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Page 10 Senate Friday, 21 October 2016 Senator DODSON: Senator Scullion, I hate to interrupt you, but I am aware of what took place in Buronga when Woolworths and others were operating, or assisting to operate, and they actually redesigned the whole way in which these things were laid out. I appreciate the education, and I appreciate what you are trying to do with that, but I— Senator Scullion: There is a different way. If you do not want sugary soft drinks in the stores, you have just got to not have them there—but there is this balance between the rights of people to make a choice. In terms of mobility, it is actually about shopping. The store in Barunga, for example, suffers because people decide they are going on a shopping trip—because it is a bit exciting to get out of town. They drive to Katherine, even if the actual prices of many of the items in Barunga are the same as in Katherine—but they will go and buy at the store. The viability of the store and all those issues—mobility and shopping—are connected. Senator SMITH: I am curious about this issue from a different perspective—access to these communities. As someone who has been to Balgo, I am familiar with this. When we are speaking to local communities, the lack of good road access is putting significant costs on the transport of food into communities and then, of course, having an effect on price and particularly on the price of perishables. Have you done any work—or can you give us any indicative figures—about the price impact that poor road access is having on some of these communities? I am not talking about the need to bituminise every access point to every community, but improving the serviceability of road access might have a positive effect on reducing costs to consumers. Now, of course, I am interested in Balgo from the Tanami Road exercise—having travelled down the Tanami Road with the Shire of Halls Creek. I know they have been here to see Minister Scullion in the last few weeks et cetera. So do you have any commentary around the serviceability of roads as a means of improving the profitability of stores and whether or not Outback Stores says to government, 'If you were to improve serviceability in these communities, this might be a positive outcome,' in terms of the quality of choices that Indigenous people might get? Mr Bradley: We go out to tender for freight services. We do not run the freight directly ourselves. We, obviously, aim to procure it in the cheapest possible way with a decent service. That often depends on whether the leg that we are doing is a return leg for something the transport provider is already running. If we can get a return leg, the cost is much lower—where somebody else is paying the primary cost. Senator SMITH: How likely is that? Mr Bradley: Well, it does occur, for example, in Balgo. Senator SMITH: Generally, how likely is that? Mr Bradley: We do not necessarily know, because it all comes netted up in the price from the service provider. I think our most expensive store to deliver to is Tjuntjuntjara and I think it is of the order of 37 per cent of the cost of the merchandise is freight in that store. That is the most remote store that we operate, and it is truly very difficult to get to. If you like, I could come back with, at least, what the percentages are of the cost price of the merchandise we pay to get into those stores at the moment. We have also done collaborative contracts with people like the Arnhem Land Progress Aboriginal Corporation, where we can share trucks if we have got communities that are adjacent and so on. I think our focus has more been on how we can negotiate the best deal rather than maybe consider more fundamentally— Senator SMITH: I am interested in these things because, as we know, they are not isolated from one another. I would be very interested in that data. And particularly in a Western Australian context—just from my selfish Western Australian senator perspective. I am curious, but, in terms of efficiency of your time, do not worry about the Northern Territory and Queensland for me! Senator McKENZIE: All politics is local. Senator SMITH: That is right. Senator DODSON: We might have a mutual interest there, Senator. Senator SMITH: We will share it around. CHAIR: There are no further questions for Outback Stores. Thank you very much, Mr Bradley. FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION LEGISLATION COMMITTEE
Friday, 21 October 2016 Senate Page 11 Indigenous Land Corporation [09:39] CHAIR: I welcome Mr Edward Fry, Chair of the Indigenous Land Corporation, Mr John Maher, the Chief Executive Officer, and officers. Mr Fry, do you wish to make an opening statement? Mr Fry: Yes I do, thank you very much. Before I do that I would like to pay my respects to the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners past and present, and if it is possible, to pass on those respects to those future generations coming forward. Thank you for the invitation to come and speak and answer any questions that you would like to ask of me in particular. This is a first for me to come in. I think it is a first for any chair of either the ILC or the IBA to be asked to come here. Yesterday was a year in the job and by extension in December it will be two years in the IBA. It has provided a quality time for me on the inside to have a very close look at these institutions and also the client base and how they intersect particularly with its major stakeholder, the Australian Government, its policies and the product offerings that are generally available for Indigenous Australians. Needless to say, there have been some surprises. I do not need to go into them but it is more to do with how we go about creating an entity that will outlast all of us here today. I do not think that has ever been thought of nor has it ever been considered in a strategic sense by the ILC in previous years. That is not to say that they did not have a corporate plan but certainly the strategic intent and the strategic design was absent. The ILC is transforming itself. It is certainly tightening the way that it does its business. If I could sum it up I would like to do it in the following way. In the past 30 years there has been a huge underwriting by Indigenous Australians and the very good will of non-Indigenous Australians around human rights and property rights. But in that period I would say, with some limitations in some areas, that there has not been the realising of those assets as each one came into the inventory list in a way that you would expect. So we are starting from a point in time which from my view maybe should have started some time ago. That being said, that underwriting has allowed us to intersect with Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Australians both at a personal level and a community level and in corporate world strategic alliances. We will transform into this. We will turn this organisation into one that Indigenous people will want to be part of and will seek arrangements with, and we would like to think that over the coming year in particular, the sorts of results and the product offerings and the movements towards a much more agile and flexible business entity can be described as follows: to turn the ILC into a commercial business that reinvests. That is the model. We only have one client in terms of delivering our products, so we will constantly look to how we refine the business case to get greater outcomes with the available resources and those resources being people, the intellectual property of it and also our available funds going forward. Thank you. CHAIR: Mr Maher, would you like to make an opening statement? Mr Maher: I just want to say thank you for the invitation. I think Mr Fry has summed up the view on where we are going as the ILC in the future. Senator DODSON: Thank you, Mr Fry. The last time we met the minister took $23 million out of the IBA account, I think it was. Who is the IBA person? Senator Scullion: I think they are next. Senator DODSON: Okay. I thought you were collectively representing them. I will see. In that case: Minister, in the estimates on 12 February 2016, you stated that you were intending to meet with the ILC and the ILC board to discuss a number of whole-of-board issues that you thought this would be a good opportunity to reset. Is Mr Fry talking about outcomes from that discussion or was there something new? Senator Scullion: I did indeed meet with the board. We discussed a number of matters. Amongst them was a loan at the very best rate to ensure that they could provide the very best outcome for their core constituencies. We discussed that and a number of other matters, and I am very pleased—certainly as an observer; you will have to go to the officers for the details—to see that the consequence of that and of other efforts that have been made by others is that Ayers Rock Resort has gone from strength to strength. I cannot recall the other matters that we discussed at the meeting, but I did have a very productive meeting with the board. Senator DODSON: There are the matters in relation to the ILC, I suppose. I get a bit confused when you start talking about the Uluru board and whether those are funds out of the ILC or the IBA. I am not sure. Senator Scullion: Sorry. For your benefit: whilst the ILC are the board, part of the ILC board is the Voyages board, so that is probably why there is some confusion. It is actually like a subcommittee of the ILC. The board that runs Voyages— Senator DODSON: is accountable to the ILC? FINANCE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION LEGISLATION COMMITTEE
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