Acknowledging First Nations have specific rights and interests needs to be included under community benefit principles in the Future Made in Australia Bill.

That’s what Co-Chair of the First Nations Clean Energy Network Karrina Nolan told the Australian Senate’s Economics Legislation Committee, which is looking at the Future Made in Australia (Omnibus Amendments No. 1) Bill 2024 and the Future Made in Australia Bill 2024. 

The First Nations Clean Energy Network provided a submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee in July 2024 and was asked to present on 28 August 2024, along with others.

In our submission, we noted that the Community Benefit Principles included in the Future Made in Australia Bill, as presently framed, do not adequately prioritise and focus decision-makers and proponents on achieving First Nations outcomes. As such, we suggested the following point must also be included in clause 10(3) of the Future Made in Australia Bill:

Please find below an excerpt from the proceedings from when Karrina Nolan presented to the Senate’s Economics Legislation Committee.

Question: There are no sufficient standalone Aboriginal cultural heritage laws in this country. Given that, how do you think that consent will be and should be obtained, particularly relating to the community benefits principles of this bill? Do you have any suggestions that would, in fact, enable First Nations communities themselves—tribal groups and clans—to actually facilitate self-determination in relation to FPIC?

Karrina: The Inflation Reduction Act [in the United States] invested $720 million specifically for First Nations communities over there in recognition of the role people have played around climate change… They also increased their loan facility from $2 billion to $20 billion. That then enabled First Nations to be proponents.

In terms of Free Prior and Informed Consent, I think one of the key things we've been saying…is that our PBC and our traditional owner entities need to be resourced in order for us to self-determine what actually comes onto our country.

We need to do country planning. We need to think about where projects are located. We need to be part of the early engagement and the early design.

That means we're able to generally consent, if we want to, to those projects happening on our country, and also have the resourcing to think about what sorts of benefits we might get from them.

Question: Going to where you said the community benefit principles must include First Nations communities and traditional owners, and that this is an unmissable opportunity to embed positive outcomes for First Nations Australians, can you articulate for the committee...how you see that sitting in the bill and how the community benefit principles are currently articulated?

Karrina: The intention is that there's...First Nations mentioned in an existing dot point, and then there's an additional dot point that pulls us out of that one before it, so that it says 'ensuring First Nations communities and traditional owners can participate in and benefit from'. So it's a separate dot point under the community benefit principles, acknowledging that we have specific rights and interests.

One of the other things that we're seeing with the whole range of other initiatives being rolled out at a federal level—hydrogen, the Critical Minerals Strategy and others—is a lot of resources going to proponents, and what we would be arguing is that, if we want to actually see our communities negotiating equally at the table, some of those resources also need to come to our communities.

We need to specifically call that out. We need to signal to industry and to the market that, actually, it de-risks projects if First Nations communities are involved, and it's not the same as other stakeholders. We actually have a specific right and interest, so we should actually have a specific community benefit principle.

Question: Did you want to just take the opportunity to make any additional points from your opening statement or other points from your submission that you wanted to make?

Karrina: I think a lot of them have been covered, but we've really been hearing three things from our communities right around the country, and one of them we've talked about a bit, which is around consent, engagement and ensuring that we're actually front and centre.

I think it's been very clear to all the developers and proponents we're working with that, when that's done well and we benefit and are engaged, the projects have a longer life and they are put in the right place, derisked and all of those things that I just mentioned.

The other thing that I think is really important is that this is an opportunity to do this for lots of our communities who actually don't currently have access to clean, affordable power.

We're seeing this transition done at a scale that, at the moment, isn't actually addressing some of the key issues we're seeing where our people are experiencing energy insecurity.

This piece around energy access, affordability and how three million rooftops around Australia have solar—they're not First Nations rooftops, so what are we doing about that piece of work, and where does this resourcing fit in with dealing with that issue?

The final one we've talked about a bit is resourcing traditional owner entities in whatever form, regardless of land tenure, right across the country to make sure that we can really participate equally.

Question: Can you...expand on what you just said about how, where there is proper engagement that is properly resourced, that doesn't necessarily only benefit First Nations communities but also can benefit and derisk projects and make them more sustainable? Are you able to expand on that point?

Karrina: Yes. We're doing some research on this at the moment, but the lessons we're learning from Canada, where First Nations communities now own 20% of the nation's electricity generation, are that, if proponents put projects in the right place—which means they've talked to the custodians; they've talked to the people who know where things should go—then, actually, people don't need to relocate them, approvals are done quicker and smoother, and people are actually engaged and work in partnership—so some of those early engagement pieces and the design of the project.

Then, of course, there is thinking about a local workforce. In some of these projects, we're seeing that people already talking about fly-in fly-out workers. They're in regional and remote places, so why aren't we building a local workforce to make sure that those projects are going to be done quicker and with local people working on them?

So there are a whole range of different things that we've been thinking about, such as incentivising First Nations businesses and making sure that every project has an equity stake, which also means that, in the place where the project is, the traditional owners have buy-in from the very beginning. So it is those kinds of things.

Download the full transcript here