Aboriginal Corporations

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:37): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs a question about Aboriginal corporations.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation, the Aboriginal corporation representing traditional owners in Perth, has been cut off from money that flows from Australia's biggest native title settlement after months of internal turmoil. Industry, government departments and councils that relied on the corporation for heritage work are now paralysed. Whadjuk has been given a default notice which requires it to appoint a special administrator to oversee operations. The crisis is now raising very serious issues of governance in Aboriginal corporations not just in Western Australia but around the country and here, where they seem to be endemic yet nobody, from governments down, seems to care one iota despite hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars either being squandered or misappropriated.

Why is that, minister, because if it was a white corporation, police and ICAC would be all over it? Since your decision to scrap without reason the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee, elders across the state have contacted me, angry and frustrated that you have cut off an avenue to speak directly with their elected representatives to air legitimate grievances of corruption in governance. My questions to the minister are:

1. What, if any, investigations have you launched into similar allegations of poor governance, lack of capacity and corruption in Aboriginal corporations in South Australia?

2. Can you confirm your government paid more than $50 million to the Narungga Nation Aboriginal Corporation on Yorke Peninsula despite allegations of unauthorised loans and consultancies which have generated a large petition signed by many concerned common law holders of that corporation?

3. Can you provide to the Legislative Council evidence of how these funds were managed or mismanaged?

4. Can you explain how and where First Nations people can raise concerns under the protection of parliamentary privilege afforded them under the standing committee inquiry into Aboriginal governance that you disbanded?

5. Will you support an independent judicial review or royal commission into the governance of Aboriginal corporations in South Australia?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:39): I thank the honourable member for his question. I might dispel some misapprehensions that I think the honourable member is labouring under in some of the ways that the questions were phrased.

The honourable member talked about a situation in Western Australia where implicit in the honourable member's question was the claim that heritage applications or issues had come to a standstill because of an issue with native title. I want to be very clear: they are completely separate things—I suspect—in WA, but they certainly are in South Australia where the native title regime, as I have said in this chamber before, is entirely a creature of commonwealth statute and commonwealth jurisdiction, as opposed to the Aboriginal heritage regime which, under our 1988 legislation in South Australia, is completely separate from native title.

Indeed, the South Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 went through parliament and came into force before 1992 when Mabo & Ors v The State of Queensland (the Mabo decision) was decided in the High Court, so our heritage regime predates native title. Certainly, the requirement under the Aboriginal Heritage Act is consultation with traditional owners, so anything to do with a native title corporation wouldn't necessarily have any effect on the operation of the Heritage Act or heritage applications in South Australia.

As I said, in relation to native title bodies, they are wholly a construct of federal legislation and the federal native title jurisdiction in the Federal Court. The regulation of prescribed bodies corporate that are established under the Native Title Act falls under the auspices of the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC) under the CATSI Act that many Indigenous corporations are registered under.

Certainly, in South Australia from time to time there have been native title bodies that have been investigated, and there have been some during the history of native title in South Australia that have been placed in administration by ORIC. I think the suggestion that Aboriginal corporations or Aboriginal bodies aren't scrutinised is one that many Aboriginal corporations and bodies, particularly those that have interactions with ORIC, would fundamentally disagree with.

I think many Aboriginal corporations are very well scrutinised and have ORIC conduct audits and also provide guidance on governance, so I just don't accept some sort of view that Aboriginal and particularly native title corporations are less scrutinised than others. In fact, they have an extra layer of scrutiny through the operation of the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations that they are required, as prescribed bodies corporate under the Native Title Act, to be registered under.