Article & Journal Resources

Bev Manton, a retired teacher, boatbuilder and grandmother of nine, is now custodian of $700 million of Aboriginal money and land worth $2 billion. Joel Gibson meets the new voice of NSW Aborigines.

'Mothers have certain entitlements," says Bev Manton, as a colleague relays a family debate about the venue for this year's Christmas lunch. And this is one mother - now mother hen of NSW's most senior elected indigenous body - who has made her feelings well and truly known since ascending to the throne six months ago.

As chairwoman of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Manton is the most qualified person in the state - in democratic terms, at least - to speak on behalf of its almost 150,000 indigenous people. She has done so regularly and vituperatively at a time when the national debate on indigenous affairs has been revived by radical federal government policy reforms in the Northern Territory.

There was her first public appearance - a scathing response to the former Coalition government's Northern Territory intervention which co-opted an infamous phrase and repeatedly asked the government to "please explain" how an army of temporary volunteers would provide a long-term solution to the shortage of doctors, teachers and police in the state; why all Aboriginal parents in the Territory face the quarantining of their welfare and baby bonus benefits while only 'bad parents' do among the rest of Australia; and prohibition will work.

She has also described Noel Pearson of Cape York as a "government- and media-appointed" Aboriginal leader who "can't get elected anywhere" and is "drunk with power", and last month accused the mainstream media of being "totally preoccupied with the political beauty contest between Mr Howard and Mr Rudd" when the crucial poll for indigenous Australians would be in the Senate.

But she stops short of criticising the Government in NSW. Manton prides herself on a strong working relationship with its Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Paul Lynch, and has taken up a position on a state ministerial advisory panel to tackle indigenous child sexual abuse. She praises the State Government for its pledge to consult Aboriginal people on all policy that affects them and lauds Lynch for initiating an upper house inquiry, to begin next month, into closing the 17-year life expectancy gap between black and white Australia. Her role and that of the land council, she says, is to ensure governments make good on their promises.

Even she, however, is not prepared to say the NSW Government is spending enough to tackle an epidemic of child sexual abuse in indigenous homes. Labor's response to the problem has been broadly described as inadequate after not a cent of new money was allocated for it in this year's budget, despite a reported request from the former attorney-general Bob Debus and three other ministers for $20 million to $40 million a year to fund a package of measures.

In person, Manton is no firebrand. Aboriginal people bemoan their portrayal in the mainstream media as drinkers, drug abusers, child neglecters and financial dunces. Perhaps accordingly, they elected a mother of four and a grandmother of nine from Karuah, near Port Stephens, with a husband of 41 years and a son who has paid off his mortgage at 35.

Asked for her proudest achievement in almost a half-century of teaching and community work, Manton nominates her brood. "I think being a mother has made me pretty proud, and having a great family."

That response is doubly down-home when you consider Manton's professional record. One of the first Aborigines to attend high school in Raymond Terrace, she left school at 15. "The Aboriginal people four or five years ahead of me were the first ones allowed into high school," she recalls.

Most recently, she was co-ordinator of the Karuah Local Aboriginal Land Council and architect of an innovative boat-building program that gave indigenous school students new skills and confidence.

As a bureaucrat with the Department of Education, Employment and Training, Manton was responsible for creating 280 jobs in Lightning Ridge at a time when work was thin on the ground.

"When the drought first hit, the seasonal jobs dried up and I thought we needed to introduce a new industry. A contract came up [to manufacture calico bags for the Brumby's Bakeries chain] and I used to be a tailoress, so we put in a tender and beat an American and Asian company to win it," she says.

"I thought, 'Let's just forget about where we are. We've got the technology to do it.' "

More than 200,000 calico bags later, she had built a cottage industry in a remote town. It continues today.

Manton has tried retirement twice since, but ran for the NSW land council in May because, she says, she "can't be idle".

"It's very exciting times for [the land council] and for those of us who are interested in tackling Aboriginal disadvantage," says Lynch, who was appointed to the portfolio to take over from the disgraced Milton Orkopoulos.

This, too, is an understatement of sorts. After a series of scandals involving unscrupulous developers and naive and sometimes corrupt local land council officers, followed by a 2004 government review and two sets of amendments to the NSW Land Rights Act, the council is finally out of administration, asset-rich to the tune of almost $3 billion and more free to spend than it was in the past.

Whereas once an enterprising land council that offered a funeral fund to members could be sued by a commercial rival for acting outside its authority, Aboriginal land councils are now permitted by law to offer "community benefit schemes".

The NSW Aboriginal Land Council has accordingly announced a $30 million education scholarship fund for Aboriginal people of all ages and levels of education in NSW.

The seed funding will be allocated from the council's investment fund, which has ridden the stockmarket to an all-time high of almost $700 million. That is almost triple the initial State Government investment of 7.5 per cent of NSW land tax from 1983 to 1998 - compensation for land lost by the Aboriginal people of NSW.

"It is important to appreciate this," the council says. "We are not talking about taxpayers' money. It is money which has been hard-earned by wise investment by Aboriginal people … over the past 25 years."

Manton and the NSW land council's chief executive, Geoff Scott, say they are considering other uses for the fund, from micro-financing to an expanded contributory funeral fund, but will move slowly, in line with the fund's conservative investment strategy and statutory limits.

"It's their money, not mine," says Lynch. "I'm not a whitefella minister who will tell Aboriginal people how to spend their money. [But] they shouldn't be looking at doing things the government should be doing. They are offering things over and above what the government is doing."

The core business of the council - land claims - is also booming.

The registrar of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, Steve Wright, says a blitz during the reign of the former administrator, Murray Chapman, had laid claim to more than 4000 parcels of unused Crown land in a year and taken the number of land claims from 8,000 to almost 16,000.

Without the new claims, which have yet to be investigated by the Lands Department in what is a long and often unsuccessful process, the council's portfolio totals more than 616,460 hectares with an unimproved capital value of more than $2 billion.

With them - and allowing for those that fail - Wright estimates it could "double, if not triple".

"The newly elected council will be responsible for taking the system into the next phase of land rights - the sustainable development and management of our land base for the benefit of present and future generations," Manton has said.

The potential for improving the economic and social status of Aboriginal people is staggering.

But a quarter-century of land rights has not done much to alleviate the state of indigenous health and wealth, giving Aboriginal people little reason to hold their collective breath.

If and when that land is converted to general wellbeing, as the 1983 act of parliament envisaged, it will be not a moment too soon.