Foxy, you do realise that the land councils are the ones who get the multi millions of dollars from royalties from mining etc don’t you? The government never sees that money. And that the councils are the ones who decide how that money is dished out?
Why do you think the separate regions want to disband the land councils and handle their own royalties money?
And do you realise that royalties money is never declared to Centrelink or the ATO. Which is why people in some communities have an income of over $100,000/ year yet still get welfare. And somehow still living in squalor.
Apparently you are not reading the correct documentation.

Big Nana,

Not just mining royalties, but national park royalties in the NT. A news report a couple of years ago observed that people at Mutitjulu, near Uluru, received $ 14,000 per household the previous year, not counted as income. Good on them, but as you point out, not only do people still get welfare, being on a low declared income, but they can be living in squalor even if they are pulling in annual six-figure actual incomes.

Nearly forty years ago, I did an income survey at a community where I had lived, assuming that I would find poor incomes. With a friend from there, we drew up a map of the place, house by house, and worked out what each household pulled in. I found, to my surprise and horror (after all, weren't Indigenous people supposed to be much poorer, deserving of our undying pity?) that the average income there was equal to the Australian average income at the time. Of course, I buried the data. I asked my supervisor about it, maybe it was just in that community, but no, she said, similar elsewhere.

Foxy, income is not the issue. There is little objective poverty in Indigenous communities. How people spend their money, is a different problem - well, a different range of problems, involving choices. Let's move on and away from endless pity for the helpless Blackfella to something more practical.

Joe

Dear Big Nana and Joe,

As far as I can gather - contrary to popular
belief Aboriginal Land Councils are not funded by
tax payers. They are self-supporting and have been
since 1998.

WA- has not passed Land Rights Legislation. Queensland
introduced a limited Land Rights Scheme. SA turned
reserves into perpetual leases but did not transfer
the land into Aboriginal communities and so on.

Aboriginal people live under different state laws and
regulations. Of course I believe that there would
be some who would mis-use the system. Just as there are
plenty of non-Indigenous who do. But I refuse to
believe the very narrow picture that you guys are
painting. Hence my reluctance to continue with this
conversation.

Joe,

The blackfella is not asking for endless pity
or "protection and support."
What they are asking for is equality with the whites.
The difference is that parliament makes specific laws
and policies about Indigenous people.

There is no native title act for non-Indigenous people,
because our ancestors were not dispossessed of land in
this country. Nor has there been an intervention on our behalf.

Whether you agree or disagree that the Intervention was
necessary, there is a consensus that it was poorly
implemented, without proper consultation, and not as
effective as it could have been. The Intervention failed
to achieve its aims.

Had local First Nations been empowered to take responsibility
in its formulation, the Intervention would not have been
discriminatory. It would have been better accepted by
communities and more effective.

We need to empower communities to take responsibility
themselves : to take the lead when it comes to
intervening in and ultimately resolving their own problems.
To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt, government cannot do anything
for you that you are not willing to do yourself.

The Indigenous People of Australia have a right to take
responsibility. They should be empowered with a Constitutional
Voice in their affairs, so they can always participate in decisions made about them.

And you guys as champions of responsibility, should support such
a reform.

Dear Big Nana and Joe,

It might be worthwhile for you to read Professor
Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh's Distinguished Lecture 2017,
given at Griffith University on -

" Mining Royalty payments and the Governance of
Aboriginal Australia."

Foxy,

In SA, Premier Don Dunstan set up the Aboriginal Lands Trust in the sixties, my wife's uncle/cousin was head of it at one time. The property in Aboriginal settlements were transferred to the Lands Trust from then on: land on most settlements, and later communities, were leased out by the Lands Trust to community councils by the early seventies.

As more land was purchased for Aboriginal communities, some was leased out to them under the auspices of the Lands Trust, but some was also purchased and owned outright, as annual licences, perpetual leases or freehold, by the community councils. Some land they didn't even know about: one 25-acre of lakeside land under annual licence, for example, which they found about accidentally hen a new neighbouring farmer asked them if they would like to pay half for a new adjoining fence. Much grumbling about the inconvenience of suddenly having more land.

I don't know about the Kimberley but down this way, communities often had more land than they thought. Nowadays, they treat this bonanza like they treat their other land, by doing nothing with it. Thousands of acres, which they could be working and providing employment and income.

Joe