Friday, February 7, 2025

Where does all the money go?

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How many troubled children in Central Australia fall under the umbrella of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA)?

Surely that was a known number upon which Anthony Albanese’s $250m “special grant” was based.

Apparently not. His Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Territory’s own Malarndirri McCarthy, doesn’t know, or won’t say.

And neither will she say how many of those kids have benefitted from the NIAA, nor how much has NIAA paid out to local non-government organisations (NGOs).

Senator McCarthy did not agree to be interviewed and relied on the blather from her minders that is offensive because of its irrelevance, and its failure to answer questions.

Sample: “The Australian Government is working in partnership with the Central Australia Plan Aboriginal Leadership Group, the communities of Central Australia, non-government and community organisations, and the Northern Territory Government to enhance liveability and improve community safety as it implements its plan to support Central Australia.”

Increasingly, poverty is being identified as a key reason for disadvantage, and the Universal Basic Income (UBI) is being discussed seriously as being superior to our convoluted welfare funding. A look at numbers is enlightening.

The NT has an excellent health service available to all its citizens. The Central Australian Aboriginal Congress funding, being a primary health facility, specifically for the Aboriginal minority, is on top of that.

Congress also operates two large contracts for the whole community: Headspace (mental health for young people), and the urgent care clinics.

Congress has an income of $83m, $69m from grants. Its 683 employees take home $57m a year (June 2024), while there are still hungry children living in rags and ruins.

At some point the question will need to be asked: If we can stop poverty, would we need Congress – and our multitude of other welfare carers. 

Congress has not responded to a question from the Alice Springs News about how many people it provides services to.

Assuming that all Indigenous people – about 5200 – in Alice Springs are Congress patients, if they got to share the $83m they’d be getting $16,000 each or $64,000 for a family of four. That’s what UBI could look like in reality. And an army of public servants currently administering welfare could be re-deployed. The banks could distribute the cash.

The Congress example shows that three quarters of public funding goes to staff. That leaves a quarter for clients in need.

If you want to compare publicly funded organisations, the Alice Springs Town Council, to run the town, has a 2024/25 budget of $55m (expenditure). That’s $28m less than Congress.

Meanwhile the Albanese quarter of a billion is perpetuating a broken system. Calculated on the Congress model $188m will go to administration and staff.

NGOs and a new breed of companies that are private (Pty Ltd) but dependent on government money are hand-balling business to each other.

For example, Operation Lunar, a joint NT Police and Territory Families initiative, may be looking for someone to care for young Freddy who is in trouble a lot. They get in touch with Oonchiumpa Consultancy and Services which describes itself as a family business.

Interestingly, it is set up under the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC), as are most Australian small companies.

Most Aboriginal organisations are set up under the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations (ORIC).

ORIC provides online extensive financial and other details of its organisations. That is where the Congress details appearing in this article come from.

Company details available in an ASIC search are far less detailed.

This means companies with a welfare agenda registered under ASIC have the privilege of being far less transparent to their funders – the taxpayer – than is the case with ORIC companies.

The Alice Springs News understands that the Commonwealth is looking at rectifying these arrangements that are clearly keeping the public in the dark.

Oonchiumpa started in December 2023 to help young people in trouble. It has 24 of them on its books. It organises sport including horse riding, takes kids to school, matches them up with businesses providing work experience, maybe a job such as at MacDonalds, and so on – pretty well the stuff parents usually take care of.

One girl has a good chance of getting a job with IGA, the three neighbourhood supermarkets owned by Lhere Artepe, the town’s native title organisation.

Oonchiumpa director Kristy Bloomfield has just been appointed chair of the Lhere Artepe board. She has many years of experience working in the justice field.

OK, Oonchiumpa agrees to take on Freddy. It falls back on its “brokerage” function and passes on the young lad to the organisation Saltbush which in turn may hand him over to a freelancing youth worker, also Federally funded.

Says Oonchiumpa operations manager Tanya Turner: “We are an alternative service response. The young person would already have existing ties with services such as Saltbush commonly through the court, we would assist in supporting their engagement with the preexisting service.

“Our brokerage function is utilised to link the young person into Aboriginal led and culturally appropriate supports mostly provided by Aboriginal businesses.

“We do not pay existing services to provide programs they are already funded to perform.”

This is the state of play by Oonchiumpa which received $1.4m from Canberra for its first 18 months.

Oonchiumpa has managed to get free of charge a NT Government office in Alice Springs and is borrowing a government car but has to engage an accountant to comply with Government requirements, pay its staff and (presumably) fees to traditional owners guiding the culturally led program.

There is no doubt that most welfare organisations are saddled with operational costs, proportionally – such as Congress’s.

We asked Oonchiumpa operations manager Tanya Turner: If the poverty issue could be resolved, how many of these 24 kids would not need your help?

“It’s hard to say. There are other issues around poverty. The alcoholism, things like that, which contribute,” she said.

“I don’t know if giving every family a wage of $60,000 is going to resolve other background issues which impact our young people.

“Poverty is an issue for the young people themselves. You know, young people have nothing, they often are wearing the same clothes for a whole week because they just don’t have anything.

“The issues are so entrenched that I don’t think that alone is going to be the quick fix.”

This article appeared on Alice Springs News on 30 January 2025.
This article is open for comment at Alice Springs News.

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