During this session I pressed Commissioner Kiss on waste, duplication and middle-man costs in the Aboriginal industry.
She acknowledged the funding failures, yet still joined the chair and other senators in pushing back on my questioning – proving that even when everyone admits the money isn’t reaching communities or Closing the Gap targets, they resist being held accountable.
My point was clear: money is being poured in, yet outcomes are worsening, accountability is missing, and real on-the-ground help is being smothered by bureaucracy.
How much taxpayer money will this government burn before the Gap Closes?
Transcript
CHAIR: Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing, Ms Kiss. You recently made comments warning of the dangers of right-wing parties. Apparently that was after the resounding One Nation win in the Farrer by-election. Is that correct?
Ms Kiss: I’m not sure what you’re referring to.
Senator ROBERTS: After the resounding One Nation win in the Farrer by-election, you made comments warning of the dangers of right-wing parties.
Ms Kiss: I don’t recall using that language at all. Can you clarify what you’re talking about?
Senator ROBERTS: No, that’s all I’ve got here. What benefits for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would such a statement bring?
Ms Kiss: Again, I’m not clear what you’re referring to. So, if you could, give me some clarity around where I might have used that language. I don’t recall using that language.
Senator ROBERTS: You didn’t use it?
Ms Kiss: Not that I can recall.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. What are your thoughts on the Aboriginal industry—that is, what’s referred to as the Aboriginal industry, the lawyers, the politicians, the public servants, the bureaucrats, the contractors, the academics and the activists living off the money allocated to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in poverty despite receiving welfare payments the same as other Australians in need? The money is being allocated, but it’s not getting to where it needs to be. What are your thoughts on that?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, that sounds an awful lot like you’re asking the commissioner for an opinion. That’s not—
Senator ROBERTS: Do you have an opinion?
Ms Kiss: I do have an opinion, but it’s not my role to share my opinion.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you aware that that’s happening?
Ms Kiss: I can speak to the fact that we know that there is a fair amount of financial allocation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services and supports. I’m not sure what you’re referring to in terms of welfare support, but I do have concerns about the fact that funding that’s being allocated to our communities and to our organisations and to government agencies is not actually meeting the needs of our communities. That’s evident in the Closing the Gap targets.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. We’re agreed. Are you aware that often more than half the grant money is eaten up by salaries and other middleman costs before getting to the people the grant was supposed to assist?
Ms Kiss: The indication of that has been presented in Productivity Commission reports and Indigenous expenditure reports, so, yes, I am aware that there is consideration of that.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I’m struggling to see the connection between your questions and the role of Commissioner Kiss.
Senator ROBERTS: I think we’ll see it fairly soon.
CHAIR: Okay, I’m looking forward to that. That would be helpful.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you aware that most assaults upon Aboriginal women in the Northern Territory and in Western Australia are committed by Aboriginal men?
Senator COX: No, they’re not.
Ms Kiss: I’m not sure that those statistics are necessarily accurate.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Why does nobody comment that the large proportion of incarcerated Aboriginal people are in jail because they committed crimes warranting a jail sentence from a magistrate or judge? That’s called social justice.
Ms Kiss: I can’t make comment on that, Senator. That’s not a question for me.
CHAIR: Again, it’s asking the commissioner for her opinion.
Ms Kiss: Senator, I don’t make the decisions about who goes to jail and how they’re sentenced. Sorry.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, when will this government learn that throwing money around is not the solution? These people are living in misery, in poverty, and throwing more money at them and throwing it to the activists and the parasites in between is not being effective. It’s quite clear. Social justice includes people accepting responsibility for their own actions and genuine help on the ground. What is your government going to do about closing the gap, because it’s widening now?
Senator Green: Thanks for the question, Senator. I reject the language in your question. Yesterday, in front of the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, the National Indigenous Australians Agency appeared and gave a lot of evidence about all of the work that we are doing to improve outcomes and close the gap. Our government is committed to that. The Prime Minister gave a statement to acknowledge the Closing the gap reports. We acknowledge that not enough is being done and more needs to be done, and that’s why we’ve made significant investments in the budget. I want to thank the commissioner for the work that she does in highlighting not just to governments around the country but to everyone in the country how important it is that we do close the gap, not just for the people who are living these lives right now but for future generations of Australians.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/yozXc3L7MV8/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-07-10 12:22:412026-07-10 12:22:44Is the Gap Closed?
I seemed to have upset my colleagues when I questioned why more than half a million dollars was being spent on a grant exploring “Indigenous connections to outer space” and whether Aboriginal people “cared for other planets.”
How do such projects help Australians who are living in tents, skipping meals, or struggling to pay rent?
While people are hurting, the Labor government is spending $1 billion a year on grants like this.
Taxpayers deserve to know why.
— February | Senate Estimates
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Moving on, Dr Lara Daley at the University of Newcastle received a grant of $528,491 over three years, including salary and project costs to study: ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge in Australian space policy, using songlines and creation stories, aiming to broaden understandings of outer space by identifying and supporting Aboriginal connections between space and life on Earth to develop culturally respectful and environmentally responsible space exploration.’ How would Aboriginal environmental management be better than what these days is a collective understanding of environmental management that includes Aboriginal management of the environment?
Prof. Shergold: My answer to this and other questions I suspect are going to be identical. I can do no more than describe the peer-review processes that are being used and hopefully make it clear why it would be entirely inappropriate for me or the board to step in on particular projects on which we would have far less expertise than the assessors to overturn decisions.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Professor Shergold. That doesn’t give the taxpayers much confidence. How would Aboriginal management be better than what these days is a collective understanding of environmental management full stop? Does the ARC expect Elon Musk to encounter an Indigenous population on Mars for which we should prepare? According to her bio, Dr Daley’s research is grounded in herself as, inter alia, ‘a white, non-Indigenous person on unceded Aboriginal country specialising in human and more-than-human research, including outer space as being already known, cared for and inhabited through Indigenous ontologies. Did Aboriginals inhabit other planets?
CHAIR: The scope of estimates is very broad, but it is contained to the operations and expenditure of departments and agencies, and I—
Senator ROBERTS: Okay, one more question.
CHAIR: Okay.
Senator ROBERTS: I wonder: did Aboriginals care for other planets in the solar system? You appear to be trying to extend Aboriginal mythology to other planets in the solar system. How far out—Pluto, Saturn, to infinity and beyond, as Buzz Lightyear said in Toy Story?
Senator FARUQI: My God. Read some books, Malcolm!
Senator ROBERTS: Australians are living in tents, struggling to buy food. Hundreds of thousands of people are struggling. Tens of thousands are living under bridges and in cars, and this is what you spend your $1 billion a year on. Unidentified speaker: Is there a question, Chair?
Senator FARUQI: Chair, please put us out of our misery.
CHAIR: Malcolm Roberts, please take a moment. Senators, I appreciate all the feelings at the table, but it is important that senators are able to be heard in silence as they ask their questions, as it is important for witnesses to be heard in silence and not spoken over. I will be enforcing this on both counts. Senator Roberts, you have the call to keep asking your question. Senators, regardless of what you think of it, please allow him to do so in silence.
Senator ROBERTS: With Australians struggling, why is this what you spend your $1 billion a year on? Taxpayers would be saying, ‘Shame on you.’
Senator Walsh: Was that for the professor or for me?
Senator ROBERTS: Both.
Senator Walsh: I’ll go first, Senator Roberts, and say that you are a politician and that you are expressing your political views right now—
Senator ROBERTS: On behalf of many constituents, yes.
Senator Walsh: and what we did is we removed politics from the processes that the ARC uses, because we believe in peer review of research not political review of research. The ARC’s process is rigorous. It is independent. As Professor Shergold has said, it is based on a strong network of peer reviewers. That is the decision of the government. We based that decision after an independent review of the ARC Act. Our reforms came into force from 1 July 2024, and we established an independent and expert ARC board to be responsible for the approval of grants, fellowships and the like. Professor Shergold and his team are discharging their obligations under the legislation to assess grant applications through these processes—through the panel, through peer review. They are discharging their obligations appropriately, and the government undermines efforts to undermine the trust in the Australian Research Council.
Prof. Shergold: You are quite right to be directing the question to me. It isn’t a ministerial decision. It is in very large measure a decision for me and the board of the ARC. You’re quite right. The reality is, as I said, that we had about 1,000 grants that were approved last year. It is inevitable that there will be 10 or 20 of those that will become highly controversial for the reasons you’ve suggested. I suppose my view is—and it’s not giving any view on any particular research—that the fact that becomes controversial is not a bad thing. The whole purpose of research is to look for new paradigms, to interpret in new ways, to provoke and, to be honest with you, to raise hackles on existence. It is the way in which we continue to improve what we do economically, socially and environmentally and have debates about culture within Australia. I can’t, like you, sit down and say, ‘I think that looks like a really good piece of research to me, and that one looks a bit whacky.’ I’ve got to be dependent upon the experts that I use. My task, as I’ve said, is to make sure that they are doing it with integrity. I want to make sure, to see, that there are no conflicts of interest. I want to look at the outcomes of that research, to make sure that all universities are getting agreement that Indigenous scholars—not just on Indigenous issues, incidentally, but Indigenous scholars in all areas—are getting fair access. That’s what I’m looking at when I look at the 4,000 grant applications we receive and the thousands of decisions we make. It’s making sure that, in all ways, the peer review process is working and, with the board, looking at ways in which it can be improved all the time.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/KfQtjTs2vls/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2026-07-09 09:15:062026-07-09 09:16:25Tents vs. Space Programs
I seemed to upset my colleagues when I questioned why the Australian Research Council is spending close to a billion dollars a year on grants that taxpayers would struggle to see any value in.
ARC leadership repeatedly hid behind “peer review processes”, refusing to justify cost-benefit while signing off on a $889,275 grant for an Arab/Muslim Australian social movements study, and another $322,213 grant that produced a commercial sold book Coming of Age in War on Terror.
While I respect independent review processes, the real issue is being ignored.
How is this supposedly “world-class system” allowing taxpayer money to be poured into niche ideological research with no demonstrated benefit to the people footing the bill?
The problem isn’t that research exists – it’s why taxpayers are being forced to fund it.
— February | Senate Estimates
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you, Chair, and thank you for appearing tonight. Good evening. I have here grant reference FT220100427 for beneficiary Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, covering the period from 2022 to 2027, with a grant amount $802,000, since increased to $889,275. The purpose of this very large grant—inter alia—is: Arab/Muslim Australian Social Movements since the 1970s: a hidden history … aims to recover previously untapped oral histories and rare archival collections of Arab/Muslim Australian activists … Who have struggled against external systems and internal conflicts to build a socially just future … include a greater understanding of the transformative activism of communities whose movement work is often relegated to the margins. This is what you’re spending taxpayer money on. What is the cost benefit of this study sufficient to justify an almost $900,000 price tag?
Senator FARUQI: Why do you hate Muslims, Malcolm?
Senator ROBERTS: I don’t; we have some in this party.
Prof. Shergold: Let me answer that question and I’m happy to do so because the key change to the ARC legislation, as you will be aware, is that, at this stage—in most instances, not all—it is the ARC and board which make the decision on grants and not the minister. So the minister is clearly at arm’s length. Now, what do you do if you’re on a board and you are trying to make sure that you use public funds for the best purposes available for projects that are deemed by universities to be in the national interest? If you look at the number of applications that come forward, you’ll start to understand what a challenge it is. I think last year—I’m looking for the numbers—there was something about 4,000 applications.
Senator ROBERTS: Is this getting to the answer of my question?
Prof. Shergold: I am going to get there, because I want you to share my pain. We’ve got 4,000 applications and about, give or take, 25 per cent are accepted. It is quite unrealistic and very bad governance to imagine I and the board members sit down and look at 4,000 applications, even as well as presented as you’ve just done with this one, and say yes or no. How do you do it? You try and make sure you have the very best world-class system, which is a peer-review process. The role of myself, the role of the board, isn’t to go through and second-guess those expert peer reviewers in the decisions they make. My role—an important one; I feel a burden of responsibility—is to make sure that the processes that are being used are best practice in peer review and are done with honesty.
Senator ROBERTS: Is there a cost benefit?
Prof. Shergold: This was a proposal that came forward out of about was about 1,200, give or take, that were accepted last year.
Senator ROBERTS: So you can’t tell me—
Prof. Shergold: What I can tell you is we are using the best peer-review processes that we have available. It was thought by members of college of experts and then by disciplinary experts that this would be an important and innovative and, no doubt, provocative piece of research.
Senator ROBERTS: But you can’t tell me the cost benefit.
Prof. Shergold: Well, I tell you what I can do. I can tell you the cost benefit as assessed of the ARC grants overall, which we had undertaken a few years ago—
Senator ROBERTS: Is that for this grant?
Prof. Shergold: which gave a return on all our grants of about I think $3.20 on the dollar, something like that.
Senator ROBERTS: I’ll move on. This isn’t your first grant to the doctor. There was also grant DP110101249 titled ‘Youth in the digital age: Being young and Muslim in Australia’ for $322,213 covering 2018 to 2021. Now my question is: why didn’t you use the correct name of the project, which was: ‘”Trust, Politics, and Fear: ‘Generation 9/11’ Muslim and Non-Muslim youth compared”‘?
Prof. Shergold: Well, it wasn’t my piece of research.
Senator ROBERTS: This grant allowed the doctor to write a book titled Coming of Age in the War on Terror, published by Allen and Unwin. Why are you funding this person to write a book which she sold commercially and for which the doctor most likely received payment? Did she?
Prof. Shergold: I have no idea—
Senator ROBERTS: That is what bothers me.
Prof. Shergold: if she received payment from that. But I am delighted overall when pieces of research that we fund end up in books or articles. I think that was a good use of money.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, this is socialising costs and privatising profits. Why is the Australian Research Council allowed to use taxpayer money to provide a commercial benefit to their friends in academia—paid to write the book, paid to sell the book? This seems to be a great scam going on here for academia.
Prof. Shergold: Well, in answering the question, and you were frustrated at the delay, the one thing I did show is how this is a best-practice peer-review process, and to identify that as a scam is probably stretching it somewhat.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, why is the ARC allowed to do this—socialise costs and privatise benefits?
Senator Walsh: The ARC’s role in the process is through its independent and expert board to use the process of peer review that Professor Shergold spoke about to be responsible for the approval of grants and fellowships and so on. That’s the ARC’s role and they rely on independent peer review to discharge their obligations. I think you’re asking questions about academics then publishing books after they have conducted research which may be funded by the ARC or may be supported in other ways. I think that publishing opportunity is just a part of higher education; it is standard procedure.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, you have been funding this person continuously since 2018. Dr Randa Abdel Fattah is a radical Islamic activist who just participated in the figurative ‘burning down’ of the Adelaide Writers Festival. Is this grant nothing more than the ARC funding Islamic activism?
Prof. Shergold: I won’t repeat the process which the minister has described well. I will say we have a college of experts carefully selected who do a first assessment. We then have detailed assessments from over 20,000 assessors from Australia and around the world that then assess each of those pieces of research. And roughly about 25 per cent of them manage to make the cut. I wish I could fund more. There are many more good projects you could, but that’s the truth. There is a process. I can’t possibly step in and start to overrule decisions of that process on the basis that I don’t like particularly the political advocacy that someone does. I’ve got to make sure on your behalf that that process is being used as well as it possibly can be to make sure that decisions are being made fairly, honestly, transparently and in the national interest.
Senator ROBERTS: They’re nice words. But I’d leave this to the taxpayers to decide. The doctor has now organised an alternative event to the Adelaide Writers Festival, which, by all reports, is designed to exclude people of a certain faith or belief. Minister, I keep on hearing about social cohesion and yet this grant has gone to a person who is attacking social cohesion to advance Islamic propaganda. Why is your grants program encouraging social conflict?
Senator Walsh: There are a lot of incorrect premises there about the role of the ARC and the grants process and the investigation that was undertaken by Macquarie University. Essentially, Professor Shergold has already gone through that process. To go over it again, briefly, the minister wrote to the ARC and, I think, to Professor Shergold and asked the ARC to look into this particular grant to the doctor and make sure that the grant was being appropriately used. The way that works is that it’s the university that receives the grant that is then tasked with doing the investigation. Macquarie University appointed academic experts to conduct the review. The review investigated whether the grant funding was being used for its intended purpose. During that process, the funding was suspended. The process concluded and the grant was reinstated. It was reinstated, as I understand it, because there was no evidence that there was an inappropriate acquittal of public funds. So that’s the process.
Prof. Shergold: The only thing I would add is that, of course, we will continue to review this grant, just as we review all the other grants.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Minister. Just moving on then—
Senator FARUQI: Chair, may I raise a point of order?
CHAIR: Yes.
Senator FARUQI: Senator Roberts is making completely unfounded and false allegations about a very respected academic and researcher. I would really like you to ask him to withdraw those or stop that line of questioning.
Senator ROBERTS: I’d like to move on, Chair.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you need to wait for me to respond to the point of order before you can direct the committee to move on. I take your point, Senator Faruqi, but I don’t believe there has been a breach of the standing orders from what I can observe. But I would just remind all senators, as we continue through this session, to do so respectfully of the witnesses and topics we’re dealing with and of each other at the table. Senator Roberts, you still have the call.
Bureaucracy shouldn’t be swallowing up funds meant for our most vulnerable communities.
I recently questioned the NIAA at Senate Estimates on the ongoing failures of the Closing the Gap initiative. Case in point: out of a recent $40M grant for the Alice Springs Camp, roughly half was chewed up by administrative salaries rather than direct aid.
When pushed for a genuine, independent external audit to see where the money is actually going, the NIAA pointed to internal reviews. ANAO does not conduct the deep financial audits required here. This is just the department monitoring itself.
Worse still, when asked if basic welfare payments are enough to survive on in remote areas, the NIAA directed me to the Department of Social Services.
How can we close the gap if the leading agency refuses to look at the actual baseline standard of living?
A One Nation government will demand transparency and independent audits, ensuring that funding goes to people that need it – not middlemen.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for appearing again. Good morning, Minister. One of the ongoing tragedies is the failure of the Closing the Gap concept when there are so many people whose vested interests lie in ensuring the gap will never close. Why is so much grant money wasted on enriching middlemen and middlewomen and only a proportion of the grant money ends up with those who the grant was intended to benefit? This is the flaw in the existing grant models where only a fraction is actually spent on the purpose. An example of this relates to grant money allocated to support those Australians living in the Alice Springs camp. Recently, a grant of more than $40 million was made, but half of that was used for salaries, with less than half going to direct assistance. Is this acceptable, Minister?
Senator McCarthy: We have gone through the breakdown of the funding for Tangentyere in terms of the town camps, Senator. I will ask Ms Bellenger to go through that again with you.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
Ms Bellenger: As we outlined earlier in the session, Tangentyere receives 18 activities funded through the NIAA. If all of those activities are successfully delivered, they will receive around $20.3 million. That does depend on the successful delivery of all of those programs.
Senator ROBERTS: That didn’t answer my question but let’s move on. Does half the grants going in salaries explain why so much money is spent on Closing the Gap, yet the gap keeps getting bigger? Let’s face it, it gets bigger every year.
Ms Bellenger: There is money spent on salaries through the NIAA grants, and they are for the services that are directly provided and are almost entirely filled with First Nations local people. I would argue that a job in the first instance supports—but then the services that are provided to people are also the primary outcome.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. When will a genuine audit of expenditure and outcomes be done on the effectiveness and the value-for-money basis of all Indigenous grants and NIAA programs over the last five years?
Ms Guivarra: We have rigorous monitoring of our own grants through internal assessment processes, and this occurs every year. We monitor for the effectiveness and efficiency and value for money, which is required under the PGPA Act, with all of our investments. You would have seen over a number of years now that the NIAA’s funding has been directed more and more to our engagement with community-controlled organisations being responsible for the provision of our services to communities so that there is a greater connection to what it is that is going to be required to make change for those communities, because now essentially many more of our grants are being delivered through community-controlled organisations.
Senator ROBERTS: When will we see a third-party independent audit.
Ms Guivarra: We have a number of different accountability mechanisms as a Commonwealth executive agency as it is. We have regular performance audits by the Australian National Audit Office that we’re required to do. I will get our group manager for integrity to go through a little of some of the more recent ANAO audits that we have had.
Mr Worth: The assurance mechanisms in place for our funding and how it’s spent, and the value delivered, are multilayered. Within the agency itself we have requirements through all of our funding agreements for providers to report against KPIs in terms of their service delivery. Each time those reports are received, they’re reviewed by the teams. It’s checked off against their own experience, checking with community and visiting the providers themselves to sight those services. With the financials themselves, each time an acquittal is required, staff within the NIAA review the acquittal—that is, the funding claim being made by the provider against that—and they check that it’s in line with the contract and that likewise it’s supported by the performance reports. Then, as Ms Guivarra mentioned, the ANAO, in terms of independent audit, conducts audits of our own—
Senator ROBERTS: The ANAO told me a couple of times that they don’t do detailed, comprehensive audits. What you’re talking about is monitoring yourself. I want to know when an independent external audit will be done.
Mr Worth: The ANAO conducts two types of audits. One is of the actual processes and the way that we operate in order to ensure that the key risks that the Commonwealth is exposed to through our operations are being properly managed through our processes and controls and so on. When it comes to individual audits, the requirement for any audited accounts from providers varies according to the assessed risk for that particular provider. We do require some providers to have their accounts audited independently, and those are checked and received. However, it’s not always the case. As I said before, we do full checks of the acquittal claims made by our own staff. Of course that’s independent from those making the claims who are the providers. So there are a large number of checks and balances in place. There are, where required, given our risk assessments, independent audits required of some providers. On top of that, our own processes and our own approach to risk management is subject to audit by the ANAO.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Do most adult Indigenous people living in remote areas, if not working, receive a fortnightly welfare payment?
Ms Guivarra: I would say, Senator, there is an Australian requirement that, after a certain period of time, if you are not working you are entitled to a payment. Yes.
CHAIR: That’s all Australians.
Ms Guivarra: That’s all Australians, yes.
Senator ROBERTS: So I’m guessing you’re saying yes. Is that likely to be the same or more than that received by non-Indigenous recipients?
Senator THORPE: We get triple! Didn’t you know that!
Ms Guivarra: I would say there’s no difference in treatment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from other Australians.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the payment enough to live on?
Senator WHITEAKER: Chair, I’m not sure this agency’s responsible for the payments to which the senator is—
Ms Guivarra: We are not. Our responsibilities are for the programs and policies that we administer. If it’s in relation to the social security system, then I would suggest you direct those questions to the Department of Social Services.
CHAIR: To ensure you get the accurate answers to your questions, Senator Roberts, we would direct you to them. This is your last question before we rotate.
Senator ROBERTS: Where does the money go? Is the payment enough to live on? Surely that’s part of your remit. What proportion goes in rent? Why is the attendance at school so low? What is being done to fix it?
CHAIR: That’s an awful lot of issues in one sentence, Senator—
Senator ROBERTS: I want to know what they’re doing.
CHAIR: many of them not related to this department, although that’s not to go to the relevance of your question. But you’re probably going to need to break it down a little for the officers to appropriately respond.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Is the payment enough to live on? Where does the money go, and specifically rent?
Ms Guivarra: I think a lot of the issues that you are raising are not within the remit of this agency. As I said, if it’s in relation to social security payments of any sort, it is actually the Department of Social Services who would be able to provide that. My understanding is they are on next Wednesday.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, on that—
Senator ROBERTS: I would have thought you would know how these things—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, can I just clarify a piece for you there. ‘Is it enough to live on’—you could ask that about anybody in Australia. You would have to look to the social security people about how it’s assessed. In terms of housing, this agency does not have a breakdown of how people spend any money they may receive in welfare payments.
Senator ROBERTS: How do you assess whether or not people are living satisfactorily?
Senator THORPE: How do you spend your money?
CHAIR: Yes, exactly.
Senator THORPE: How do you spend your money, Malcolm?
Senator ROBERTS: I’m not being questioned here.
Senator THORPE: Well, you should be.
Ms Guivarra: It is not our job to monitor the personal payments or spending habits of individuals. Our role is to administer the programs and policies that we are responsible for.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you assess the standard of living?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, we are going to rotate the call, so I will give you one final question.
Senator ROBERTS: Do you assess standard of living and what’s needed to upgrade—to close the gap?
Ms Guivarra: We are in constant contact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities around the country for pressure points for their own cost of living. It is why there is a lot of focus and attention on what is happening in remote communities across the country. You were not present previously when the minister referred to the work that she has been undertaking with the Coalition of the Peaks in regard to the monitoring of the current fuel crisis, where we have, obviously, been in contact with community controlled organisations about the cost of service delivery to remote communities across the country. So those types of issues, in terms of how we understand the impact of the cost of living for remote communities—there are various mechanisms by which we do that all of the time.
In this session of Senate Estimates, I sought clarity on the operation of the Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP). There’s a lot of confusion around whether government contracts over $7.5 million must be awarded to Indigenous businesses.
After questioning officials, it’s clear that this isn’t the case. The policy doesn’t mandate awarding contracts based on race—it requires that, for large contracts delivered in Australia, companies meet minimum Indigenous participation targets. These targets can be achieved through employment, subcontracting, or a combination of both.
Australians deserve transparency on how their taxpayer money is spent. While the government says these measures aim to close the gap, we must ensure that procurement decisions remain focused on value for money and fairness for all. I’ll continue to scrutinise policies that risk introducing race-based preferencing into government processes. Accountability matters.
— Senate Estimates | December 2025
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Alright, I’ll move on to clarifying the operation of the Indigenous procurement policy. I’m told that every Commonwealth agency is obligated to choose Indigenous content on contracts over $7.5 million, so if there’s a choice between a white employer and an Aboriginal employer the government must choose the Aboriginal agency. Is that correct?
Ms Guivarra: I think you’re referring to mandatory minimum requirements which actually relate to employment. There are mandatory set-aside requirements for contracts valued between $80,000 and $200,000, where, all other things being equal, if it is an Aboriginal organisation, then a preference is allocated.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you talking about employment or expenditure?
Ms Guivarra: No. I think the figure you were referring to was the $7.5 million, which refers to the mandatory minimum requirements. For contracts over $7½ million, there’s an employment target.
Mr Dexter: That’s right. The $7.5 million threshold is one part of the IPP. It’s the mandatory minimum Indigenous participation requirement. It does not require Commonwealth agencies to grant those contracts to Indigenous businesses. That’s not a feature of the IPP.
Senator ROBERTS: So if the contract is granted, then they must hire—
Mr Dexter: What it does require is for there to be mandatory minimum Indigenous participation targets as part of that contract, and that’s for contracts delivered wholly in Australia valued at $7.5 million or more in 19 industry categories. That’s been one of the three parts of the IPP since 2015.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, what’s the basis for the government engaging in race based preferencing?
Senator McCarthy: I reject outright your assertion there. I have called on all senators and members of parliament to join me in trying to close the gap in terms of the targets we’re trying to achieve. Those targets are specifically aimed at trying to improve Indigenous employment and Indigenous businesses, and we make no apologies for that.
Senator ROBERTS: So, all things being equal, an Aboriginal will be preferred based on race to a non Aboriginal?
Mr Dexter: No, that’s not correct.
Senator ROBERTS: I’m exploring this.
Mr Dexter: I’m trying to be helpful in clarifying that that’s not a requirement of the policy. In selecting those contracts, Commonwealth procurement officials are always required to demonstrate value for money for the contract, whether there are MMRs applied for the contract or not.
Senator ROBERTS: But then there will be hiring criteria that are favourable to Aboriginals if the company gets a contract. Is that correct?
Mr Dexter: How the supplier meets those targets is entirely a matter for the company. They can do it through subcontracting arrangements, they can do it through employment arrangements or they can do it through a combination of both.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/XteFhlSW_cM/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2025-12-30 10:08:472025-12-30 10:08:50Setting the Record Straight on Indigenous Procurement
During Senate Estimates, I asked the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC) about the issue of late reporting by Aboriginal corporations. I was told that of the 3,312 Aboriginal corporations registered with ORIC, 2,940 were late in submitting their required reports and 1,162 reports for the 2024 financial year had not yet been lodged.
Of the reports not yet submitted, 84% were from small corporations with an income of less than $100,000. ORIC advised that out of the approximately 3,300 corporations, 60 had been listed for prosecution, with 27 already prosecuted. Penalties imposed ranged from deregistration and winding up to personal litigation against directors.
The most common reason cited for non-submission of financial reports was apathy. As part of their response to this issue, ORIC is now offering training for all relevant parties to help improve compliance.
– Senate Estimates | October 2025
Transcript
CHAIR: Senator Roberts.
Senator ROBERTS: My questions are to ORIC, the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations. Thank you for being here. It has been widely reported that many Indigenous corporations have not submitted reports required under statute. How many Indigenous incorporations are in breach of requirements to submit their required reports for this period?
Ms Stroud: As at 6 October, I can confirm that, of the 3,312 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations, 2,940 are required to lodge one or more annual reports—some have exemptions. Of those 2,940 corporations required to lodge one or more reports, I can confirm that 1,162, or 39½ per cent, have not yet lodged their 2024 reports, which would’ve been due in December 2024, noting that the 2025 reports are not due till the end of this year. For context, though, I would add that, of those 1,162 corporations that have failed to lodge last year’s reports, 84 per cent are small corporations. They are corporations that have a consolidated growth income revenue of under $100,000 each year and are only required to lodge a general report. Corporations that are large and, rightly so, are those that should be subject to greater public scrutiny and funding body scrutiny, represent two per cent of those corporations that have not yet lodged their reports.
Senator ROBERTS: My rough mental arithmetic is about 250 that are not small corporations have failed to lodge a report.
Ms Stroud: I’ll give you that number—it’s 241.
Senator ROBERTS: I was pretty close. That’s a lot. It might only be two per cent, but it’s actually about eight per cent of the total of corporations. How many board members, on average, are on a corporation board?
Ms Stroud: I don’t have that figure on hand. I can take that on notice. I can tell you that, across the 3,000 odd corporations, there are 17,649, in total, director positions. That doesn’t account for that some directors might sit on multiple corporations. Under the legislation, corporations can have up to 12 directors and over 12 requires an exemption to do so.
Senator ROBERTS: Say that again about the exemption, please.
Ms Stroud: To have fewer than three or over 12 directors on a board requires an exemption.
Senator ROBERTS: How many Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders are overseen, helped or serviced by these boards?
Ms Stroud: Sorry, I wouldn’t be in a position to answer that question. I can tell you that, of the just over 3,000 corporations, they are made up of just shy of 245,000 members, again, that’s not accounting for that some members might be members of multiple corporations.
Senator ROBERTS: What was that number again?
Ms Stroud: It is 245,594, to be exact. Those 3,300 corporations, as I mentioned before, can be very small corporations with under $100,000 in assets or $100,000 in income through to large corporations. They do everything from cultural heritage protection to land and water management, schools, health services and other vital social services. I wouldn’t be in a position to even estimate the total reach of those services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients and beneficiaries.
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve mentioned that 2,940 are required to report, and 3,300 is the total number. So about 360 are not required to report.
Ms Stroud: Eighty-eight per cent of corporations are required to lodge some form of annual report.
Senator ROBERTS: I appreciate your concise and direct answers. Thank you for that. Why have these breaches occurred? I know for small corporations it’s probably lack of—well, you tell me.
Ms Stroud: There are a number of reasons why corporations don’t lodge their annual reports. We encourage corporations, wherever possible, to reach out to us and let us know to help us understand the reason for it. It can be turnover in boards, difficulties of getting the services of auditors, disruptions in corporations or it can be just apathy and negligence of directors’ duties. Why we encourage corporations to reach out and let us know—and be on almost an update plan with us so that we can keep on top of when we can expect reports—is that we take that into consideration with our prosecution work. We have referred 60 corporations to CDPP for prosecution for failing to lodge reports. Twenty-seven corporations have been prosecuted. They are medium and large corporations, so, again, they’re corporations with over $100,000 annual revenue and those from which the public would rightfully expect a higher degree of accountability to their members and to their regulator and also to their funders. That’s why medium and large corporations are those which we refer for prosecution where they persistently fail to lodge reports for a couple of years. We now deregister corporations.
Senator ROBERTS: What happens when they’re deregistered?
Ms Stroud: If a corporation is deregistered, it no longer exists. There are challenges with deregistering corporations, particularly those that hold assets. There might be a corporation that holds assets but is ordinarily not conducting business and continually failing to lodge its reports. We’ve recently sought legal advice on alternative measures for those corporations, including winding up. We’ve also flagged to the public that, where a corporation continually fails to lodge its reports and has been subject to prosecution and still refuses, we will consider civil prosecution against individual directors.
Senator ROBERTS: So the directors can be liable?
Ms Stroud: It’s a lengthy and expensive exercise for ORIC to peruse civil litigation against directors that continually fail, hence why we flagged it in our recent regulatory posture. It’s done so because, where a corporation is prosecuted for failing to lodge its reports, it’s an offence of the corporation, and the corporation is what pays the fine if the court imposes one. Our intention now is that, where directors sit behind that, we will civilly pursue individual directors. I’ve also got with me Deputy Register Andrew Huey, who can help answer your questions.
Senator ROBERTS: Is there any suggestion of fraud being involved or incompetence being involved, or is it just apathy? You mentioned apathy. What would be the defining characteristics?
Ms Stroud: For the small corporations—again, that’s 84 per cent of corporations not lodging reports—I would say it is a capacity and capability issue, or challenge, and a degree of apathy around reporting. We have no evidence that there is an immediate and direct correlation between medium and large corporations failing to lodge their financial reports and evidence of fraud, noting that, when corporations do lodge their annual reports, a quality check by us has been done, directors have signed off on it and directors have done their declaration to accept responsibility for it. That is one way of identifying where there might be red flags. But, in the main, evidence of corruption, fraud, mismanagement or negligence of director duties or abuse of director duties comes through other avenues—through referrals, reports of concerns and complaints.
Senator ROBERTS: Finally, apart from keeping track of it, what changes in oversight will you introduce to ensure the integrity of the management of these Indigenous corporations? Have you got an overall plan for raising the standards?
Ms Stroud: We have refreshed our two-day guidance training. It’s for directors sitting. Current directors are given priority. Members and relevant staff can also attend the training, and we’ve also introduced a new one-day ‘understanding your finance’ training, which is designed for directors to understand how to read financials and have greater confidence in asking questions, knowing what to look for and holding their management staff accountable for financial reporting to them.
Senator ROBERTS: Building understanding to build confidence?
What we suspected all along about The Voice to Parliament …
When Australians rejected the Voice to Parliament, they were not saying ‘No’ to a single referendum question – it was ‘No’ to a broad activist ideology seeking to entrench racial privilege into democracy.
Australians were deeply offended by the push to create treaties between Australians.
They were horrified by the suggestion that taxation would become a matter of skin colour.
And they remain furious about efforts to erase Australian history and have ancestral stories brutalised by so-called ‘Truth-Telling’ commissions.
The experiences of our pioneers, convicts, and free settlers – the ancestors of so many Australians – have been deliberately and maliciously twisted with the full authority of state governments who see the past as a tool to implement vile racial movements which, ultimately, desire land and money that belong to all Australians.
Remember when ‘Yes’ proponents of the Voice promised their demands would be ‘mild’?
Racism is never mild. It is corrosive.
Western Australia has authorised an $85,000 per person ‘reconciliation payment’ for Aboriginal people. A payment that takes money off people who were never perpetrators and hands it to another group who were never victims.
This is not equality.
How many national parks, beaches, mountains, rivers, and forests have a racial lock on the gate?
We are seeing this in Victoria where the Jacinta Allan Labor government has ignored the voice of Victorians and pushed ahead with a Voice-like entity known as the First People’s Assembly – a body set up to negotiate a Treaty.
This month, the Yoorrook Justice Commission handed down 100 recommendations to the government, each more appalling than the last.
Many of these demand public money, resources, and power.
They ask that racial priority be given for housing, health, government contracts, and jobs. Widespread compensation, reparations, and tax relief is being sought for Aboriginals.
The recommendations are divisive and discriminatory suggesting that Aboriginal people should be treated differently from other Australians.
The Report says that the Victorian government must establish income streams based on land, water, and other natural resources to benefit self-determination and other First Peoples-led initiatives and to seek access to a portion of government revenues.
Victoria will soon have streets of families treated differently by the state government and local council based purely on how they look.
Living side-by-side, born under the same sun, and yet deemed unequal.
This is what people voted against.
One Nation does not support a bottomless money pit approach to perpetuate a victim mentality for Aboriginals and a permanent guilt trip to be imposed on the rest of Australia.
One Nation supports equitable access to all the benefits available to all Australians which should not discriminate based on a person’s race or faith.
We are all of One Nation.
Revealed! by Senator Malcolm Roberts
What we suspected all along about The Voice to Parliament
This is how you close the gap. It’s what One Nation has always said – treat people based on need not race.
When that happens fundamental needs come out. For people to have purpose they need to be able to contribute and hold a job. For a job you need industry and industry needs basic things: power, water and internet.
The 3,000km Northern Rail link sometimes referred to as the Iron Boomerang would bring all of these fundamental things and allow remote communities to thrive like never before.
This is what is possible when we address needs instead of separating people based on race.
At the recent Senate Estimates, I inquired about the recent turmoil at the Northern Australian Aboriginal Justice Authority (NAAJA), which has seen six CEOs appointed over a two-year period. One of the CEOs was found by the Federal Court to have been unfairly dismissed and chronic staff shortages have led to the suspension of legal representation, leaving approximately 75 Aboriginal individuals unrepresented in court. I questioned how someone with a history of domestic violence could be appointed Chairman of the Board and still remain a Director of the agency. The answer – this individual was elected by the other Directors.
Currently, a grant controller has been appointed to oversee the funds being given to the NAAJA to ensure they are spent appropriately. The grant controller is part of an external firm, adding another layer of bureaucracy to prevent misuse. Refunds of unspent funds are under review and an audit decision is expected by late November. A new Annual General Meeting (AGM) is scheduled for later this year. I asked why the government opposes full audits. Senator McCarthy denied any misuse of funds, though community members claim that money is not reaching the grassroots level. Performance audits will be provided to me on notice.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for appearing. I have questions on the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency. Does someone need to come up for that?
Ms Broun: Senator, we have got NIAA and Attorney-General’s Department.
Senator ROBERTS: I don’t know who to address this to.
Ms Broun: This is Attorney-General’s.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. I’m told the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, the Northern Territory’s largest Aboriginal legal service, has been in turmoil in recent years. Since late 2022 there have been six CEOs appointed to the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency. That’s in just two years. Its long-standing CEO, Ms Priscilla Atkins, was controversially sacked in February 2023, and she was found in June 2024 by the federal court to have been unfairly dismissed. The agency has suffered a chronic shortage of lawyers and other staff, leading to a suspension of the provision of legal services and almost 75 Aboriginal clients not being represented in court during the staff shortage. They are the figures I have. Minister, is Mr Hugh Woodbury, former CEO and domestic violence perpetrator, still a director of the board of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency?
Senator McCarthy: Yes, he is. We were asked these questions earlier today—just to let you know.
Senator ROBERTS: How is this man able to be appointed the CEO with such a history, given the prevalence of domestic violence as an issue within the Aboriginal community? We’ve seen Senator Cox and Senator Nampijinpa Price both raising this issue.
Mr Worth: Senator, it is for the membership of NAAJA to appoint board members under their constitution. They are an ASIC organisation registered with the ACNC. The appointment of Mr Woodbury to chair that board was made by the board without the knowledge or permission sought by the NIAA. Subsequent to that, Mr Woodbury has resigned as chairman of the board. He remains as a director of NAAJA as is allowed under the terms of the regulator for that organisation, being the ACNC, under the terms of the Commonwealth’s funding agreement. Given that Mr Woodbury is not directly involved in the management or service delivery in his capacity as a non-executive director, consent from NAAJA is not required from the Commonwealth for him to hold that position.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, it seems pretty unusual for us to be asking the taxpayers of Australia to be giving money to such an entity. What is the state of Commonwealth funding to the agency? There’s been talk of refunds, stopping money, audit and misspent money.
Mr Worth: Since December last year the NIAA has had in place a grant controller managing the funding provided by the NIAA to NAAJA. Under the scope of that arrangement the grant controller reviews the expenditure from NAAJA in relation to those funded programs. When they are satisfied that sufficient evidence has been provided, they release funds to NAAJA. So it’s tightly controlled. All of the standard performance management and performance reporting requirements that exist within our contracts continue. So, again, they need to be meeting both the performance standards and requirements of the contract as well as having the additional scrutiny provided by the grant controller to ensure that there’s clear alignment between the expenditure and the funds that have been provided.
Senator ROBERTS: I missed the earlier part of your answer; I was looking down here. Where does the grant controller, the grant manager, fit in the scheme of things, in the hierarchy?
Mr Worth: The grant controller is an external firm that’s been appointed to manage those funds. They act on behalf of the NIAA, but they are an independent body and they effectively sit in between the NIAA and NAAJA, as I said before, to ensure that NAAJA is applying the funds appropriately in line with the contract.
Senator ROBERTS: So we’ve got the taxpayer giving money to the government, giving money to the NIAA, giving money to the grant controller—the grant manager—who then authorises the money to go to NAAJA.
Mr Worth: To be released—effectively the grant controller acts as a trustee of sorts in terms of just holding and releasing the funds once the evidence has been provided.
Senator ROBERTS: There are a lot of people in the chain. Is the Commonwealth funding of $80 million over five years ending in 2025 still the plan, or is this sum being reviewed?
Ms Harvey: The Attorney-General’s Department is responsible for legal assistance funding. Through the National Legal Assistance Partnership, which is in place from July 2020 until the end of June 2025, we provide funding through to the Northern Territory government that then provides funding through to NAAJA as well as its legal aid commission and other bodies. So that funding is in place until the end of June next year.
Senator ROBERTS: Has this sum been reviewed? It is still in place, but what about the future?
Ms Harvey: Has the funding been reviewed?
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Ms Harvey: There has been a broad review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership which was handed down earlier this year, but in terms of the funding to the Northern Territory there are conditions within the National Legal Assistance Partnership that they meet those milestone events and we release the funding to the Northern Territory. They then separately have a contract with NAAJA, for example, which have their own conditions in there.
Senator ROBERTS: Is the Commonwealth still seeking a reimbursement of some unspent funds, as I have been led to believe?
Ms Harvey: The Northern Territory, I think, has been in contact with NAAJA and are working that through, in terms of their unspent funds.
Senator ROBERTS: They’re what?
Ms Harvey: The funding for legal assistance goes through the Northern Territory government, so they have the relationship with NAAJA about that funding including any underspends that there might be.
Senator ROBERTS: What’s the amount being sought? Does anyone know?
Ms Bogart: Being sought in underspends?
Senator ROBERTS: Unspent money back.
Ms Bogart: The Northern Territory government is responsible for that under their grant agreement, and they’re working that through with NAAJA. I think they’re in a negotiation about what that amount looks like.
Senator ROBERTS: So that’s been given to the Northern Territory government, another entity in the chain, and that’s been given to NAAJA, and NAAJA and the Northern Territory government are now haggling over the unspent money. Is that right?
Ms Bogart: They’re working through the amount and what, if any, can be retrieved back by the Northern Territory government.
Senator ROBERTS: Minister, what has been the outcome of audits of the agency?
CHAIR: I’ll need to rotate the call, Senator Roberts.
Senator McCarthy: I’ll refer to Mr Worth.
Mr Worth: The audit is currently being finalised, so at this stage there is no outcome. We’re looking to have it finalised by the end of the year.
Senator ROBERTS: Can you tell me about the nature of the audits: the scope, the purpose, the deadlines?
Mr Worth: The scope itself, yes. The auditor is reviewing expenditure for the 2022-23 financial year, both the application of funds received for the 2022-23 financial year through the national legal services funding as provided by the Northern Territory government as well as the NIAA funding.
Senator ROBERTS: Was that after Ms Priscilla Atkins was controversially sacked?
Mr Worth: Correct.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts.
*BREAK*
Senator ROBERTS: Back to the NAAJA, the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency—I don’t know how you get your head around all these acronyms!—specifically, what is the nature of the current governance of the agency?
Mr Worth: Are you seeking the current status of NAAJA’s governance?
Senator ROBERTS: Governance, yes.
Mr Worth: We are in regular contact with NAAJA. We have received advice from them that they are looking to hold an annual general meeting later this month, on 27 November, in order to elect new board members.
Ms Bellenger: But they are registered with ASIC, and ACNC is their regulation body.
Senator ROBERTS: Who are the voters?
Mr Worth: The members of NAAJA.
Ms Bellenger: The members.
Senator ROBERTS: Is service delivery meeting the needs of the community? As I understand it, it’s suspended at the moment. And is legal representation in court meeting the needs of accused people and in accord with the contract with the Commonwealth Attorney-General?
Ms Harvey: Throughout the time that we have been working with NAAJA coming out of the kinds of issues that they have been having for nearly two years, service delivery has been a really key focus of ours and so we have tracked it really carefully. We understand NAAJA is now back at full service delivery. For example, I mentioned we were advised by NAAJA in October this year that there are no Aboriginal people going unrepresented in criminal proceedings in the Northern Territory except by choice. I think that is a very strong indication of the service delivery having resumed.
Senator ROBERTS: So there was a suspension of the services and they have been resumed?
Ms Harvey: Yes. Toward November last year, I think, there was a temporary suspension of some services. They rebuilt through the end of last year and over the start of this year, and I think it was maybe April—
Ms Bogart: First of April.
Ms Harvey: First of April this year they recommenced full service delivery.
Senator ROBERTS: How long were they suspended? Six months? Twelve months?
Ms Bogart: November to April, so about six months.
Senator ROBERTS: Six months, right. Minister, community members in Queensland tell me that taxpayer funds are not reaching the communities. That’s in the Torres Strait, that’s in Cape York, that’s in southern Queensland. Why does the government oppose full audits of Aboriginal agencies and why, in essence, does the government keep feeding the white and black Aboriginal industry of activists, consultants, academics, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians and others who are effectively barons while ignoring the plight of Aboriginal people in communities who are not getting what they are entitled to? They’re not getting the support they deserve and need.
Senator McCarthy: Thank you, Senator Roberts. If I could just ask for a breakdown of the particular agencies or departments that they’re not receiving, because there are health departments going out, there are educational departments going out—
Senator ROBERTS: They’re saying in general.
Senator McCarthy: Well, they’re taxpayer funds.
Senator ROBERTS: The money is being hived off to the barons in the white and black Aboriginal industry.
Senator McCarthy: Alright. If you’d like to give us examples that you have specifically, Senator Roberts, but I do know that taxpayer funding goes right across Queensland—federal government funds as well as state funds.
Senator ROBERTS: So why won’t you do audits?
Senator McCarthy: There are audits. The ANAO does its audits with respective organisations, certainly with the land councils that you’re referring to. Questions around audits for land councils actually do occur.
Senator ROBERTS: My understanding, Minister, is that the ANAO does not do audits. It does scoping assessments, not comprehensive audits. They identify areas of weakness, but they do not do comprehensive audits.
Senator McCarthy: That is not correct, Senator Roberts, but perhaps I need to refer to those who work in the area. Mr Worth?
Mr Worth: The ANAO undertakes two kinds of audits on Commonwealth entities. The first ones are financial statement audits, which might be pointing towards the ones you’re talking about with how funds are received and applied through the departments—or agencies, I should call them. The second ones are the performance audits, which are the ones that look at how effective operations, governance arrangements and things like that are and make the recommendations on their findings on those. So there are the two different types of audit.
Senator ROBERTS: Can I have a list on notice, please, of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander agencies that have been audited in the last five years?
Mr Worth: Absolutely.
Senator ROBERTS: The agency, the scope of the audit and the date.
The 2024 NAPLAN results revealed that in the Northern Territory, students in Year 9 performed worse than when they were in Year 3. My question to Senator McCarthy, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, focused on why Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory are falling behind as they progress through school.
Despite billions spent by successive Liberal and Labor Governments on Aboriginal education, the results are disappointing. It is clear that an audit of spending into the Aboriginal industry, as proposed by One Nation, is necessary to determine where the funds are going and why they are not reaching the children who need them most.
The 2024 NAPLAN results highlight a concerning issue: the academic performance of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory is alarmingly poor. An overwhelming 90% of these students require additional assistance, meaning they are testing below the expected standard—twice the national average.
Even more troubling is the trend where Aboriginal students performed better in Year 3 compared to Year 9 – this suggests that the longer Aboriginal students spend in the school system in the Northern Territory, their education outcomes deteriorate.
One Nation has frequently sought an inquiry into the allocation of funds for Aboriginal Affairs and where it is being spent – clearly it is not on education. Although the Minister isn’t accountable for what has gone on in the past, she is responsible for any actions taken going forward.
Transcript | Question Time
Senator ROBERTS: My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator McCarthy. The 2024 NAPLAN results are out and call into question the entire education process for Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory. These children, to whom our nation owes a duty of care, recorded worse NAPLAN scores in year 9 than in year 3. Minister, please explain why Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory go backwards the longer they stay in school?
Senator McCarthy: Thank you, Senator, for your question, and thank you for joining me this week when I reached out across the aisle to all parliamentarians from every party to try and close the gap in many of these areas, including education and educational attainment. Clearly, that’s one of the things that we’ve tried to do, in terms of the Northern Territory. For example, just recently Minister Jason Clare came to the Northern Territory to work with the NTG on an agreement to boost education funding for all public schools across the Northern Territory—and I know that he’s also trying to reach out to all the states across the country. We certainly are very disappointed in terms of the NAPLAN results. One of the things I know is that, in regard to Alice Springs, for example, getting the kids to school is our biggest challenge. We’ve seen how we’ve had many difficulties with this in Central Australia in particular—but they are mirrored across many of our regions, even in your state of Queensland—where we need to work harder in terms of getting First Nations people even to school, let alone trying to pass the simple examination at such a young age, with NAPLAN. I commend the education minister for the work that he’s doing in the space, Senator Roberts. I know we have a long way to go, but we are certainly trying to do that in terms of our work in the Northern Territory.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, first supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The percentage of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory who NAPLAN classified as needing further assistance was 90 per cent—90 per cent. In Queensland it’s only 56 per cent, and Queensland is a standout failure in this round of NAPLAN. Minister, can you assure the Senate that every cent of federal government money dedicated to the education of our Aboriginal community is spent appropriately?
Senator McCarthy: Thank you for the question, Senator. I can certainly assure the Senate that I will be working very hard, across party lines, in the role that I now have as Minister for Indigenous Australians. I do want to see a great improvement in the lives of First Nations people but in particular of our children. I certainly will do that, Senator Roberts, and I’m more than happy to keep working with you in terms of the issues that are going on in Queensland. Can I just point out again, though, with regard to the funding that we are providing, that, as I said, two weeks ago Minister Clare signed an historic school funding agreement. Under the agreement the Australian government will invest an additional estimated $736.7 million from 2025 to 2029 in Northern Territory public schools. I’m certainly happy to look at further information in regard to Queensland.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, second supplementary?
Senator ROBERTS: The Greens are assisting this government in suppressing any inquiry into federal government assistance given to the Aboriginal community. We heard Senator Cox’s comments in the chamber yesterday on many topics, including native title. Minister, if you continue to block an inquiry into and audit of the use of funds given to the Aboriginal community, how can you assure the Senate that there’s no corruption, waste and cronyism occurring?
The PRESIDENT: Minister Wong?
Senator Wong: Can I just ask for consideration of whether that’s an appropriate supplementary to a question about NAPLAN results in the Northern Territory?
The PRESIDENT: Senator Wong, I remind the chamber that Senator Roberts’s second question did go to funding, so it does flow from the first supplementary. Minister.
Senator McCarthy: Thank you, Senator Roberts. Can I firstly say, in regard to comments around Senator Cox, that Senator Cox is very dedicated to working to improve the lives of First Nations people so I would caution any slur against her work in that space. What I would say, though, Senator Roberts, is that the government has invested more than $110 million in initiatives to support First Nations children, students and organisations. We are committed to strengthening the formal partnership arrangements, in line with the Closing the Gap priority reforms. Senator Roberts, you met with the co-chair of the joint council—and that was Pat Turner—in reaffirming that commitment, and I look forward to working with you and others on that.
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts.
Senator Roberts: The question was one of irrelevance before Senator McCarthy sat down. I asked: how can you assure the Senate—
The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, firstly, that’s a debating point and, secondly, the minister has finished her answer.
Transcript | Take Note
I move:
That the Senate take note of the answer by the Minister for Indigenous Australians (Senator McCarthy) to a question without notice I asked today relating to NAPLAN testing in the Northern Territory.
I thank the minister for her clear answers. In reviewing the results from this year’s NAPLAN this morning, one thing stood out: the results showing 90 per cent of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory were classified as ‘requiring further assistance’. That is double the national average. Even more troubling were the results showing Aboriginal students tested more positively in year 3 than they did in year 9. This means the longer an Aboriginal student spends in school in the Northern Territory, the worse their educational outcomes become. Clearly, the education system is failing Aboriginal children. The reason why is not understood, yet this problem has existed for years. The minister can’t be held responsible for the result of this NAPLAN. The poor result is a collective failure of the parliament.
This year, the federal government will spend $5 billion directly on Aboriginal programs. Inquiry into the continued failure in the provision of services to the Aboriginal community is being blocked through actions of Aboriginal industry lobbyists here in this chamber. Those in this chamber who exploit and perpetuate disadvantage for political gain have voted down repeated attempts from Senators Hanson, Nampijinpa Price and Kerrynne Liddle to understand how so much money could achieve so little benefit.
One Nation’s reward for caring about Aboriginal welfare was for Senators Cox and Ayres to, last night, call One Nation racist and use other labels. It’s not racist to want every Australian child to have access to education no matter the circumstances of their birth. It’s not racist to make sure every cent we send to these communities is spent for the benefit of the community. Labels are the refuge of the ignorant, the incompetent, the dishonest and the fearful. Labels are the resort of those lacking data and logical argument.
I look forward to working with Senator McCarthy, one day, to achieve better outcomes for Aboriginal communities, and, in this chamber, I look forward to less name calling and more constructive dialogue, meaningful dialogue for the people who we are supposed to represent. Question agreed to.
