Tangentyere Council facing backlash over CEO's absence in community matters

Walter Shaw has been the Tangentyere Council chief executive since 2011. (ABC News: Randi Dahnial)

An Aboriginal-controlled organisation paid tens of millions of dollars in government grants each year to help improve social issues in Alice Springs has come under fire for declining meetings, allegedly failing to deliver services adequately, and allowing a convicted domestic violence offender to sit on its board.

Tangentyere Council Aboriginal Corporation is one of Australia’s largest Aboriginal-controlled organisations and is funded to provide housing, safety and youth services for Aboriginal people in Alice Springs.

In the past financial year, it collected more than $30 million in government grants and contracts including for servicing 16 town camps dotted across Alice Springs’ fringes, a women’s safety group and family violence prevention programs.

But as another bout of social unrest tarnishes Alice Springs, the council’s chief executive — Walter Shaw — has remained silent and has declined to meet with local government and other stakeholders.

The organisation, which employs about 300 people, hasn’t released an annual report since 2018.

Mr Shaw has declined multiple requests for comment by the ABC.

Mayor calls for greater collaboration

Alice Springs mayor Matt Paterson said the town council had been trying, without success, to meet with Tangentyere’s chief executive for the past decade.

Last year, the town council took the extreme step of calling on the NT government to broker a meeting between the two organisations.

The NT government said it was unable to assist.

“As a council, we represent everyone in Alice Springs and we want to sit down with major stakeholders to reach suitable outcomes,” Mr Paterson said.

“It’s about sitting at the table and sharing similar views and advocating for similar things.”

Current and former employees of the council have spoken to the ABC about shortcomings in the leadership of Mr Shaw and the board, which is made of up of elected members from each of the town camps the organisation represents.

They criticised the council leadership’s absence in community matters, including the social unrest culminating in a youth curfew in Alice Springs and the Voice to Parliament in 2023.

One former employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the silence from the top was failing the community.

“What it means is that the organisation really isn’t taking a public leadership role within the community to help bring about positive change,” they said.

“Things here in the territory need everyone at the table working constructively if different and more effective approaches and change is to be brought about over time.”

Mr Shaw has been the chief executive at Tangentyere since 2011.

His father, Geoff Shaw, a former chief executive and establishing member, is the current president of the board.

Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has repeatedly called for an audit into government spending on Indigenous programs across Australia.

Senator Price, also the Shadow Indigenous Australians minister, said she wanted an audit of Tangentyere.

“This has been a red flag for years and one that’s been brought up by community members for years,” she said.

“This is why we need greater governance in these organisations. This is why we need an audit into how these organisations are run.

“They should be run to service our most marginalised and particularly those in town camps.”

‘Fourth world poverty’ town camps

Yipirinya school principal Gavin Morris said many of his students from town camps managed by Tangentyere were living in “diabolical” and “fourth world poverty” conditions.

Dr Morris said Tangentyere was neglecting its responsibility to regularly clear rubbish and maintain a suitable standard of housing for families.

“There’s no real sign of any type of maintenance in any of the houses that you look at across the [16] town camps which are serviced by Tangentyere,” he said.

“The level of rubbish and filth and faeces is a disgrace.

“The cars are smashed up … kids climbing in and out of [them] — there’s hundreds of them in town camps, skips full of rubbish with nappies hanging over the edge with maggots … sitting there for weeks with children playing in and around them.”

Tangentyere is tasked with providing tenancy management, property management, maintenance and essential services to several town camps.

The National Indigenous Australians Agency, the federal body that provides funding to Tangentyere, said the organisation had met all reporting requirements.

NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler said no concerns had been raised with her about potential governance issues at the organisation.

But she said it was important that Tangentyere did the work it was paid for.

“They get a large amount of money from federal government as well as the Northern Territory government – both the governments need to be really tight around making sure that Tangentyere are producing outcomes for the dollars that they get,” she said.

“They need to be part of the solutions in Alice Springs.”

Allowing DV offender on board is ‘utter hypocrisy’

The ABC can also reveal one of Tangentyere’s board members, Philip Miller, is a convicted domestic violence perpetrator who has been jailed for breaching multiple domestic violence orders, including a 17-month stint behind bars in 2019.

The organisation runs a suite of programs addressing domestic violence in town camps, and campaigns against family violence through its Tangentyere Women’s Family Safety Group.

Senator Price said Tangentyere’s decision to allow a domestic violence perpetrator to sit on its board was “utter hypocrisy”.

“It demonstrates to the community and to victims of DV that this organisation is not serious about reducing levels of domestic and family violence within our communities,” she said.

“This is the low expectations that are rolled out for Indigenous Australians.

“They are the most marginalised in this country, experience the highest rates of domestic and family violence, and yet these are the standards that are maintained within organisations.”

Mr Miller told the ABC he was elected to the position by his town camp and that he had put his issues of violence behind him.

“I’ve got that history, but I’ve got no issues with violence anymore,” he said.