As long as we believe "policy makers [can] work out how to spend that $40 million to build the evidence base in for indigenous programs" then the money will inevitably be wasted.
No amount of money and no quantum of time and effort by highly-paid policy makers will ever succeed.
Resolutions to the complex challenges resulting from the occupation of an entire continent will only ever come from Indigenous people themselves when they are finally given the authority and the responsibility to forge their own way forward.

Economics anything but an exact science!

A thirty year long ivy league study apparently followed 300 hundred economists to validate their accuracy as predictors of economic trends/anomalies?

And found the more prestigious and well known they became as individuals, the less accurate their prognostications became! With a shared degree of accuracy no better than a dart throwing monkey?

Put ten economists in the same room and you'll invariably get thirty different opinions?

Lastly and pertaining to specialized knowledge/expertise inside the pubic service?

An X is an unknown quantity and a spurt is merely a drip under pressure. One only need look at the parlous state of our self reliant defense capability/energy-housing affordability to understand that!

If knowledge based science had anything whatsoever to do with energy decisions, based on either the economic case or raw science?

Some of the risible rubbish substituted for good decision making/policy! Would be very different! And not manifestly the result of a closed shop/old boys club!?
Alan B.