Editorial
Green shoots in red earth

Anthony Albanese’s choice of imagery at the Northern Territory’s Garma Festival was apt: the culture wars are a dry gully. That parched earth epitomises much about the case he went on to make for Indigenous empowerment.

More than half of Australia’s land is subject to some form of native title claim, but First Nations people hold rights to only a fraction of a per cent of freshwater allocations. This distortion alone is a clear reflection of enduring disenfranchisement. Moreover, the Native Title Act prohibits almost any form of economic use of the land.

Labor’s new First Nations Economic Partnership is a promise of shared wealth. Native title holders will receive $75 million to support their work with the private sector, $70 million will help to establish First Nations clean energy projects and $31 million will go to mobile TAFE programs.

This ought to be a pure moment of bipartisanship. It’s an enterprise-centred agenda that fits the Coalition’s ethos. Yet Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and shadow minister for Indigenous Australians Kerrynne Liddle headed off instead this week to the Kimberley, with no policies, to talk about impoverishment. In response to Labor’s program, Liddle said she looked forward to “seeing the detail”.

There is still no phrase too tired, no story too wretched, no gully too dry, for this opposition.

It’s tempting to say that in the midst of another woeful Closing the Gap report, Labor is focusing on one of the few targets that is actually on track – economic inclusion. This shouldn’t obscure the many that are failing. Rates of incarceration and youth suicide are no less shameful, as are the law-and-order policies that are throwing younger and younger First Nations kids in jail.

But following the rejection of the simple request for a Voice to Parliament – and amid the drift and deception that threatens to stall Treaty and Truth-telling across the country – the prospect of greater economic autonomy is compelling.

Indigenous businesses are major contributors to the national economy, adding more than $16 billion in 2022. Marcia Langton has long advocated “unleashing the power of native title” to boost economic participation – writing in these pages that Albanese’s agenda “draws attention to the universal aspiration for Indigenous economic parity in a way that no other national Indigenous affairs policy has in the past 50 years”.

It’s important also to learn from the many missteps over that time, including the flaws of the Indigenous Procurement Policy reported last month by Ben Abbatangelo.

With this in mind, we look to the treasurer’s August 19 productivity summit. This week, First Nations round tables convened across the country to raise ideas that will flow into it. Among the guests announced for the Canberra event so far is just one Indigenous official, Ben Wyatt, former treasurer of Western Australia and current board member for Woodside Energy.

The discussions are expected to lean into deregulation, to speed project approvals in the race to decarbonise. It’s a valid goal in the face of a climate emergency but approached with care given the long history of dispossession and lip service to inclusion that has too often sidelined First Nations interests.

A partnership grounded in the red earth and flourishing for its Traditional Owners would be a worthy one indeed.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 9, 2025 as "Green shoots in red earth".

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