The federal minister for Indigenous affairs should be sacked from cabinet and sent packing for his allocation of Indigenous funds to non-Indigenous interests, but his exploits are far from an isolated incident when it comes to the standard of administration of any money earmarked for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Over the past fortnight, it has been revealed that Nigel Scullion has awarded almost $500,000 of funds intended to alleviate Indigenous disadvantage via the government’s Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) to non-Indigenous groups including NT amateur fishermen’s association (AFANT), the NT seafood council, and the NT cattlemen’s association (NTCA). It is up to Scullion’s discretion as to where to allocate funds, and these allocations meet those criteria, but they certainly don’t pass the pub test in terms of integrity.

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Introduced in July 2014 by the Abbott government, the IAS centralised 150 individual programs into five “flexible, broad-based” ones that sat within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). The reform was projected to save over $530m in expenditure on Indigenous affairs across the next five years.

The following year, the federal government allocated $4.9bn to the IAS grant funding process and its “administered procurement activities”. The substantial purse was, essentially, intended to address the “clear priorities” of the strategy: education, employment, economic development and social participation, healthy and safe home and community. The strategy’s five programs stemmed from these clear objectives, and delivery was to occur over the next four years, expiring in time for the 2019 federal budget.

Criticism of the strategy was immediate, as many frontline community services and programs were either axed overnight or throttled into impotency. In response, there were protests in the major capital cities and a surge of opposition online. Independent appraisals of the strategy’s grant funding process have been critical ever since.

In early 2017, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) concluded that “transitional arrangements and structures … focussed on prioritising the needs of Indigenous communities” had been affected by the department’s rush to establish the IAS; and that “the department’s grants administration processes fell short of the standard required to effectively manage a billion dollars of Commonwealth resources”; and perhaps most relevant in Scullion’s present predicament, that “the basis by which projects were recommended to the Minister was not clear and, as a result, limited assurance is available that the projects funded support the department’s desired outcomes”.

While a 2016 research report for the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) also identified that “misuse of funds for Indigenous programs is extensive”, that “multiple service providers including government agencies, Indigenous organisations, not-for-profit, non-government organisations (NGOs) and for-profit contractors – are all competing in the same space”, and went on to suggest that information relating to accountability in the funding process should be made publicly available.

Elsewhere, conservative voices like Maurice Newman, Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt and others have consistently been frothing about the “Aboriginal industry”, which (to my grasp of their fraught punditry) apparently consists of black individuals – or, worse, individuals who claim Indigenous ancestry but do not appear to be black – and who have opportunistically emerged from the reeds to lay claim to a sudden tower of pecuniary benefits.

According to Newman, it is “… an industry that too often puts ideology and self-interest ahead of the wellbeing of the Aboriginal people it purports to represent.”

Well, to my black mookoo, that sounds a lot like Scullion’s bag. The same behaviour can also be found dribbling down from the standard set by the rest of government.

The actual Aboriginal industry is, as the CIS report observes, one that entices international consultancy firms to establish their own Indigenous departments to tender for lucrative government contracts in competition with not for profits and NGOs and community-driven organisations and initiatives. This industry consists of opportunistic individuals of all complexions, though too often it is being perpetrated by non-Indigenous people. And as Newman notes, they have no interest in Aboriginal communities beyond their own self-interest.

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The actual Aboriginal industry is present in areas as varied as local councils and heritage groups, the academy, the primary healthcare network, even primary schools. It’s so ubiquitous it’s routinely overlooked, left unquestioned, or just considered normal.

Non-Indigenous academics within universities will apply and sometimes obtain Indigenous-specific project grants. Funding for Indigenous-specific support programs in schools, for example, have been known to go to topping-up non-Indigenous teacher aids who don’t necessarily work with Indigenous students. Non-Indigenous community groups can be awarded project grants by councils after falsely claiming to be working in partnership with local Aboriginal organisations. Not to mention the hundreds of cases where a non-Indigenous person has eventually been found to have lined their own pockets while “administrating” Aboriginal community organisations.

Newman and his ilk often carry on about why Indigenous Australians must seize control of their lives. And in an inverted way, I agree. It’s time to target control of our own funds by taking administration away from the greatest obstacle: the power of the actual Aboriginal industry elites.

• Jack Latimore is a Guardian Australia columnist

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