If you follow the money in Indigenous procurement, you start to notice a pattern. And not a good one.
Fresh analysis of the Commonwealth’s Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) shows what many in community have been whispering for years: a small cluster of companies is soaking up a huge share of contracts, and a massive slice of that spending is landing in one place, Canberra.
Canberra’s population is 1% Indigenous. Well below the Australia wide figure of 3.2% or the New England’s 11.9%.
Yet, over the IPP’s first eight years, 5,272 contracts, more than 40% of all grants, and 30% of total value, about $2.1 billion, went to ACT-based businesses.
But the geographic distortion is only the beginning.
Half of all contracts worth more than $10,000 went to just 11 businesses, while 18 businesses captured half of the entire IPP spend. Even more concerning, 47 per cent of total value went to firms with 50 to 51 per cent Indigenous ownership, and another 27 per cent went to companies where ownership could not even be identified. If your policy is meant to support Indigenous businesses, that last category should not exist. Yet here we are.
Meanwhile, real community-led work, the kind that actually changes lives, is rarely funded.
Benjamin Knight captured the frustration perfectly in a post now circulating widely:
“There’s an Elder in a remote town who’s prevented more youth crime with their kitchen table than any million-dollar program ever has.
“They don’t have a grant. They don’t write reports. They don’t count “attendance metrics.”
“They just know every young person’s story – who’s struggling since their dad went inside, who needs a meal, who just needs someone to believe they’re more than their worst day.
“Meanwhile, 800km away in Sydney, professional grant writers craft perfect proposals about “innovative interventions” for communities they’ve never visited, for young people they’ll never meet.
“Guess who gets the funding?”
This is the heart of the issue. Communities are delivering results, real results, yet the money continues to pool around the same set of suppliers, many of whom are far removed from the communities the policy is supposed to support.
Success indicators should be set by communities, grounded in cultural authority, continuity and local impact, with Indigenous governance built into procurement from the beginning.
Shifting to simple, culturally safe evidence for smaller, place-based projects: yarn-based reflections recorded with consent, basic participation notes and budgets that actually recognise Elders’ time, would be much more effective and efficient.
In other words, match the accountability to how community work actually happens, instead of punishing smaller groups for not having corporate polish.
But here is the uncomfortable truth. Bureaucratic risk settings tend to favour established, well resourced providers, not grassroots organisations. Those same settings are helping concentrate IPP spending among the few and in Canberra. The result is a system that measures success by paperwork, not outcomes.
No wonder the “fund proof, not promises” message is catching on. Communities are tired of being told that the brilliance happening on their kitchen tables does not count because it cannot be formatted into a neat spreadsheet.
At the very least, there is growing agreement that we need clearer, enforceable rules about who counts as an Indigenous business. If 27 per cent of spend is going to firms where ownership cannot even be identified, the system is not just leaky, it is inviting exploitation. And when nearly half the value goes to companies with only 50 to 51 per cent Indigenous ownership, it raises a hard question: who is really benefiting?
This is not an argument against procurement. When done right, it is powerful. It can grow local economies, back Indigenous entrepreneurs and transform communities. But the figures tell an ugly story: the benefits of the IPP are being captured by too few players, in the wrong places, with too little oversight.
Communities are already showing what works. The system just needs to start funding it.
Until procurement recognises and rewards genuine impact, rather than corporate proximity to Canberra, Indigenous empowerment will remain a policy talking point instead of a lived reality.
Dean Foley grew up in Gunnedah and later served as an analyst in the Royal Australian Air Force before founding Barayamal, an Indigenous business accelerator. He is a contributor to the New England Times covering Indigenous Affairs, procurement and community-led economic development.
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