Central Land Council

David Ross

Director Central Land Council

Indigenous Economic Forum 6 March 2003

Employment for the bush

I have been director of the Land Council for quite a few years now and requests from traditional owners for assistance to develop country in some way for economic advancement have increased considerably over the last decade.

However, I have no intention of talking here today about indigenous enterprises. Instead I would like to give you the benefit of my experience over the years on the issue of employment - especially in the mining industry..

In the past five years CLC has worked hard and successfully to improve the rate of indigenous employment in the mining sector in central Australia .

Starting from a participation rate of virtually nil we have now reached the stage where more than 20% of the mining workforce in the Tanami mines is Aboriginal - that is more than 100 Aboriginal employees out of a work force of nearly 500.

Some of these people are from bush communities: from Nyirrpi, Laramba, Yuendumu - communities from the west

But not many.

Sure …there are plenty of people in the bush who say they are sick of CDEP, they want real jobs , wages, they want to do something. We've got close to 900 people on our books wanting jobs and there has certainly been an increase in interest from Warlpiri communities on whose country most mining takes place.

But lets make no bones about it…Employment of people from the bush is a major difficulty.

Many of these people haven't had a primary education ..They haven't ever had a job and certainly not any idea at all about what a 12 hour shift on a minesite would entail.

There is the constant demand of community and cultural life - much of it wonderful ..much of it distressing ..funerals.. disputes ..family problems . a whole range of issues ..These are the realities of Aboriginal life.

However the cycle of unemployment in the bush is deeply entrenched and it is getting more and more so .this cycle is getting harder and harder to break as more generations emerge which missed getting an education .. Have no idea what work is..

If you think things in the bush are bad now ..I can assure you the price of not expanding our energy and commitment at this time … is going to have very serious consequences - and its going to get harder and harder and much more expensive to address it

None of us here can afford to throw up our hands and say 'it's all too hard' and walk away from it.

So what do you do?

Well believe it or not there are a number of things you can do to make the road travelled a lot easier.

Firstly I would have to say Committment from Industry is a key… Credit where credit is due …Some of the mining companies the CLC deals with under the Land Rights Act agreements have demonstrated that they are starting to understand the dynamic of what has occurred out bush …and they are prepared to commit the necessary time and resources to getting results. Newmont in the Tanami, Roche contracting are two that come to mind.

Believe me their efforts have not been inconsiderable .with the Central Land Councils help they're developing practices which can be applied across the board.

Funerals and cultural business are taken into account and the mine management is as flexible as they need to be about these things. There is a Workplace Language and Literacy program running which people can do both in and out of work time. There are pre - vocational courses run on communities

We pushed for an Aboriginal liaison officer to be employed at the mine and people talk to her all the time about any problems which means they're sorted out quickly.

These things are a big ask - they are a lot of effort and expense - the CLC acknowledges this and we acknowledge those companies that have done the hard yards on it. Social responsibilty can be tough , thankless expensive but the rewards will be tangible in the future

Secondly, Good communication between parties leads to an understanding of what the industry needs and matching people to meet these requirements. Trust is essential.

And industry also needs to learn about the needs and requirements of the indigenous sector.

Cross cultural courses for the other mine workers help - so these guys from the bush don't have to put up with ignorant comments , they're respected, included, made to feel comfortable. That's a great start - believe me - it makes a difference.

Other companies have allowed the situation to just slide for more than twenty years and contributed to the appalling situation we find ourselves in now. The Mereenie Oil and Gas Fields until now had not employed one Aboriginal person in more than 20 years - and they are not alone .there are plenty of others. This has to turn around .

Thirdly, Binding Agreements Legally binding mining agreements under the Land Rights Act allow the CLC to negotiate agreements which ensure that employment outcomes are taken seriously. How these are interpreted by individual companies unfortunately varies according to their management and the CLC has not always had the resources to be an industry watchdog.

A Dedicated CLC unit. CLC has established a specialised unit dedicated to achieving real job and training outcomes in the mining industry. CLC currently employs two indigenous staff in this unit with considerable experience in indigenous employment and training issues

For an Aboriginal person looking for work, walking into a CLC office or another Aboriginal organisation dealing with employment, is a heck of a lot easier than rolling up at Centrelink. Aboriginal people can be pretty shy and fairly used to getting the run around from government agencies.

Communication with indigenous community. CLC Employment unit staff have developed pretty good relationships with indigenous communities in Central Australia in relation to employment opportunities.

We work with the industry to organise career information days at communities and familiarisation visits to mine sites for Aboriginal job seekers.

Two pre-vocational courses - at Yuendumu and the Granites Mine, which is relatively close by - have been run in the last two years. At the end of them, Roche and Newmont guaranteed jobs. As simple as that.

The courses followed the same 12 hour shifts that the workers at the mines do, it enabled people to see what it is like living and working on a minesite, eating in a mess hall with others all around and what its like working to a two week on one week off roster. It's pretty tough.

Especially if you've never had a job before .some of these blokes had blisters from their boots , they were exhausted .but they still went on to work in the mines .. Out of sixteen Aboriginal people from bush communities that have started at the mines in the last two years, eleven are still there. Some of them - especially the younger ones - had no literacy skills.

Some might say these are small outcomes with high failure rates. I know there are others of you who can see and understand what an enormous achievement this is for these community blokes . Good things can happen in small increments.

The income these guys bring home is not insubstantial either - ten blokes bringing home quite a few thousand dollars each after a fortnight puts up to $50,000 into the regional economy.

However money management is a major problem - the culture of feast or famine among Aboriginal people is a barrier to ongoing employment, and this year we are developing strategies to encourage better money management. This is pretty fundamental.

Understanding what the industry needs is important . CLC staff have built an excellent knowledge of the mining industry requirements in employing staff. This has led to good job matching and good staff retention for indigenous employees.

Mentoring. CLC provides direct mentoring services to many indigenous employees to help them overcome any issues affecting their employment and supports industry initiatives to provide their own mentoring support.

Funding support from Department of Employment and Workplace Relations . The CLC Unit has been funded under the DEWR RAP and more recently STEP programs. DEWR's programs are a critical resource and should be given due credit in delivering good employment outcomes in the mining industry sector in central Australia .

Government support and funding is vital .

These strategies are working and more and more people from communities are applying for these jobs. We have one bloke from Nyrripi who has been there for two and a half years working with explosives ..when he came to us he couldn't even fill out his own application form.

Success breeds success. Indigenous workers provide role models for others to follow. The industry values its indigenous workers. Negative stereotypes are replaced by success stories.

As people go back to their communities from the mines they tell the others what its like .what you have to do to survive the 12 hour shifts - like pack your lunch in the morning or else you wont get to eat all day. All those small important things about having a job such as this... So it gathers momentum as more people experience it.

These are just some of the efforts being made to overcome the barriers to working in the mining industry.

The Alice to Darwin rail project could have delivered similar outcomes

But it hasn't. Not for people in Central Australia anyway

It could have set itself apart as a truly modern developer and included its pictures of Aboriginal people in its annual report with pride.

But it hasn't.

Out of the 90 applications we sent to Adrail not one got a job.

And these were all people with skills , job histories mainly from the mines. Only 29 Aboriginal people in Central Australia work on the railway and they are in the sleeper factory at Tennant Creek. Others have been sent on training courses and taken medicals only to be told the railway had reached its quota . South of Tennant Creek the opportunities have been all but nil

Furthermore a tender for a joint partnership between a large catering company and the Central and Northern Land Councils here was knocked off by Adrail in favour of a global company working virtually at cost.

This is one of the largest projects ever to be developed in the Northern Territory but opportunities for Aboriginal participation have been marginal at the most.

So where do we go from here and what can we gain from a conference such as this ?

The valuable lessons we have learnt about indigenous employment in the mining industry need to be applied to other parts of the economy and the job market such as the service and retail sectors, and to emerging industries like the horticulture industry.

I am also very pleased to say that the CLC Employment unit is now expanding its contract with DEWR to get at least 10 indigenous people from the Ti Tree / Anmatyerre region into employment and training in the $20 million local table grape industry within the next year.

Obviously 10 people is a small target - but like the mining industry it's a starting point. The potential for local employment is in the hundreds. That's if we get the process right and build a solid relationship between the community and the industry. We have already taken steps in this direction and we've had positive talks with the industry and the local communities. All parties believe we can get more local people into jobs and training. It's a matter of working together to make it happen.

The CLC is also working with our Centrefarm project to establish a commercial horticulture joint venture on the Ti Tree Aboriginal land trust. This work has been going on for over two years. Recent water drilling work by the NTG and soil investigation currently being done means we will be able to identify a development site on Aboriginal land at Ti Tree within the next few months. We should then be ready to commence negotiations with landowners about setting up the project.

Of course this type of work needs resources to get results.

And there is the rub. Believe me there is plenty of money out there for Indigenous business development - ATSIC, the Indigenous Land Corporation and Indigenous Business Australia Unfortunately they all may as well live on completely different planets to each other

We have had a number of projects ready to go but obtaining funding from these bodies set up to do exactly that has been a circus.

They appear to work in complete isolation to each other, the funding guidelines are convoluted, unclear, inflexible … Nobody out bush knows what the guidelines are - that's for sure ..Promises are made then promptly broken… Even they don't seem to know what sort of projects they want to fund

The CLC is prepared to develop the vision and put in the work to assist indigenous employment, to develop pastoralism, to develop horticulture and any other viable industries. But the work we can do is only part of the process - there is a major role for government, and indigenous funding bodies such as IBA, ABA , ATSIC, ILC ..and of course the private sector.

So I hope that this conference can help tell us what is going right and what is going wrong and lead to more positive results.

The Central Land Council is playing its part in developing employment and economic opportunities for indigenous people in our region. We are doing this with limited resources. We also know that we can't do it on our own.

There are no magic solutions to making Aboriginal land produce economic benefits. There are no short cuts to putting indigenous people into real employment.

Finally I don't believe we would necessarily be standing here today if the educational requirements of Aboriginal people had been taken seriously for the last 25 years , I don't think we would need an economic forum - I think people would have sorted it out themselves armed with the tools, the creativity, the self sufficiency that most people get from going to school - to me education is the most fundamental issue we can address.

It takes brains and vision to see economic opportunities and a lot of hard work to make them happen. Lets look after those young brains.