Page 43 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2022

NOVEMBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
“While we’ve got a huge Defence industry here, and the Commonwealth IPP has been really important for growth in Aboriginal businesses in the North, the Northern Territory Government has failed in its responsibilities to support the Aboriginal population,” Anstess said.
“Aboriginal people have the highest rates of youth suicide, incarceration (and youth incarceration), literacy and numeracy failure, and lack of education and training – as well as the highest rates of rheumatic heart disease in the world.”
This is in a territory where nearly 50 per cent of the land, and approximately 85 per cent of the coastline, is owned by Aboriginal people under native title.
“We’re land-rich but dirt-poor. How are we not activating this Indigenous estate, and how are we not seeing further growth, even in those spaces in Defence,
for new businesses? Anstess asks.
DEFENCE BUSINESS NTIBN 43 running a number of significant Aboriginal economic
development events.
ENSURING INTEGRITY IN DEFENCE CONTRACTING
While the introduction of the Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) in 2015 has been overwhelmingly effective for the growth of Indigenous businesses, Anstess and Cubillo emphasised to ADM that there are opportunities – and in- deed an urgency – to sophisticate the policy.
A rampant issue is ‘black cladding’, where businesses seek to take advantage of the government’s procurement targets to secure contracts, while being controlled by non- Indigenous people.
As such, the question of genuine Indigenous ownership should be judged against a higher standard than the 50 per cent target set
“So, what NTIBN have done, is activated and pushed. And we’ve pushed the NT Government to announce this year an Aboriginal Procurement Policy, which became active and in effect on July 1. We’ve moved mountains there; as the only jurisdiction in Australia without an Aboriginal Procurement Policy, we did the advocacy work for that.”
“WE’VE PUSHED THE NT GOVERNMENT TO ANNOUNCE THIS YEAR AN ABORIGINAL PROCUREMENT POLICY, WHICH BECAME ACTIVE AND IN EFFECT ON JULY 1”
It was also announced in April that the
NTIBN will deliver a $10 million Indigenous Business and Employment Hub in the Northern Territory.
The Hub will join a network of established hubs in Syd- ney, Adelaide and Perth, as the fourth to be delivered under the Government’s Indigenous Business Sector strategy.
“We’re the only jurisdiction to have had to enter in a com- petitive tender process for an Aboriginal Business Hub, and we’re the only 100 per cent Aboriginal owned entity to win that contract, which is to deliver services to enable business in the North,” Anstess said.
“We’ll provide a place for them to come to start up, to get help, for crisis management, legal advice, joint venture advice – and I think it’s the only space there will be which will be able to understand purely
the nuances of Aboriginal business. I
think that’s an important difference.”
The NTIBN also released the nation’s
first ever Aboriginal Business Export
Strategy last year – which sets out a
strategy to reinvigorate international
partnerships and trade routes between
First Nations peoples – in addition to
MAIN: The Australian Aboriginal flag and the Torres Strait Islander flag fly alongside the Australian National Flag.
RIGHT: The NTIBN is the peak body representing Indigenous business in the Northern Territory
by governments, Anstess urged.
“There is a gap in the IPP in the recognition of 50-50s as an Aboriginal business,” she explained. “If you took out the spend by Defence and measured out how many went to 50-50s versus 51-49s, I think you would see a significant drop in the amount of money we say we spend on
Aboriginal businesses.
“The NTIBN will stand firm by the
fact that for 12 years now we have advocated that the only business that can call themself an Aboriginal business is one that is majority-owned. And that’s the basic principle. I think that the policy itself now has to look at that.”
The NTIBN has established a robust Indigenous Busi- ness Certification process, ensuring that members need- ing ongoing certification continuously to fulfil Indigenous ownership requirements.
Importantly, the NTIBN also differentiates between ma- jority-owned Aboriginal businesses and 100 per cent Ab- original-owned businesses – because even when it comes to majority-owned partnerships, it is crucial to understand where the capability is coming from.
NTIBN