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Leading West Australian Aboriginal MP Ben Wyatt has called for greater empowerment of Indigenous communities in self-determination and governance at this week's national Indigenous Business, Enterprise and Corporations Conference at The University of Western Australia.

WA's Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Native Title and Cost of Living said government policy had for too long been based on palliative economics - a defeatist attitude "premised on Aboriginal culture dying."

"No longer is it acceptable to view regional poverty from the social welfare perspective," Mr Wyatt told more than 300 delegates from all over Australia at the conference, hosted by UWA.

"This is what Norwegian economist Professor Erik Reinert calls ‘palliative economics', a phrase that is as unpalatable as is the inevitable end it portends."

Mr Wyatt said palliative economics must be replaced by building relationships between Indigenous communities and industry.

In his speech titled ‘Western Australian strategies to achieve Indigenous empowerment', Mr Wyatt said regional empowerment was vital.

"Aboriginal people cannot be empowered if they are not willing to prioritise the one key to empowerment - education," My Wyatt said.

"If we do not accept that a school in a regional or remote part of Western Australia must perform at mainstream standards, then what is the point of that school?  How are we providing Indigenous empowerment with such expectations?

"We cannot deliver a standard of education lower than what we expect in Perth and then expect ‘mainstream' jobs to flow.  We are, effectively, giving Governmental endorsement to a ‘palliative education' system."

Mr Wyatt said while the WA Government's $6.5 billion Royalties for Regions funding scheme had bipartisan support in State Parliament, it was imperative to ensure the program avoided becoming "the spending narrative of a Perth-based Minister".

"While Royalties for Regions has delivered some outstanding results for regional Western Australia, issues of governance, sustainability and decentralisation remain ignored," Mr Wyatt said.

Mr Wyatt said WA's Ord Final Agreement between the State Government and Miriuwung Gajerrong Traditional Owners to develop 65,000 hectares of land for Australia's biggest irrigation farming scheme in WA's far north presented an important opportunity for Aboriginal communities to achieve empowerment.

"We may well see a comprehensive settlement leading to empowerment," he said.

"The moral obligations of ‘corporate social responsibility' mean that Aboriginal people have been able to negotiate impressive outcomes with the corporate world.

"Yet the benefits still remain unclear, the money trail often murky and the obvious benefits seem nothing more than those services that Government should otherwise already be providing."

Mr Wyatt defended Native Title rights, saying "property rights, however weak, give Aboriginal people a bargaining position".

"It is not for those miners who seek such access to Country to decide the moral virtue of their claims," he said.

However, Mr Wyatt said mineral deposits were too often a lottery.  The fact that Indigenous communities in the Kimberley would receive benefits if a gas processing plant is built onshore but not if it is built offshore - despite the same gas fields being exploited - was "somewhat absurd".

The Indigenous Business, Enterprise and Corporations Conference , convened by the Centre for Social Impact at the UWA Business School , is being held on 3 and 4 December 2012.

Media references

Tammy Solonec (Indigenous Media Consultant)  (+61 4) 57 877 308
Fiona Allan (Conference Manager)  (+61 4) 08 645 634
Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783