Indigenous jobs need transparency, says Stan Grant

Stan Grant has called for proper governance and transparency around government contracts being awarded to indigenous groups.

Journalist and political hopeful Stan Grant has called for “proper governance, accountability and transparency” around government contracts being awarded to indigenous groups, amid warnings that “fake Aborigines” are ­involved in widespread rorting of benefits and jobs.

But the indigenous broadcaster, who in recent weeks has been mentioned as a potential federal political candidate, warned that alarm over the issue should not be used as a “smokescreen” for questions of indigenous identity.

Grant’s comments came as a decade of indigenous community complaints prompted the removal this month of former public servant Laurinne Campbell from membership of a NSW land council after she had relied on council vetting to secure an “Aboriginal identified” job in Dubbo and ­almost $120,000 in government grants and private donations.

Community leaders, including the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council chairman Warren Mundine, have called for a toughening of the vetting process to make a claim of Aboriginality, with revelations in The Weekend Australian that Ms Campbell, who is white, invented an indigenous family history.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Grant said that “wherever government money is dist­ributed”, there should be “a process when people apply and people claim an identity, and people have the identity validated, that this needs to be an open and transparent process”.

Life and times of Stan Grant

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“Let’s by all means have good governance and transparency and openness, that is what the taxpayer demands, that is what our communities demand,” he said. “But let’s not allow this to become a smokescreen where we can start to question identity. We know who we are. We know our families — there are not that many of us (and) we’re related to half of them.”

Grant has been tipped as a candidate in this year’s federal election, with the ALP having considered putting him up for a tilt at the Sydney electorate of Reid, currently held by the Coalition’s Craig Laundy.

Grant continued to equivocate yesterday on whether he would run at all, let alone for which party. However, he acknowledged that the time for “shouting from the margins” was over and there ­needed to be more senior indigenous voices in parliament, including an indigenous treasurer or an indigenous foreign minister.

“We can’t pitch a tent outside parliament any more — policy is made in only one place,” he said. “As for my own ambitions, this is an election year. The time is short. The number of seats is finite. The number of seats I could win, even less. So, yes, I’ve had conversations with people.”