Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mutitjulu is a small Aboriginal community located adjacent to Uluru within the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. About 400 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs, it has a population of approximately 330 people. Until 3 February 2006 the governance of the Mutitjulu community was the responsibility of the Mutitjulu Community Inc., a body incorporated under the Northern Territory Associations Act 2003. On 3 February 2006 the Mutitjulu Community Aboriginal Corporation came into being by incorporating under the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976. This then meant that the governance of Mutitjulu was regulated by the Commonwealth and subject to the various powers and authorities of the Commonwealth government under that act. In particular, when Mutitjulu’s governance was brought under the ACA Act it became subject to the regulatory authority of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations. Upon the incorporation of the MCAC the members of the Mutitjulu Community Inc. automatically became members of the MCAC and subsequently the MCI was deregistered.

What I want to do today is revisit and examine the circumstances of the transfer of Mutitjulu’s governance to the Commonwealth framework. On 30 September 2005 Mr Wayne Gibbons, head of the OIPC, met with 12 members of the Mutitjulu Community Inc. Also present at the meeting were Mr Bernie Yates, a senior bureaucrat within OIPC, and Mr Gregory Andrews, then manager of the Mutitjulu Working Together project and later Assistant Secretary of the Communities Engagement Branch of the OIPC. The minutes of these meetings clearly demonstrate that Mr Gibbons threatened to stop funding to the Mutitjulu community. Mr Gibbons claimed that the Australian government was responsible for around 75 per cent of the council’s funding and he provided a small pie graph to support his claim. Mr Gibbons stated that the Australian government wanted to see results from this investment. He then outlined the changes that were expected from MCI if it were to continue to receive funding from the Australian government. These included incorporating under the ACA Act, the Commonwealth legislation, and hence under ORAC, the Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations; allocating half of the seats on the council to women; extending the terms of council members from one year to two years; and replacing half of the members each year.

Mr Gibbons stated that the changes were urgent and that if MCI did these things it would be easier to convince ministers to invest money in the community. He said that he had just been given $3 million to invest in the NPY lands for petrol-sniffing diversion and claimed that if MCI’s governance was not changed he would not be able to provide any of this funding through MCI.

I just want to make it clear to the chamber that I have sought leave from the government to table all of the documents I might refer to in my speech today: minutes of meetings, registers, corporations’ constitutions and various other matters that I will refer to.

On 13 November 2005, MCI held a special meeting chaired by Sammy Wilson, with Alison Hunt interpreting. The meeting was held to discuss constitutional and incorporation changes. An annual general meeting was also held at that time to elect a new council. As the minutes of that meeting show, during discussion of the possible advantage of incorporating under the federal ACA Act, at the special general meeting Mr Gregory Andrews—still at that time on the Working Together project—stated that being under the NT act was a bit like using a Mazda 121 on bush roads when you needed a four-wheel drive. As the minutes further demonstrate, Mr Andrews went on to explain that the OIPC was strongly encouraging organisations incorporated under the state or territory legislation to change to the ORAC legislation.

As the minutes of the special general meeting further show, Mr Andrews’s comments sparked a discussion at that meeting of the visit of Mr Wayne Gibbons on 30 September 2005. The minutes show that according to one councillor Mr Gibbons had been dictatorial in insisting that the community change or risk losing funding. The minutes of the SGM also note that during the discussion Mr Andrews stated that although the community did not have to change it was more likely to be supported by OIPC if it did. The new constitution met the stipulations as requested and the SGM also passed a resolution stating that MCI’s intention to cease to exist under the Northern Territory legislation was, in fact, the way they wanted to go and that they wanted to move to the ACA Act.

Let us go to several months later—16 May 2006. The Hon. Mal Brough, Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s—the ABC’s—Lateline program claiming that paedophile rings exist in Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. I have attached the transcript of the program to the documents that I have tabled. On 2 June 2006, Mr Greg Andrews, Assistant Secretary of the Communities Engagement Branch of the OIPC, gave an interview with Lateline’s Suzanne Smith. It was agreed that Mr Andrews would remain anonymous, with his voice digitised for the airing of the program and his faced filmed in shadow.

On 21 June 2006 Lateline broadcast the program ‘Sexual abuse reported in Indigenous community’. The program included Greg Andrews’s anonymous interview. The program described him as a ‘former youth worker’ in the Mutitjulu community. The program made serious allegations about Mutitjulu, including that children were being forced to trade sex for petrol. Following the program the Mutitjulu Aboriginal community made a formal complaint to the ABC, which I intend to table at the end of this speech.

On 13 July 2006, the National Indigenous Times revealed that the anonymous witness on the Lateline program was Mr Gregory Andrews, a senior employee of the OIPC. On 19 July 2006, the registrar appointed Brian McMaster of the West Australian office of the accounting firm KordaMentha to conduct the affairs of MCAC under section 71 of the ACA Act. On 31 July 2006, Gregory Andrews published a statement confirming his identity and outlining his reasons for seeking to remain anonymous in the Lateline report.

On 1 August 2006, Lateline aired a report entitled ‘Mutitjulu source comes forward’. An article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 2 November 2006 titled ‘Public servant a no-show at hearing’, regarding the evidence of Mr Gibbons to the Senate estimates hearing on or about 2 November 2006. Mr Gibbons is quoted as saying that he knew that Mr Andrews would be participating in the Lateline interview and knew the nature of that interview. He is also quoted as saying that after he had been so informed by Mr Andrews, he informed the office of Minister Brough that Mr Andrews was intending to do the interview with Lateline. Mr Gibbons is further quoted as saying that on the day of the interview he informed the minister that the interview had occurred.

Let us now go back to 30 June 2006. Mr Wayne Gibbons wrote to Laura Beacroft, the registrar of ORAC, urging her to give consideration to immediately appointing an administrator to the MCAC. On 3 July 2006 FaCSIA suspended funding to MCAC. I have here an email from Tim Youngberry to Laura Beacroft of 30 June 2006 indicating that funding would stop on that day, 3 July 2006.

On 5 July 2006 the members of MCAC met with the manager of the ICC in Alice Springs. As is recorded in the letter dated 11 July from MCAC to the minister, the members were informed verbally that there was a hold on Commonwealth funding to MCAC, the Mutitjulu Community Aboriginal Corporation. This was the first that that corporation had heard of the suspension of its funding. Following this meeting, FaCSIA told MCAC that it could have until 10 July 2006 to respond to the concerns raised by FaCSIA. This fact and various other matters are recorded in an email dated 7 July from Laura Beacroft to various representatives of agencies funding MCAC.

On 11 July 2006 at 3.45 pm, a delegate of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations sent to MCAC by fax a document purporting to be a notice under section 71(2) of the ACA Act. The letter required MCAC to show cause by 5 o’clock on 12 July 2006—24 hours later—why the registrar should not appoint an administrator to MCAC pursuant to section 71 of the act. So the community had a little more than 25 hours to respond. The notice states that the reason for its issue was:

… FaCSIA has lost confidence in the Governing Committee and the Corporation.

The governing committee of the Mutitjulu Community Aboriginal Corporation attempted to preserve its position by lodging a preliminary response to the registrar’s notice within the stipulated time. As that response points out at the bottom of its first page, the only communication that MCAC had received in respect of the matters raised in the registrar’s notice was the oral communication from the ICC manager.

The letter of notice of the registrar dated 11 July 2006 states:

… without continued funding from FaCSIA, the Corporation cannot continue functioning at a level which would enable it to continue providing the services referred to above.

However, correspondence obtained in the Federal Court proceedings suggests that the registrar had information or was of the opinion that MCAC had funds in reserve, such funds being separate and independent of the funding provided by FaCSIA. That correspondence includes an email, dated 7 July 2006, from Laura Beacroft to various persons and an undated in-confidence briefing paper prepared by ORAC and addressed to the minister. That briefing paper says at paragraph 7 that, ‘Financial statements produced by the corporation as at 30 June 2006 indicate total net assets of $6.95 million, an annual income of $3.3 million and expenses of $2.2 million, leaving a surplus for the year of $1.1 million.’

Documents discovered by the Commonwealth in the Federal Court proceedings show that in the period leading up to the service of the show-cause notice, various officers in FaCSIA corresponded with ORAC regarding Mutitjulu. In that correspondence, FaCSIA raises with ORAC various and wide-ranging allegations about the community and about MCAC, including those that had been canvassed in the Lateline program. None of this correspondence or the allegations contained therein was put to the MCAC governing committee. It follows that MCAC was not given an opportunity to respond to all—or, perhaps, even the majority of—the grounds which founded its dismissal.

At the 30 September 2005 meeting, Mr Gibbons used bullying and threatening tactics to convince MCI that, in order to continue to receive funding from the Australian government, it would have to incorporate under the ACA Act. This transfer made the governing institution of the Mutitjulu community susceptible to the appointment of an administrator. The documents suggest to me that the removal of Mutitjulu’s Indigenous governance was the ultimate intention of Mr Gibbons’s threats.

In May this year, Minister Brough launched a media smear campaign aimed at sullying the reputation of the Mutitjulu community when he appeared on the ABC’s Lateline program making claims that paedophile rings were operating in Aboriginal communities. This campaign reached full force with the airing, on 21 June 2006, of the Lateline report entitled ‘Sexual abuse reported in Indigenous community’. That program also made allegations of illegal conduct, paedophilia and corruption by members of the Mutitjulu community.

Of greatest importance for this complaint is that the media smear campaign, in particular the allegations aired in the Lateline report, were later relied upon by employees of FaCSIA and the OIPC to convince the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations of the need to appoint an administrator to MCAC. This was done despite the fact that it was later revealed that the allegations made in that program had no substance, and high-level investigations by a Northern Territory police task force have led to no arrests, even to this very day.

On 30 June 2006 Wayne Gibbons wrote to Laura Beacroft urging her to give consideration to immediately appointing an administrator to MCAC. I ask: on what basis? In that letter Mr Gibbons referred to ‘the serious public interest issues associated with the alleged corrupt and illegal behaviour of some community members—including some members of MCAC’s staff and board—that had been the subject of recent widespread media coverage’. Based on the documents and events recorded above, there is a high degree of probability that over the period 2005-06 there has, I believe, been a sustained campaign by FaCSIA against the Mutitjulu community and, in particular, against its Indigenous governors. Indeed, it is apparent that this campaign was aimed at bringing an end to the community’s self-governance. The reasonableness of this view of events is supported, at least in part, by a statement contained in an ORAC briefing paper produced for the minister, Mal Brough.

The author of the paper feared that ‘there would be allegations that various agencies orchestrated the appointment and the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations’ independence would come under question’. Who were the main proponents of this orchestrated campaign? Perhaps they were some of the major players already mentioned and associated with the preceding events that led to the appointment of the registrar.

I note that the Ombudsman Act does not allow you to investigate government ministers. Nevertheless, Mr Brough’s involvement is highly relevant to the events leading up to the appointment of the registrar. The chronology I have outlined today shows, I believe, that this campaign has been comprised of a series of discrete but interlinked events orchestrated, co-ordinated and executed by the government. I seek leave to table the documents I have referred to. (Time expired)

Leave granted.