that have emerged at the ALC (link here).

To date, the Minister appears to be continuing with her strategy of proactive disengagement. Meanwhile, while the NACC is focussed on determining whether there has been corrupt conduct by any individuals (inevitably a highly legalistic and thus narrowly focussed exercise), the potential for significant and ongoing financial losses and/or financial harm to the traditional owners on Groote remains unaddressed. These are two separate issues, and while they might overlap, it is unacceptable in my view for the Minister and NIAA to use the NACC investigation as the reason for doing nothing to mitigate the likely financial harms arising from the convoluted lattice-work of conflicts of interest that the ANAO uncovered in May 2023. Where is the public interest in waiting?  

Of course, the Government might argue that it set up the ‘independent review’ undertaken by BellChambersBarrett. This was sheer diversion to cover up inactivity. Ministers and the NIAA persisted in claiming the review was ‘independent’ notwithstanding that its recommendations were negotiated with and approved by the ALC (and implicitly its CEO Mr Hewitt who is now implicitly not trusted by the ALC and presumably the NIAA), notwithstanding that’s its drafts were commented upon and thus influenced by the NIAA Integrity Unit (and by implication the Minister), and importantly, notwithstanding that its terms of reference were limited to the implementation of the narrowly framed ANAO recommendations, and did not canvass broader or more recent issues. And of course, the ANAO report was itself limited by the ANAO’s remit to the operations of the ALC per se, whereas the complex flows of royalty distribution finance extend beyond the ALC to at least 12 corporations established under the CATSI Act, and over which the ALC exerted considerable influence if not actual control, thereby bypassing the intent of the Land rights Act to place individual distributions and investment decisions outside the purview of the land councils. The CATSI legislation itself falls under the Minister’s responsibilities.

Taking the commentary above as context, I propose to make some high-level observations on likely future developments and the necessary next steps in relation to the ALC.

The first set of observations relate to the case for undertaking a truly independent and transparent forensic audit of the ALC’s distribution of royalties and royalty equivalents. The ALC has leveraged these processes to allocate substantial (but as yet unquantified) financial resources to (a) retail outlets which do not appear to be independent of the ALC and its staff, and which may be shifting significant amounts of money to private individuals; (b) to request the Anindilyakwa Mining Trust (AMT) to transfer $41m to ARAC, a CATSI corporation which appears to have been effectively controlled by the ALC, but whose financial statements do not record the receipt of the payment which the AMT made; and (c) to effectively subsidising the infrastructure and other associated investments necessary to establish the Winchelsea mine which was / is effectively controlled by private investors and the former Chair and former CEO of the ALC (it is not clear if the Directors Winchelsea Mining have changed since the death of the former Chair and the dismissal of the ALC CEO; if they haven’t, then this in itself is a problem). The import of this subsidisation is in effect to grant funds to the interests which control Winchelsea Mining; yet analysis of the ALC’s own submission to the EIS suggests that the proposed mine will not be commercially viable (link here).

Even were these alleged financial misallocations to be found to involve corrupt conduct by the NACC, it would not fix the problem. What is required is a forensic audit to understand where the funds have been allocated and on what basis as the precursor to taking action to methodically unwind the arrangements that have been established to facilitate the misallocations. A forensic audit is thus the essential first step towards both addressing the conflict of interest and other problematic issues that have been allowed to develop within the ALC and to understanding whether it will be possible to recoup any misallocated funds. Moreover, delays will inevitably lead to an increase in the quantum of funds at risk of misallocation.

Perhaps more importantly, a forensic audit is an essential step in redesigning the ALC’s strategic financial strategy for the medium-term future given that the South32 mine is scheduled to close sometime in the early 2030s, with the almost immediate cessation of what is a significant financial flow to the Groote community. The sheer magnitude of these flows — which emanate from Commonwealth appropriations — to what is a relatively small population, which as has been previously pointed out (link here and link here) is paradoxically suffering from extraordinary levels of disadvantage, suggests that the Commonwealth itself has a responsibility to put in place a transition strategy of some kind. Again, the first step in doing so would be to understand just where the royalty and royalty equivalent financial flows have been allocated. It should not need to be said, but I will repeat it: the mere undertaking of a forensic audit is essentially a core regulatory oversight task, and it will not inevitably and adversely impact any ongoing investigations. Indeed, the reverse is more likely to be the case: it is likely to assist the investigation of potential legislative and accountability breaches, and it is possible that new lines of investigation in relation to corruption or criminal behaviours will emerge.

The second observation relates to the potential consequences of the current royalty distribution arrangements on Groote unravelling. There is more at stake here than an issue of whether an individual or group of individuals associated with the ALC have engaged in criminal activities or corrupt conduct. Notwithstanding the rhetorical hype that is often promulgated, the population on Groote are among the most disadvantaged citizens in Australia (link here). The reasons are complex and are not merely a matter of access to income. What is clear however is that the complexity and artificiality of the current financial arrangements on Groote are such as to exacerbate the risks of seriously negative social and cultural impacts from an erratic and haphazard unwinding of the current royalty distribution arrangements. The possibility of violence cannot be discounted. The implementation of any reform process will need to be managed. This is a task that will inevitably require external support. As a coda to this observation, I should emphasise that the risks of an unmanaged unwinding of current financial arrangements are higher if the Commonwealth chooses to remain inactive and disengaged. In my view, the Commonwealth now has no choice but to engage with the complexity its lack of regulatory oversight has unleashed (see below).

The third set of observations relates to the responsibilities of the Minister (and her predecessors) and NIAA to oversight the operations of statutory corporations in her portfolio. The scale and breadth of apparent maladministration; the quantum of the funds that may have been misallocated; the complexity of the financial arrangements involved; the convergence of public investment and private commercial interests, the sensitivity of the social, environmental and economic issues involved, and the extraordinary way in which much of this has developed and taken place in plain view indicates that there has been an extraordinary and substantial regulatory failure by the Commonwealth over a period going back to shortly after the former CEO Mr Hewitt was recruited. To provide just one example, the advice he gave to a previous Estimates Committee Hearing that he had a conversation with former Minister Scullion where he advised him of his dual roles on the ALC and Winchelsea Mining and assured him that there were arrangements in place to manage the conflict is (if true) an extraordinary revelation. Mr Hewitt claimed the subsequent Minister, Mr Wyatt, was also advised of the arrangement. These conversations in themselves appear to be significant watersheds in the development of the current royalty administration crisis, and yet appear to have elicited not one iota of concern within the Ministers’ Offices, nor NIAA (assuming of course that they knew of it; if they didn’t, what did NIAA do when they did become aware of the conflicted roles?).

Fourth, and finally, I make the observation that the current policy of proactive disengagement has meant that there is absolutely no information in the public domain regarding the current state of management of a key statutory corporation within the Minister’s portfolio. There are numerous legitimate questions that remain unasked and thus unanswered. To take some at random: what is the status of Ms Liu, Mr Hewitt’s spouse and a former employee of the ALC, who is /was actively engaged in the Royalty Shoppa scheme, in the ALC Royalty Management Unit (and thus a range of associated CATSI corporations), and in Winchelsea Mining? What is the status of the Chair of the ALC Audit Committee? How is it that the Audit Committee failed comprehensively over many years to identify and recommend the necessary changes to prevent the crisis that has emerged? For that matter, where was the NAIA Audit and Risk Committee in this whole process? Does the minister see these lapses as a problem and if so does she intend to do anything about it?  What is the current status of the proposal for a mine on Winchelsea Island?  Who are the Indigenous members of the Winchelsea Board following the dismissal of Mr Hewitt and death of the former Chair? Why did AAAC, the corporation which owns 70 percent of Winchelsea shares not have a single Director on the Winchelsea Mining Board? Has that been remedied recently?

More fundamentally, why has the current Government pursued a deliberate policy of proactive disengagement in relation to the operations of the ALC? How can the public and the traditional owners of Groote be reassured that the Government itself is not complicit in some way in what has transpired here?

The ALC and its associated recipient CATSI corporations are in a state of crisis. A crisis that no one wants to acknowledge, let alone seeks to fix. An apt metaphor would be a commercial corporation operating while insolvent. The risk is that it will seek to trade its way out of its financial crisis, and in the process, go bankrupt with even greater losses. The solution is for the shareholders to appoint insolvency specialists who can make an independent assessment and address the underlying issues.

In the present case, it is the Minister to whom this responsibility falls. To date, she has given absolutely no indication that she is cognisant of the risks or prepared to take the necessary action. She should immediately take action to appoint a highly experienced independent administrator to the ALC with the authority to oversee an independent forensic audit and to develop a pathway out of the current crisis. This process will require full transparency to minimise the risks of societal conflict on Groote, to ensure that those responsibility for getting the ALC into its current morass are held accountable, and importantly to maximise the chances that those who will be found to have suffered financial losses or disadvantage are recompensed. This responsibility goes beyond one individual and the possibility at some point in the future of a limited finding of corruption or misfeasance in public office.  And it goes beyond the ALC and its employees.

 

5 November 2024

 

Silent dissemblance: discussion of the ANAO report on the ALC in Estimates

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep

2 Henry VI, Act three, Scene one.

 

I thought it might be worthwhile to have a quick look at the most recent Estimates Hearings related to the Indigenous portfolio. Held on Friday 27 October (link here), the hearings were predictably anodyne. I am not seeking to provide a comprehensive overview but thought I would focus on just a few issues that struck me as significant (albeit under-appreciated). In particular, the transcript is interesting for two reasons: first, for the issues that were avoided during the questioning; and second, for what it tells us about the approach of the various committee members.

 

Unsurprisingly, the dominant presence during the hearings was the Oppositions spokesperson on Indigenous Australians, Senator Nampijinpa Price.  She appeared to have two main objectives. The first was to pursue the extent of the involvement of various agency and statutory corporation staff appearing before her in supporting the Yes case in the recent referendum. Her efforts on this front failed to strike the gold she perhaps was searching for, but the insistence of her efforts, and the recourse of those being interrogated to providing answers later ‘on notice’ left an impression that at least in some instances some unspecified red line had been inappropriately crossed. The second objective was to seek out information and further detail on a range of presumed accountability failures. Here I suspect her intent was to lay the groundwork for a future political attack on the government for the lack of accountability in the Indigenous sector. Interestingly, her focus was wide and shallow rather than deep and narrow, and overwhelmingly focussed on the Northern Territory, which happens to be her own constituency. In other words, she appears to be laying down the outline and precursors for a future political campaign directed towards reinforcing the longstanding predispositions of her non-Indigenous constituents.

 

There were two meta-issues that struck me as particularly significant insofar as they are almost certain to have substantial policy and financial implications into the future but were almost completely ignored or avoided by the committee in its questioning.

 

The first relates to the ANAO audit of the four NT land councils. The second issue raised only tangentially during the Hearing relates to the preparations for the divestment of the Ayers Rock Resort by the ILSC. This second matter is slightly complex and speculative, so I shall deal with it in a future post.

 

Turning to the ANAO, all four land councils were called to appear before the Estimates Committee. Questions from Senator Price covered their support for the referendum and issues raised by the ANAO audit recommendations, including governance shortcomings, and progress on section 19 lease approvals (an issue that plays into deeper conservative beliefs regarding the constraints on economic development arising from communal and inalienable title). Labor Senator Sheldon asked the land councils about their respective processes of membership selection (a matter also raised in the ANAO reports, but without identifying major concerns). Pages 39 to 45 of the transcript cover Senator Price’s pursuit of the NLC, the TLC and the CLC in relation to various technical recommendations of the ANAO in relation to their fraud control policies and conflict of interest policies not being up to scratch. What a close reading of the transcript reveals however is that Senator Price neglected to raise the issues of actual conflicts of interest and various other shortcomings identified by the ANAO in relation to the management of the Anindilyakwa Land Council.

 

Senator Price also went out of her way to raise the land council audits when the ANAO appeared before the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation committee on 24 October (link here). Again, she raised a series of technical issues relating to the NLC, and at the end of the session as time was running out, went out of her way to state that she had extra questions:

…I would like to have the opportunity to ask all the questions that are before me – they are obviously very important – with regard to all of the land councils within the Northern Territory.

 

She had that opportunity later in the week in the Cross-portfolio hearing, but didn’t raise any substantive issues relating to the ALC. It was almost as if, to use a rugby term, she was running interference for the ALC.

 

Avid readers of this blog may recall that in June and August of this year I published three separate posts reviewing the ANAO audits (link here and link here and link here). In my last post, I provided the following high-level assessment of the impact of the audits for the land councils:

The overall picture has been positive, although the ANAO findings in relation to the ALC in particular are in my view extraordinary and of serious concern. In relation to the ALC audit, we are yet to see any formal or public response by Minister Burney nor NIAA, though one hopes that action is underway behind the scenes.

 

My post dated 1 June 2023 (link here) had recounted quite significant and disturbing ANAO findings within the Anindilyakwa Land Council’s governance structure. Shortcomings which — in theory — could be utilised to facilitate actual fraud and mismanagement. To be clear, the ANAO did not identify any instances of fraud or financial mismanagement. Of much more significance was the ANAO analysis which identified a complex array of related corporations which while technically and legally independent of the ALC have substantial overlap in terms of senior management involvement. The result is that they are effectively either controlled or influenced by the senior management of the land council and are both the recipient of substantial benefits and investments emanating from the land council and yet outside the purview of the ANAO as they were private companies. See figure 4.1 of the ANAO report at page 68 (link here) although this diagram does not include the revenue streams related to the two private trusts referenced below. The financial flows involved are significant, especially when extended into the medium term.

 

The NIAA annual report reports payments to the ALC of $59m in 2022-23 for distribution to royalty associations representing traditional owners. Over say ten years, the amounts involved would be extraordinary, likely totalling around half a billion dollars. In addition, the ALC document Invested in our Future (link here) indicates that there are two further trusts established to receive negotiated royalties arising from mining agreements with GEMCO. That document suggests that these two trusts had a balance of $262m in 2020, and expect to receive a further $370m, in future royalties and interest payments over the decade to 2030. This takes total royalty and associated revenues flowing into Groote to around a billion dollars over the coming decade.

 

Given the quantum of funds flowing to Groote, the potential consequences of risks such as fraud, or mismanagement, or commercial loss for ALC constituents arising from poor due diligence of commercial development proposals are orders of magnitude higher than those related to the mere (mis)use of Commonwealth funds appropriated for the operations of land councils. Yet all these risks can be traced back to institutional arrangements established by, and theoretically overseen by, the Commonwealth. In a worst-case scenario, were significant royalties and other monies to be diverted away from the intended beneficiaries utilising complex private rather than public governance structures, the Commonwealth would be unlikely to escape legal and fiduciary responsibility, as well as significant political responsibility. Yet neither the Government nor the Opposition are focussed on addressing the issue of potential risks.

 

A major contributing factor to this short-sightedness is that there are a plethora of Commonwealth (and NT) regulatory oversight agencies each looking at a slice of the total picture: the NIAA, ORIC, ASIC, AFP, NT Police, the NACC, and the ANAO each have potential roles in oversighting elements of the financial structures in play on Groote. The ANAO adopts an extraordinarily narrow view of its responsibilities, notwithstanding it is purporting to undertake ‘performance’ audits. In his evidence to the Estimates Committee on 24 October at page 135 (link here), the Auditor General laid out in detail his overly narrow approach to his job, in effect leaving it to other agencies to investigate suspicions of fraud and indicating that his legislative remit does not extend to non-government entities. This is a matter I have argued, in my post dated 17 August 2023 (link here), that requires both more adventurousness by the ANAO and probably legislative reform.

 

What is missing is any oversight agency with a remit to undertake a wholistic risk assessment of these royalty flows. Moreover, the issues related to financial risk on Groote are replicated at probably ten other mine sites across the nation, mostly in WA.

 

Conclusion: an action agenda

It strikes me as more than strange that neither the Government nor the Opposition are prepared to initiate an open discussion about the financial risks and implications arising from the ANAO’s narrow and minimalist findings into the ALC. Clearly there are multiple angles with potential political implications: a Commonwealth entity facilitating direct Aboriginal investments into a joint mining venture with a privately owned company (AUS China International Mining Pty Ltd) with limited resource development experience; potential environmental issues related to strip mining of manganese and the associated infrastructure on Winchelsea Island and the northern coast of Groote Eylandt; an extraordinarily ambitious development agenda for Groote Eylandt apparently endorsed by the NT Government’s Local Decision-making Framework (link here) and supplemented by slick marketing and PR most evident in the 2022 document on the ALC website Invested in our Future  (link here) [note the caveat at the end of this document];  a commercial and administrative presence in Darwin and Cairns (link here); and not least the paradox of poverty and dysfunction amongst revenue plenty (link here [see data point two] and link here).

 

These risks are balanced against the important focus on building a sustainable fund to underpin the future viability of the Groote economy outlined in the document Invested in our Future on the ALC web site. The plan to establish a perpetual fund to provide an income stream to Anindilyakwa people post mining has real merit, although it is unclear how robust the estimates are and why the focus is limited purely to the negotiated royalty streams and not the statutory royalties. However if significant risks eventuate, they will threaten the viability of creating a sustainable future fund for Groote people. This is why the issues raised in this post are so important and demand policymakers; attention.

 

There are also serious management questions that are worth asking. For example, the ALC CEO who received $419k in total remuneration in 2021-22 is also listed as the Transition Manager of Groote Holdings Aboriginal Corporation (GHAC) in the 2022 document on the ALC website Invested in our Future. That document lays out the extraordinarily ambitious development agenda being pursued by the ALC and its associated entities. The ALC 2021-22 Annual Report (link here) (page 125) lists the CEO as both a Director of GHAC and also a Director of Winchelsea Mining. The ANAO in figure 4.1 (page 68) (link here) go out of their way to make clear that not only is the ALC CEO a Director of GHAC and Winchelsea, but his spouse is the Chief Operating Officer of GHAC and an Executive Assistant within Winchelsea. Moreover, ENMARK the company providing the Chair of the ALC Audit Committee is also responsible for governance and accounts in GHAC (see page 34 of Invested in our Future). As the ANAO said in para 4.46:

4.46 AAAC holds 60 per cent of the shares in Winchelsea Mining, and GHAC will own the Little Paradise logistics base assets being developed to support the Winchelsea Mining venture (see paragraph 1.29). Figure 4.1 shows the directorships and senior positions of, and main financial flows between, the ALC, AAAC, GHAC and Winchelsea Mining. The figure shows that the ALC Chair and CEO have interests in GHAC and Winchelsea Mining, either as Chair, CEO or director.

 

Setting aside the question of whether the ALC CEO ( a full time position) is being paid additional remuneration by GHAC and/or Winchelsea, there remains the question whether the Land Council (a complex organisation with a range of governance challenges as identified by the ANAO) is getting adequate attention from its CEO given these competing responsibilities.

 

As an aside, the effectiveness of the Estimates Committee (and the currency of this post) has not been helped by the fact that, contrary to the Department of Finance guidelines, the 2022-23 Annual Reports for the four NT land councils are yet to be tabled (as of 14 November) notwithstanding that the expected date for tabling is in advance of the October estimates hearings. This is a matter that falls within the responsibility of the portfolio minister, and which deserves an explanation. Neither the Government members, the NIAA, the land councils, nor the Opposition or Greens commented on the absence of these reports in the Estimates transcript.

 

The avoidance of any questions to the ALC by the Opposition, and the apparent inaction of the Government following the ANAO report, serve to add weight to the view that all is not what it might seem in relation to the commercial development agenda of the ALC on Groote, and the relationship between the ALC and government in both the NT and Canberra. Moreover, this silence only heightens the questions relating to the quality of the overall management and allocation of the ALC’s extraordinary royalty revenues, and the concomitant risks.

 

Whether or not there is maladministration or worse is not the point. The real issue is that the current policy frameworks in relation to royalty management, commercial development and social services delivery are contributing to a much more fluid and complex policy environment. In turn this is throwing up new challenges and opportunities, including ensuring that the essential oversight of corporate activities are fit for purpose. Addressing the economic, social and commercial challenges at Groote, and grasping the opportunities in ways that are able to be sustained and grow, will require strong management and governance. The success or failure of these efforts will have real world implications for the people resident on Groote. The existence of substantial royalty flows, and the financial implications and significant commercial risks of the current ALC strategy, merely reinforce this point.

 

A close reading of the ANAO report suggests that they had serious concerns but lacked the forthrightness to make their concerns clear. Their recommendations were anodyne. Their remit, and thus their recommendations are limited insofar as they are directed only to the ALC and do not address the issues being pursued by the ALC’s associated entities. Notwithstanding the excellent work of their audit team, the ANAO senior management appear to have baulked at the last hurdle.

 

I am sure that within NIAA, there is an appreciation of the risks of a substantial and monumental policy failure in relation to royalty management on Groote. They too have a responsibility to provide the Minister with forthright advice. Following the robodebt debacle, the possibility (however remote) of a Royal Commission at some point in the coming decade should be front of mind for public servants advising the Minister on these issues.

 

And the Opposition shadow on Indigenous Australians also has a responsibility to focus on these issues. It seems to me highly unlikely that she is unaware of at least some of the issues on Groote. Whatever her motivation for avoiding asking the hard questions in the recent estimates committee, she would be wise to get on the front foot and play a constructive role in shaping effective policy outcomes going forward. In our democratic system of government, the role of the Opposition is not merely to criticise the Government (important as that is), but to play a part in ensuring that policy outcomes are effective and in the public interest.

 

Given the magnitude of the economic and political risks, and the adverse social consequences if those risks come to pass for the Groote populace, it would be smart if the Minister for Indigenous Australians were to initiate an independent and wide ranging inquiry into the current developments at Groote. If all is well, there is no downside to pursuing such a course, and it will expand trust in the judgment and probity of the policymakers involved, and send a clear signal to future leaders and managers that their policy choices need t be robust and well directed. If all is not well, then the sooner we identify the issues and address them the better. Doing nothing and acting as if there is nothing worth examining in relation to Groote would be both irresponsible and short-sighted.

 

A second action worth initiating would be for NIAA to develop (ideally in conjunction with Treasury and Finance) advice on policy options to ensure better and more coordinated regulatory oversight of the increasingly complex Indigenous commercial development policy domain. The absence of regulatory coordination exacerbates the likelihood of a major commercial and financial disasters particularly where royalties and native title payments are substantial. Indigenous citizens are more vulnerable to the impacts fo such occurrences than other Australians.

 

15 November 2023