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Fresh turmoil has engulfed the powerful Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation and its controversial chair Eddie Fry after the abrupt resignations of several board directors and executives from one of its major subsidiaries late on Thursday.
The latest crisis has erupted over a push by the ILSC, led by Mr Fry, to seek the divestment of the Redfern site of the National Centre of Indigenous Excellence – which was acquired by the corporation in 2006 as a key cultural, social and economic hub for urban Indigenous communities in Sydney.
Eddie Fry has chaired the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation (ILSC) since 2015.Credit:Matt Turner
In their letter of resignation to Mr Fry, departing NCIE chair Alison Page and directors Dillon Kombumerri and Kate Cam say the way the ILSC has gone about divesting the centre has sidelined their staff, destabilised the centre, lacks transparency and “resulted in a catastrophic risk to the NCIE’s operations”.
NCIE chief executive Clare McHugh and director of operations John Leha have also resigned, with Ms McHugh warning of severe “operational, financial and reputational risk” because of the ILSC’s “mismanagement of the divestment process”.
The federal government appeared caught off guard by the developments on Friday morning, with officials saying they were still assessing the situation when grilled by a Senate estimates committee.
The ILSC is one of the Commonwealth’s most significant statutory Indigenous organisations and controls hundreds of millions of dollars worth of land and water assets, held or deployed for the benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
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The corporation’s board has been plagued by severe dysfunction as well as a rift between Mr Fry and the federal minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, exposed in correspondence obtained by the Herald and The Age last month.
In the latest batch of leaked correspondence, the outgoing NCIE chair, Ms Page, says the Redfern-based centre is a “unique and significant ILSC asset … [which was] acquired under a new urban strategy following intense public scrutiny of the ILSC for failing to redress urban dispossession”.