APN Cape York chairman Bruce Martin is looking for investors in a new prawn farm the group wants to build on its land in Cape York.
He hopes signing up to a new set of investment standards for Indigenous groups backed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and David Murray will help attract the right financing partners.
Mr Martin said signing up to the principles would leave his company less vulnerable to financial advisers who did not have the community’s best interest at heart.
‘‘Historically we have encountered a perceived lack of good governance that has held back some banks and other financiers from getting involved because of the fear working with the blackfellas will all be just too difficult,’’ he said.
‘‘And, conversely, lots of people within our community have been held back by concerns that every whitefella in the investment community is a snake oil salesman come to rip us off.’’
Mr Turnbull is slated to attend an event at KPMG’s offices in Sydney on Monday evening to launch the Indigenous Investment Principles, a voluntary best-practice framework designed to lift governance standards and investment skills within native title organisations.
Alongside Australian Indigenous Governance Institute chairwoman Robynne Quiggin, Mr Martin co-chaired a working group representing 20 native title groups set to embrace the voluntary set of governance and investment principles to help them shrug off negative perceptions and secure better partners from the banking and finance sector.
Mr Murray, the financial system inquiry chairman, sponsored the 18-month project to develop the principles that provide a blueprint to help Aboriginal land councils and other Indigenous community organisations better understand, articulate and execute their investment goals.
‘‘My hope is that this will empower communities to greater self-determination in how their land assets are managed and realised into wealth,’’ Mr Murray said. ‘‘Otherwise we risk a national tragedy if the income that native title organisations receive through the mining production boom are not invested well.’’
The Indigenous Investment Principles are modelled on the ‘‘Santiago Principles’’ used by sovereign wealth funds that Mr Murray was involved in developing during his stint as founding chairman of Australia’s Future Fund.
Mr Murray said the most important starting point for groups adopting the principles would be to agree on their investment goals, so they were able to work better with financial advisers who could help them implement short, medium and long-term portfolio strategies as appropriate.
KPMG and Credit Suisse also supported the project.
Research by government body Indigenous Business Australia in 2014 estimated the total size of the native title wealth market at more than $10 billion and tipped it to quadruple in the next few years.
Mr Martin said he intended to consult his shareholders on the adoption of the principles in the coming months.
APN Cape York runs a cattle property on 607,000 hectares of its 1.09 million hectares of Wik land and recently developed a new revenue stream for the community with the sale of its first lot of carbon credits.
The group is working with the CSIRO to develop a sustainable prawn farm, with plans to launch a prospectus by June 2016 to invite investment in a trial site of 10 hectares of land-based ponds.
‘‘More than 20 years on from the Wik decision, too many Aboriginal communities are land rich but dirt poor,’’ Mr Martin said.
‘‘About 20 per cent of Australia’s land mass is owned under native title, yet for all the talk of ‘closing the gap’, outcomes for Indigenous people are not improving and on some fronts are going backwards.’’
Without closer ties to the banking and finance sector the economic development of Indigenous communities would continue to falter at the whim of political cycle, he said.
‘‘The government’s push to foster economic development in northern Australia, where 43 per cent of land is held under native title, must not be a wasted opportunity.’’
