$7.5m sought for next series of referendum meetings

Nationwide consultation aimed at reaching consensus on indigenous recognition in the Constitution will cost about $7.5m.

Melbourne lawyer Mark Leibler.

Another round of nationwide consultation aimed at reaching consensus on how indigenous people would like to be recognised in the Constitution is expected to involve 18 regional conferences leading up to a national convention at Uluru, and cost about $7.5 million.

Secret documents obtained by The Australian show the Referendum Council agreed to ask government research body the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to conduct the meetings.

An initial proposal submitted by AIATSIS costed the series at $9.8m, excluding a 10 per cent contingency, and would have involved a staff of 73 people to organise gatherings for about 100 people.

AIATSIS is chaired by Mick Dodson, brother of former council co-chair Patrick Dodson, who ­resigned this month to take up a ­casual Labor Senate vacancy.

In its initial proposal, AIATSIS warned that “as the cornerstone of the overall referendum process, the indigenous conference warrants sufficient funding to ensure success”.

“Full funding is required to ­enable AIATSIS to auspice the project: it has now been well established, in recent cabinet sub­missions, that AIATSIS is significantly underfunded and cannot meet its current responsibilities without a substantial injection to its base funding,” the proposal states.

Records of a meeting in January show council members objected to the “high cost of the AIATSIS proposal, including in staffing” and recommended the expansive role the organisation had designed for itself be scaled back.

GRAPHIC: Revised referendum framework

Sources said there had been a struggle for control between ­AIATSIS and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

AIATSIS responded testily a few days later with a revised proposal airing “significant reser­vations” and listing two pages of itemised new problems created by its loss of responsibility for key parts of the process.

“AIATSIS cannot guarantee a project initiation or end date and can only confirm project timetable starting after delivery of all ­dependencies and resolution of risks,” the response states.

Line-by-line budgets put the revised cost at $7.5m including contingency.

The budget features a national project director on a salary equivalent to more than $200,000; $1.2m in consultants’ fees; $1.4m for staff travel; and $400,000 for promotions.

Both proposals included “an administration overhead calculated at 25 per cent of salaries”.

Each regional convention would require about a dozen staff in place for five nights to manage a three-day event for 100 people (200 in capital cities).

The estimated travel cost per attendee was $530, equating to more than $50,000 per regional conference and more than $100,000 per capital city conference, assuming only half of attendees are subsidised.

Facilitators, legal experts and report writers would be paid $2000 to $3000 a day. Attendance would be allocated on a 60-20-20 First Nations, community organisations and key individuals basis.

AIATSIS spokespeople did not respond to calls or emails before the Easter break.