Coalitions indigenous advisory head Warren Mundine has foreshadowed major changes if elected. Source: AAP
THE man set to head the new indigenous advisory council under a Tony Abbott government is flagging a radical shakeup of Aboriginal institutions, starting with abolition of a wide range of governance bodies.
Warren Mundine, former Labor national president and now executive chairman of the Indigenous Chamber, said indigenous people were the most highly governed in Australia.
At every level of government, there were additional structures for indigenous people, producing a system of mind boggling complexity, crippled by over-regulation, stultifying of economic development, not truly representative or transparent, inefficient, unwieldy and sometimes corrupt, he said.
Mr Mundine said there were numerous statutory bodies including land, regional and homeland councils, Aboriginal Corporations and indigenous shire councils.
"For this there should be one governance body representing each indigenous nation," he said in a landmark speech to the Garma indigenous festival in the Northern Territory.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott is on board, declaring the new advisory council headed by Mr Mundine would inform coalition government policy implementation.
"What we've got to do is develop new governance arrangements where things happen a lot more quickly than they seem to at the moment," he said.
Mr Abbott said this new advisory body would meet three times a year with himself and other ministers.
"If lasting change is to be achieved in this area it has to be broadly bipartisan and embraced by Aboriginal people rather than simply imposed by government," he said.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd agreed.
He said if he had one ambition in life, it was to ensure closing the gap with indigenous Australians was taken out of the political ruck.
"We are judged by the rest of the world on these questions and rightly so and we will be judged by our children as to whether we have got this right," he said.
But Greens Senator Rachel Siewert said Mr Abbott seemed intent on returning to the Howard government's ineffective approach to ending disadvantage.
"Mr Abbott has shown no commitment to a number of key issues, such as addressing the lingering problems with our system of native title or ending the failed and expensive regime of income management," she said in a statement.
Mr Mundine's vision goes much further than reforming governance.
He said indigenous people should be able to own their homes which they can't now in communities where land is communally held by traditional owners.
He said communities could never attract business and investment to create jobs if substance abuse was out of control, which was why alcohol management plans were so important for economic development.
As well, indigenous communities needed to be more open and do away with permit systems if they were serious about development and jobs.
"This requires that we make some hard decisions," he said.
