This seminar reports on two research papers in preparation that examine the financial architecture underpinning the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA) and set out the risks and reform pathways now facing it. Initially we trace the now fifty-year history of the Aboriginals Benefit Account (ABA) its financial engine room — which has received an estimated $5.3 billion in mining royalty equivalents since 1978 — and assess recent reforms that created an Indigenous-controlled statutory entity Aboriginal Investment NT (AINT). We find that, notwithstanding AINT's establishment, a belated response to a reform agenda first proposed in 1984, ministerial controls in Canberra remain dominant. We then turn from diagnosis to prognosis, unpacking the policy logics underpinning ALRA. We argue that while the land-restoration and representative functions remain broadly fit for purpose, the compensatory and financial elements are incoherent and exposed to compounding financial, political and governance risk. We set out possible responses and propose reconstructing ALRA's financial model as a perpetual endowment, alongside a First Nations-led collaborative governance process for building a durable reform agenda. Together, our papers argue that fifty years after the passage of ALRA, if self-determination is to mean anything in practice, First Nations interests in the Northern Territory should not just wait for governments but instead set the terms of ALRA's next fifty years.

About the speakers

Jon Altman is an emeritus professor of the ANU affiliated with the School of Regulation and Global Governance since 2015. His academic background is in economics and anthropology and his research over many years has focused on Indigenous economic and public policy issues mainly in remote and very remote Australia.

Michael Dillon is a visiting fellow at the ANU affiliated with POLIS. He has a longstanding background in Indigenous affairs that have included senior bureaucratic and ministerial appointments dating back to the 1980s. Michael has written extensively on public policies impacting Indigenous interests

On several occasions since 1984 Jon and Michael have collaborated in research and subsequent publications.

This seminar presentation is a dual-delivery event. 

Light lunch will be provided. 

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: bennymarty, iStock