By PETER ROWE
A leading Indigenous business group has called for greater scrutiny of project partnerships with Aboriginal businesses after revealing cases of ‘black cladding’ are on the rise in the community.
Indigenous Emerging Business Forum chief executive John O’Driscoll, who’s organisation partners with ABDWA, the prescribed directory for the department of finance, which has approximately 850 businesses, told a Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee enquiry into the economic ability of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Perth that black cladding does exist and called for a watchdog to monitor future projects.
“Yes, black cladding does exist,” he told the enquiry.
“Once the project is complete, Aboriginal partners are being told ‘see you later’ Mr O’Driscoll said.
“We have received many calls from businesses telling us their quotes for tendering are too high and that they cannot do the job within the budget so the contractor then goes elsewhere or the business ends up having to work for just a basic wage.”
Mr O’Driscoll, who was one of many making submissions to the enquiry yesterday, said an Aboriginal watchdog was needed to monitor contracts and tendering to ensure joint ventures were fair to all parties.
“Targets within JVs and exit clauses are not mandated so there are no consequences and it’s too easy for contractors to say they couldn’t find an Aboriginal JV partner,” Mr O’Driscoll said.
IEBF chief executive John O’Driscoll says the Commonwealth needs to do more.
“A joint venture is where two entities enter into an agreement and both entities benefit. But here in this State on the joint ventures we are mentioning, it is absolute black cladding.
“There needs to be up-skilling where both the contractor and the partner benefit and that is not happening.
“There is a lack of funding from both State and Federal to grow the tendering process.
“The Commonwealth needs to do more.
“A lot of government departments in this State are now creating their own Aboriginal business directories, so they can control the narrative around Aboriginal business, which is wrong.”
When asked by the committee what needed to happen, Mr O’Driscoll said more opportunity needed to be given to Aboriginal businesses.
“The majority of partnerships are based on self declaration and there should be a three-part definition rule – that needs to happen and currently there is little thought for culture,” he said.
