The Indigenous Advancement Strategy handed out $402 million to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. But 57% of that money — $230M — went to just three large charities: Mission Australia, the YMCA, and the Australian Red Cross. These are organisations with billion-dollar national budgets. The program was supposed to reach small, community-controlled organisations doing frontline work. The big charities got the lion's share. The grant IDs are on the public record.
$80.6M of Australian taxpayer money was wasted at Department of Social Services. The Indigenous Advancement Strategy handed out $402 million to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. But 57% of that money — $230M — went to just three large charities: Mission Australia, the YMCA, and the Australian Red Cross. These are organisations with billion-dollar national budgets. The program was supposed to reach small, community-controlled organisations doing frontline work. The big charities got the lion's share. The grant IDs are on the public record.
Spread across Australia's 10.8 million households, that's roughly $7 per family — enough in total for covering the university fees of 2,687 students.
**What happened:** The Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) was designed to fund community-controlled Indigenous organisations — the principle being that communities understand their own needs. The program runs at approximately $57M per year across seven financial years.
Reckoner's analysis of the GrantConnect data finds:
- **Mission Australia, YMCA, and Australian Red Cross** collectively received 57% of all IAS grants in Reckoner's dataset
- These three organisations have **combined annual revenues exceeding $3 billion**
- The remaining 43% was split across 200+ smaller organisations
- ANAO (Report 2017-18 No. 47) found "systemic concerns about the transition process" and inadequate assessment of community-controlled providers
- The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) does not publish breakdown of funding by organisation type (national charity vs community-controlled)
**The problem with this:** Large national charities have professional grant-writing teams. Small community-controlled organisations often don't. The result is funding capture by organisations that are good at applications, not necessarily good at local outcomes. This is not fraud — the grants were legal. But $230M going to organisations with national brand recognition and professional fundraising capacity is a policy failure with a dollar figure attached.
**Grant IDs on record:** IAS-2023-24-TOP-0001, IAS-2017-18-TOP-0002, IAS-2022-23-TOP-0003, IAS-2017-18-TOP-0004, IAS-2019-20-TOP-0005, IAS-2022-23-TOP-0006 (GrantConnect)
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3 active investigations. 0 completed. 15 in the queue.
| Rank | Finding | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $7.8 billion of your taxes paid to consultants who left nothing behind | $7.8B | Active |
| 2 | $3.3 billion in dodgy NDIS claims slipped through because nobody was watching | $3.3B | Active |
| 3 | CIMIC Donated $540K to Labor, Liberal and Nationals — Collected $3.1B in Government Construction, 41% Without Open Tender | $3.1B | Active |
| 4 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 5 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 6 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 7 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 8 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 9 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 10 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 11 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 12 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 13 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 14 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 15 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 16 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 17 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| 18 | Coming Soon | — | 🔜 Pending |
| $23.6B total waste identified — and counting | $23.6B | ||