INDIGENOUS LAND CORPORATION (ILC) GETS BIGGER WHILE FIRST NATION PEOPLE SUFFER
Mick Estens
Katherine NT
0428936305
It was with interest that John Pilger mentioned the price of staying a night at Ayres Rock Resort then moved onto the community next to it, Mutitjulu in his film Utopia. With the ILC posting a $120 million write off at their owned and run resort I thought straight away, how far have the ILC come of the rails. Imagine what the 320 million dollar purchase price could have done for not only Mutitjulu, but communities around Australia, now with the write off of 120 million more one has to wonder if the ILC are capable of handling tax payers money. More importantly I have two questions, can the ILC do real good for Aboriginal people not only themselves? Plus, why after 19 years in existence isn’t the ILC fully Aboriginal staffed and run?
In the comedy series Fawlty Towers, Basil Fawlty is often heard to lament that he would be able to run a marvelous hotel if it wasn’t for his customers. The ILC don’t suffer from this delusion as their customers are Aboriginal people and after 19 years in existence, the ILC run most of their management positions with the bulk of European staff.
The organisation itself has a poor track record in regards to retaining skilled staff. This has been raised previously in Senate Enquiries into the ILC. Sitting here writing this in the heat of Katherine NT I cannot think of one Aboriginal person trained by the ILC from Stockman to Manager. The ILC have trained no Aboriginal Helicopter pilots, full time cattle preg testers, currently their contract mustering teams in WA and NT are outsiders, as well the contract fencers European. When I contacted Gary Cook Agriculture manager of the ILC about this I was told in writing “…it has absolutely nothing to do with him….” Recently an Aboriginal transport operator in Katherine couldn’t even get work from the ILC as it went to a non-indigenous owned company.
The Indigenous Land Corporation was established by the Keating government in 1995 as a way of redressing the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples. It was part of the Social Justice strategy - the end result of a long struggle by Traditional Owners and Indigenous leaders who had the vision and determination to press onward for land justice. In effect, the position that the current ILC Chairperson now holds was established as a result of the efforts of those same people who are now watching their communities being strangled and dismembered under the changes wrought by mean spirited policy implementation over the past years. It is the sons and grandsons of these same people who the ILC now pull the wool over the eyes of.
Hodgson Downs is owned by the Alawa clan who live at Minyerri NT. The ILC took a lease from the Alawa clan 8 years ago to in a 10 year period, have the station set up and run by Alawa people. Two years from handover and there are no Alawa Aboriginal people in power of their own lands, only European managers and assistant managers, boreman etc handpicked by the ILC. The ILC have given power to the Alawa people in the form of a cattle council, but they listen to these people and never act on much at all. For four years the ILC have promised to take the cattle council to Mistake Creek Station to view a successful run Indigenous Station, but it’s all talk as the ILC know Hodgson Downs will be like Roebuck Plains Station in the West, a property owned by Aboriginals that they will never hand back. Long time respected cattleman Ned McCord called the ILC a ‘lost cause’. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/indigenous-land-corporation... The Alawa people have been set up for failure by the very people, the ILC, that under law were invented to help them.
There is a major difference between mainstream employment and employment in enterprises operated by the ILC. The businesses that the ILC operates quote written figures of how many Indigenous people they employ, but, use the effects of ‘wordsmithing’ to get advantage as while figures look like a yearly employment they are not, and by using figures over financial years the ILC can ‘double dip’ on their bad results to stack the figures. The ILC poor and deceptive training results are nothing new https://www.indymedia.org.au/2013/03/12/ilc-keeping-aboriginal-men-in-th... and last year one boy stayed as a trainee on Hodgson Downs but for some reason, the ILC still ‘pass’ all involved. The Ngukurr Council sent a letter saying “our children go to ILC to be trained happy and come back broken and feeling worthless” signed by 10 T/Os.
The ILC may be offering well- intentioned employment and training opportunities, but people know that the profits of their labor will be shared not by their communities, but by a Commonwealth agency. Moreover, they are also aware of the years of failed representations that their community leaders have made to the ILC for a more just and equitable sharing of the businesses and land that was purchased or leased on their behalf. Only just recently did the ILC run governance training at Hodgson Downs despite the fact they have been dealing with T/Os there for 8 years.
It is interesting to examine the legal basis of the ILC. Its legislation specifically requires it to pursue policies that:
Assist Aboriginal persons and Torres Strait Islanders to acquire land; and to
Assist Aboriginal persons and Torres Strait Islanders to manage indigenous held land
So as to provide economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits for Aboriginal persons and Torres Strait Islanders.
(ATSIC Act 1989 Section 191b)
Including:
Acquiring interests in land and granting the interests to Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Corporations
(ATSIC Act 1989 Section 191d(3a)
Making grant of that land “within a reasonable time after that acquisition” (Section 191D4)
The ILC seems to have significantly departed from these legislative parameters. It is currently holding and operating several pastoral leases in the top end region including some many thousands of head of cattle. They have held these leases for years, with scant regard for the traditional owners groups for whom they were purchased and little likelihood of divestment in the near future.
Indeed, the ILC seems more intent on building itself a successful corporate pastoral empire across the north of Australia than acting as a statutory authority concerned with redressing the impacts of dispossession on the Indigenous people of this country. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-30/ilc-cattle-expansion-plans/5418920
It has often excluded traditional owner groups from participation in the management of these properties. No serious effort to establish training and employment programs to build the management skills of members of the proponent groups has been made. For example, a national Extension, Education and Training Strategy for Aboriginal landholders set up by the ILC has been abandoned. The ILC ‘train’ Aboriginal stockman to ride a horse, pick up rubbish, mow a lawn but never let any progress from there, and after the ILC being around for 19 years, the BULK of employees at ALL levels should be Indigenous , but the critical question is, where are the Indigenous trainee managers that should have been working alongside the European managers on these properties for the past 19 years? The ILC has simply sat on its hands. The one Aboriginal man they did start to train for management at Myroodah jumped ship and now runs a camp at Mistake Creek Station.
Employees in any vocation do not work to make their employers rich. People respond to incentives to work and to remain at work. A disgruntled and resentful workforce is a liability.
If you want people to work for you, then there must be trust, respect, and incentives to work beyond “available jobs”. The ILC treat their Indigenous workforce no better than the European structure of long ago. They even deal out what Aboriginal people called “munanga juga” (white man sugar) giving corn beef and favors to leaders they can sway opinion on and never really take an interest in Aboriginal culture, lore or family. http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/sacred-birds-poisoned-under-w...
It is clear that the ILC’s vision and that of Indigenous people are poles apart. In recent years the ILC has made much of its receiving awards for it pastoral management strategies. It pushed ahead with these strategies despite them not having the support of Indigenous representative bodies, who warned that the strategies were neither sustainable nor useful. It is now blowing up in their faces. If the outcomes of these “highly awarded” strategies are so effective, why are Indigenous people not finding them attractive? Because the basic principles of community development were ignored. The ILC simply does not listen. Several Aboriginal owned cattle Stations around Fitzroy Crossing leased their land to the Australian Agriculture Company over the ILC and just now, 10 other Aboriginal stations have leased their land to the Chinese as a better deal can be sought there than involving ILC. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-26/indigenous-stations-merger/5478056 Senior man John Watson, a leader on one of these Stations said of the ILC “….the ILC, today one of the most benignly regarded, least scrutinised bodies operating in the Aboriginal domain. They keep saying we own all these pastoral stations, but the reality is we are being cut out of the entire decision-making. ILC is under government control, not Aboriginal control, and they were set up to suit the government's interests. On paper we might be the owners of these stations but they are all under ILC control and they run the stations to suit themselves."
A culture of control at the expense of indigenous empowerment and development seems to have developed at the Board and senior management level of the ILC. While denying support for traditional owner groups and insisting that they repay the ILC for cattle purchased with properties it acquires, the ILC has accumulated massive funds. In this operating environment, it seems clear that the real measure of ILC’s success, that of addressing Aboriginal dispossession and assisting them to generate a range of social, economic, cultural and environment benefits – is not being achieved in any effective way.
A chasm of distrust has developed amongst the many Aboriginal communities and organisations that have dealings with the ILC. The ILC have no business retaining & profiting from properties that were acquired for Traditional Owners. Is it any wonder that no-one wants to work for them as is evident by the large amounts of Aboriginal owned Stations being leased to anyone but the ILC????
The writer of this article, Mick Estens, declares an impartiality conflict of interest as he has had direct involvement in the matters he has written about. I was an ILC employee from January 30, 2012 to January 16, 2013.
