Noel Pearson eases back on Cape York duties

INDIGENOUS  leader Noel Pearson is stepping back from day-to-day duties at his pathfinding organisation Cape York Partnership.

INDIGENOUS  leader Noel Pearson is stepping back from day-to-day duties at his pathfinding organisation Cape York Partnership.

The new co-chairs are the writer and academic Marcia Langton and national law firm boss Danny Gilbert.

Mr Pearson, the founding chairman of Cape York Partnership, will stay on as an executive director of the organisation.

He will concentrate on driving the introduction of direct instruction teaching through his Good to Great Schools program and the campaign to secure constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

“The role Noel currently has is very challenging and beyond the capacity of any one human being. It is simply too much work,” said Professor Langton, whose chair is in Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Cape York Partnership is the umbrella for bodies founded by or associated with Mr Pearson to pursue social and welfare reform.

Mr Pearson said Professor Langton and Mr Gilbert, the managing partner of law firm Gilbert and Tobin, had previously chaired his policy organisation, the Cape York Institute.

“They bring with them a passion and commitment to the Cape York agenda and I have no doubt that under their chairmanship the partnership will continue to make a significant contribution to communities in the cape and to the broader policy agenda.”

In addition to operating the Cape York Institute, the Cape York Partnership under Mr Pearson’s leadership had set up employment and leaders programs, enterprise groups and has taken over the troubled Djarragun College based near Cairns.

Mr Pearson’s welfare reform initiatives have focused on ending passive welfare dependence in indigenous communities. “There is great potential for economic development led by the Aboriginal people of Cape York Peninsula,” Professor Langton said.

The firepower on the board of Cape York Partnership has also been boosted by the recruitment of Ann Sherry, chief executive of Carnival Australia and Westpac Foundation chairman Jon Nicholson.