Indigenous Business, Corporations & Entrepreneurship Conference

1 Comment

1. Dave McLennan says:

   November 20, 2011 at 9:07 am

   The people that need to attend these conferances, are ordinary Indigenous people wanting to start a business who cant afford to feed their familys let alone pay $990.00
   Most of the speakers will stand up and tell the listeners how wonderful things are, but the truth is the money spent by goverments never reaches the people that need it.
   It is harder to get a loan from IBA than the main stream banks,ICAS is a sad joke and the banks dont want to lend money to Indigenous Australians.More money in keeping Indigenous people poor than helping them prosper.

   It seems that there is a real business in keeping Indigenous people in poverty rather than assisting them to be economically independent.
   I was recently speaking with native chiefs from America and Canada and they alerted me to the fact that governments and professional people have built a multi-billion dollar industry around Indigenous poverty.
   They told me why fix a problem if you need that problem to obtain funding , I then realised why the poverty cycle continues, they told me that it is similar in the USA and Canada but they are starting to win the battle.
   This is confirmed by the leaked cabinet report Strategic review into indigenous expenditure 2010 which highlights the billions of dollars wasted over the last ten years which was meant to assist Indigenous Australians escape the poverty cycle, but instead has made the management of government Indigenous organisations and consultants attached too the government funded organisations wealthy.
   I have witnessed this first hand while dealing with these Government and government funded organisations.
   Some of the organisations that are involved in this which include Indigenous Business Australia, DWEER, Indigenous Community Volunteer’s, Indigenous capital assistance Scheme, Indigenous Coordination centres, Kinnaway and Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier council, most of these government funded organisations have no real intention of assisting Indigenous Australians.
   The Indigenous coordination centres we meant to be a one stop shop for Indigenous people. They end up being a one stop shop to be run around in circles.
   I have had up to 50 Government people come and meet with me, make promises, receive expensive gifts from our cowboy world store and then let us know further down the track that the program that they had in mind had been scrapped.
   Mainstream business receive million in assistance packages, Mitsubishi gained a grant of over 5o million dollars so why can’t an Indigenous business get any assistance.
   I own and operate3 businesses and I am the chairman of two not for profit organisations and we receive virtually no funding, and this is at a time when the federal government a supposedly closing the gap, Imagine how bad things would be it they weren’t closing the gap.
   Further evidence is the fact that Indigenous Business Australia and DWEER are prepared to fund Business consultant’s for approx. $400 per hour, but they won’t spend a cent on any genuine business development.

   Some people criticise the spending on Indigenous Australia but it is actually an investment into the future, as if we can teach these people how to get into business they are no longer welfare dependant and that there are many other benefit’s.
   The housing fiasco in the northern territory as part of the intervention which has seen about 200 homes constructed at a cost of around 600 million dollars
   This is an absolute disgrace and their needs to be an independent senate enquiry as we have evidence that these organisations, do not care about the people that they should be servicing and the funding that is meant for indigenous business development and economy building never reaches the people that it is meant for.
   With the record profits being made from mining on Indigenous lands, why are indigenous people still living in poverty?
   I have developed Australia’s a first franchising system, with the assistance of some of the worlds, bests business consultants but we cannot get anywhere, were keep getting hurdles put in front of us by Indigenous Business Australia and other government departments.
   These departments have spent in excess of $140,000 telling us that they cannot assist us even though we meet all of the criteria for assistance as stated on their websites.
   Where does the money go?
   Why are we treated like 3rd class citizens By IBA?
   Why are we spoken to like dumb children By IBA?
   When will we start to see genuine outcomes, from the closing the gap initiatives.
   The government hand out aid overseas, for many reasons, we have severe poverty in this country and the problem is swept under the carpet.
   When the government said sorry, they didn’t mean that it would be an excuse for mainstream Australia to win the lottery.
   So of the simple solutions to these answers is economic development, education, tourism, agriculture, horticulture, simply start spending the money where it is meant to go.
   The camels in central Australia cost the government more than 60 million dollars to shoot and waste the carcass, this was done on Indigenous owned land, these camels could have been processed and each carcass is worth $150.00 so the 60 million dollar deficit, could have been turned into a sustainable industry worth more than 200 million dollars while employing an Indigenous workforce in an area where there is high indigenous unemployment. Also the rotting wasted carcasses emitted 100 s of tons of greenhouse gases.
   The meat from the camels could have been processed and exported which has a positive cycle.
   This concept was put to government, but because there was a chance of success, it was refused.
   Is this fraud or Indigenous economic genocide
   What happened to Closing the Gap?
   I would like some answers please,and some genuine assistance to help build a sustainable Indigenous economy.