The department's latest annual report now says the ABA "is structured to meet one outcome: to support the provision of engagement and support for individuals, families and communities to improve wellbeing and capability". The department declined to comment on the change.

The ABA had until recently a balance of $100m, but its annual income has in recent years ranged from $150m to $200m.

The ABA's funds are used in three ways. A fixed 30 per cent share is paid to areas directly affected by mining. It funds the operations of four territory land councils, which cost $82m in 2010-11. And a third element, known as "beneficial grants", is paid to indigenous communities and organisations that make specific requests.

It is this third tranche that is subject to the greatest ministerial discretion. These grants totalled $70m in 2010-11, three times the previous year.

Accusations that the ABA has been used to fund discretionary or short-term items date back at least to 2007, when then Coalition indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough defended a $20m drawdown for Aboriginal housing.

The ABA's 2010-11 annual report shows that total grants paid out of the fund nearly trebled from $24m to $70m, a rise that largely reflected the $50m cost of a community stores program that Ms Macklin chose to draw from the account. Payments to land councils for administrative purposes more than doubled to $47m.

The increased cash burn meant overall equity rose by just $14m to $412m, despite income of $155m.

Last financial year, Ms Macklin drew $9.5m from the ABA to pay for township leases in two NT communities, while the account provided $4.75m to the Office of Township Leasing, which included running costs.

Last month, Ms Macklin used the ABA to bail out an indigenous organisation that provides services to remote communities.

The Laynhapuy Homeland Association faced a shortfall of about $1m, but Ms Macklin's department cancelled 14 capital works projects worth about $6.5m in order to fund the bailout. The surplus monies went back into the account.
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The axed capital projects included women's hygiene facilities and a mud-brick operation aimed at reducing the exorbitant cost of home building in the territory.

The government's much vaunted Indigenous Economic Development Strategy, launched by Ms Macklin in October, emphasises the accrual of trust funds. Ms Macklin said when launching the strategy that Aborigines "need to build financial independence", while she has been urging communities that have signed royalty agreements with mining companies to save a substantial share of their income in trust funds.

But Aborigines in the NT have no such independence with the ABA, which has grown substantially in recent years as a result of the mining boom. While an advisory committee of Aboriginal representatives gives advice to the minister, Ms Macklin has final say on how much money is spent.

FOI documents show that Ms Macklin has been reluctant to raise the ABA's own financial management standards. From late 2008 onwards, she ignored or rejected her department's advice to appoint a financial analyst to put the ABA on a sustainable financial footing, though she has done so very recently after The Australian obtained documents proving these facts.

The spokeswoman said Ms Macklin had now approved a financial consultant to produce a 10-year outlook for the fund. While work will begin early this year, this is three years after the department first urged the minister to appoint such a consultant.

Following a 2008 audit by the Office of Evaluation and Audit, the department told Ms Macklin the report had been "critical of the transparency, accountability and operation of the ABA". It urged her to appoint a financial analyst because it lacked "in-house expertise", according to a December 2008 minute obtained under FOI.

The minute shows the department asked the minister to approve $50,000 to pay for a consultant to advise on a "minimum investment amount", but it appears to have had no response.

Two years later, it repeated the request, but in March last year Ms Macklin rejected the proposal.
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Mr Giles, a member of the opposition Country Liberal Party for the Alice Springs seat of Braitling, said he feared the federal government's control of the ABA and its use of funds acted as a disincentive for Aboriginal communities to approve mining developments.

Indigenous leaders have been reluctant to speak out about the fund's management.

Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner, criticised Ms Macklin's use of the ABA to pay for township leases earlier this year. He said it was "outrageous" the government negotiated just compensation and then paid for it with "Aboriginal money".

A spokeswoman for Mr Gooda said he subsequently received a "briefing" and as a result would not be making any further comment.

The Central Land Council's chief executive, David Ross, declined to comment. The Northern Land Council did not return calls. The land councils in the NT rely on their funding from the ABA.

*Yes Loudmouth royalty is paid but not like you think. This harks back to the stolen wages stunts govts did. Macklin is just carrying on what Mal Brough started.
This is an example of structural racism that seems entrenched in Australian society.

G'day Aka, nice to hear from you,

I'm not sure where this discussion is going. Mining royalties are not like as wages - they accrue with no effort on the part of Aboriginal people, after all, but as a result of minerals being dug out of the ground, with Aboriginal people as spectators, sometimes as workers on good wages. And I would support Macklin when she said:

'.... that Aborigines "need to build financial independence", while she has been urging communities that have signed royalty agreements with mining companies to save a substantial share of their income in trust funds.'

Sounds good to me. If royalties go into some sort of fund, then why shouldn't those funds be expended for the benefit of Aboriginal bodies ? We can argue about whether or not the Land Councils should have received so much, for so little, I would agree with you there.

But if royalties funds are used to assist people with housing, and as payments to councils for leasing land for housing, who gets the funds ? Nobody but the councils, and their bureaucracies ? Sounds okay to me, apart from the bureaucracies, on the face of it.

Why aren't royalties sort of notionally individualised, and set off against the purchase of houses, on land leased from local Aboriginal councils ? This is hardly rocket science.

Frankly, there are so many far more important issues which genuinely touch on real, substantial, fair dinkum, self-determination, i.e. the ability and responsibility of people to manage their own affairs themselves, with their own skilled personnel, and then get onto the business of actual enterprises, staffed and managed again by their own skilled personnel ? With all able-bodied 'community' people either working, or studying to get the skills to work ?

If that's not what people want to do, then don't waste my time. As a pensioner, I've got sunshine to sit in and birds to listen to. In the time I've got left, I'd rather focus on people who are actually trying to do something with their lives like you, Aka.

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth states,

"...if royalties funds are used to assist people with housing, and as payments to councils for leasing land for housing, who gets the funds ? Nobody but the councils, and their bureaucracies ? Sounds okay to me, apart from the bureaucracies, on the face of it.

Why aren't royalties sort of notionally individualised, and set off against the purchase of houses, on land leased from local Aboriginal councils ? This is hardly rocket science."

Once again you show how much you don't know about the deeper signifance of land rights and economic rights as they relate to Aboriginal people.

More than 60% of minerals operations in Australia have neighbouring Indigenous communities. Swan/Gillards/ Macklins passed the Minerals Resource Rent Tax in both houses the other day - but this legislation does not recognise Aboriginal land rights to mineral deposits or will not give any direct benefit to these communities. Instead these communities can only rely on and use agreements which are not founded on recognistion of Aboriginal land ownership beyond the weakest set of usafructory rights that native title law provides.

Hence, the burden of negotiating with extractive industry bodies falls disproportionately on Aboriginal organisations such as NTRB's (Native Title Rep Bodies) who are not funded to properly negotiate with mining interests.

And to date, the Australian government has used the High Court decision in Western Australia v Ward whereby property rights in subsurface minerals are vested in the crown – thus denying native title groups’ access to Statutory Mining Royalty Equivalents (SMRE’s)

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There is no legal standardisation or recognition based on the actual wealth/ market price of the minerals extracted, just an ex gracia payment decided through ILUA’s, (and other promises of employment etcetera)

The fund that Macklin has been dipping into echo's the bastardry and theft of Aboriginal stolen wages right across the country.

And I playing victim here? No just pointing out the facts as I know them. I seems that every time we point of these facts you turn them against us and somehow attributes this as a defect and inadequacy we have acquired through our poverty, injustice, slum life, and racial difficulties, advocacy, eduction, protests and of course calling it racism.

Your neoconservative approach allows you to cleverly shift the stigma that marks us as 'victims of these facts' But the stigma, the defect, the fatal differences - though derived from the immediate past is something you choose to locate within Aboriginal people.

It's a clever card trick that allows you to justify your perverse ideas of social action designed to change, not society, or law, as one might expect, but rather those who are trying their utmost to change these situations, that is, Aboriginal people like me and AKA who you so boldly hold in contempt. Why?