INDIGENOUS business experts say rapid growth in the sector is forcing a significant culture shift but it is still being restrained by traditional biases.
According to presenters at the University of Western Australia’s Indigenous Business, Enterprise and Corporations Conference, joint venture arrangements have lit the fire under the state’s Aboriginal business sector.
Professor Marcia Langton, from the University of Melbourne, said its growth was most evident in the Pilbara.
“Ten years ago you wouldn’t have been able to find an Aboriginal business in the phone book but now you can find about 300,” she told a panel session. “In the main, joint ventures, partnerships and joint projects have all worked to get Aboriginal businesses from ground zero to 300 in the last 10 years in the Pilbara.
“Somewhere in the last 10 years there was a tipping point, I think it was about six years ago, and it just exploded,” Professor Langton said.
Such joint ventures have included NRW Holdings’ partnerships with indigenous businesses the Ngarluma and Yindjibamdi Foundation, and Eastern Gumura; Gergiou Group with Gumala Enterprises and AbiGroup with GLH Contracting.
But, despite the significant growth, in-built biases of Aboriginal business still existed.
“We’re on the cusp of a big cultural change where we’re moving from a deficit model to a new way of thinking about ourselves ... we’ve moved past the inferior race model and now it’s down to business,” she said.
“(But) it’s almost taboo to talk about the biggest indigenous industrial workforce in Australia’s history - we’re not allowed to talk about that, we’re not allowed to talk about Aboriginal millionaires.”
Chief executive of indigenous business the Willmett Group, Neil Willmett, agreed that inbuilt biases - especially around Aboriginal people only operating small art and tourism-focused businesses - still existed.
“What people need to realise is that businesses have changed - we have people operating in every single profession and industry and that’s hard for people to understand because we’re still thinking about cottage industries,” Mr Willmett said.
Non-indigenous businesses needed to be more open-minded about the breadth of Aboriginal business and its ability to deliver, he said.
The Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council was established three years ago to improve relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous business.
Chief executive Natalie Walker said there had been significant economic benefits realised but the success of further indigenous business and contracting would be measured by perfonnance alongside non-indigenous businesses.
“We want to see the growth of indigenous business outstrip the growth of non-indigenous business - once we see that, that will be the measure of our success,” Ms Walker said.
“And that’s based on trends in growth in Canada and the US where the growth rate of indigenous (business) is 15 times faster than non-indigenous at the moment.”