KLC executive director Wayne Bergmann said while the resources-driven boom has changed the lives of a lot of Western Australians, Aboriginal people were still being shut out.
“We’ve got a skills shortage, yet only 16 percent of Aboriginal people in the East Kimberley participate in the mainstream labour market,” Bergmann said.
“We need to look at the barriers that are stopping Aboriginal people from sharing in the boom.”
But Bergmann said he accepted that change could not happen overnight.
“The reality is that many Aboriginal people do not have the numeracy or literacy levels needed to gain meaningful employment,” he said.
“Government has a role, but we also say that mining companies should be making long-term commitments to providing the generational training and support programs to fix this situation.
“Some of the developments planned for the Kimberley will run for 50 years, but the opportunity is now because it takes a long to time to get people skilled.”
The Land Council is calling for regional employment plans to be developed at a local rather than state-wide level.
“Working through partnerships with local Aboriginal groups would provide a much better chance at success on the ground,” Bergmann said.
“We should learn from past mistakes. For example in the Pilbara and Goldfields there has been negligible Indigenous participation in mining operations.”
The dominant petroleum companies in the Kimberley are Woodside and Inpex, which are aiming to develop their respective Browse and Ichthys LNG projects in the region, and explorer Arc Energy, which has the Kimberley’s largest onshore acreage holding.
Each company has made commitments to Aboriginal employment.
Woodside and Arc are founding members (alongside Apache Energy, BHP Billiton Petroleum and Chevron) of a Western Australian Indigenous Engagement Forum.
This body brings together member companies to share ideas about increased training and employment opportunities in the oil and gas industry for Aboriginal people.
Woodside has already made concrete advances in Perth and in the Pilbara region, southwest of the Kimberley. Early last year, the company had just two Indigenous people on its payroll. Now it has about 90, more than a quarter of whom work at the giant North West Shelf project.
Arc managing director Eric Streitberg told the company’s annual directors’ dinner last month, to loud applause, that Arc would ensure Aboriginal groups would benefit from any discoveries the company made in their traditional lands.
Inpex has admitted it has previously had a strained relationship with the Uunguu people, traditional owners of North Maret and South Maret, the islands where the company intends to site its Ichthys project.
“Our discussions have not always been easy and the relationship has been tested, but today we celebrate moving towards a new beginning,” managing director of Inpex Browse Jiro Okada said in August.
"We are committed to working with both the Uunguu people and the wider Kimberley community to develop and deliver sustainable economic outcomes."
Bergmann welcomed Inpex’s stance, and said the Kimberley Land Council would negotiate employment training, business and joint venture opportunities, land management programs and compensation for traditional owners.
