A $65 million government loan bailing out the Indigenous Land Corporation after its controversial purchase of the Ayers Rock Resort will free it from enormous interest repayments so it can support jobs, the indigenous affairs minister said.
Senator Nigel Scullion announced the low-interest loan at Yulara on Saturday, and said that had the government not stepped in, the ILC would have had to cover interest of up to nine per cent with money intended to create jobs for indigenous people.
He would not confirm reports that the reduced interest rate is four per cent.
The ILC manages a fund of almost $3 billion which is intended to help indigenous people to acquire and manage land that would have economic and cultural value, and it bought the resort for more than $300 million in 2010.
Shortly afterwards it was revalued at $200 million, although it has since rebounded to about $250 million.
Questions have been repeatedly raised about due diligence and governance issues around the original decision to buy the resort.
Senator Scullion said the ILC was "caught in a bind" by the global financial crisis and was unable to repay its loan in time.
But when asked if the new loan was "too little too late" as characterised by former ILC chair Dawn Casey, Senator Scullion said there was no evidence of mismanagement by previous boards.
"The previous chair of the ILC continues to have this war with everybody, and sadly part of her time in office was characterised by trying to prosecute a case about a conspiracy back in 2010," he said.
Three reviews all exonerated previous board members, he said, and he has not seen "a shred of evidence" of wrongdoing.
"We've decided that there's really nothing we can do or act on," he said.
The resort averages an occupancy rate of about 80 per cent, up from 50 per cent in 2012, he said.
He said 35 per cent of its employees are indigenous and it is on track to meet its indigenous employment target of 50 per cent.
But only 15 of 276 indigenous workers are local Anangu people, plus 11 contractors, representing only three per cent of the total resort work force.
"It's nowhere near the number of (local) people we would like here", Senator Scullion said, but getting locals in has been slow going because of a "very harsh and sharp cultural divide" between the neighbouring Mutitjulu community and the resort.
