FNA MONTHLY BRIEF - March

Note from the Founder

Good governance is getting the right information to the right people at the right time to make informed decisions. I share this definition of good governance with anyone who will listen!

Most organisations stop at the information piece – data quality, reporting cadence, board papers. Important, but insufficient. The harder question sits earlier in the chain: who are the right people?

In First Nations governance contexts, this is not a given. It is not resolved by position descriptions or organisational charts. The right people for a decision about cultural heritage may be entirely different from the right people for a decision about commercial structuring. The right people for consent may be different from the right people for implementation oversight. And the right people at the start of a project may not be the right people once it is operational.

If governance is designed around static roles rather than dynamic authority, the mechanism fails. Information reaches someone, but not the someone who holds the standing to act on it.

This month's brief examines the 'right people' question as a matter of governance design.

~ Bec Blurton

Governance Reflections

'Right people' is deceptively simple. In practice, it requires answering three distinct questions.

First, right for what? Different decisions carry different authority requirements. A decision about project siting on Country may require Traditional Authority - grounded in kinship, lineage, and cultural responsibility. A decision about equity structuring may require Contemporary Authority - with expertise in finance, negotiation, and governance. A decision about long-term monitoring may require both or neither. Clarity on the nature of the decision is the precondition for identifying who should make it.

Second, right by whom? Authority is not self-declared. It is conferred. In First Nations contexts, this means identifying who holds the power to designate the right people, whether through cultural governance structures, community consent processes, or legally recognised entities. When this step is skipped, organisations risk engaging individuals who appear representative but lack the authority to bind outcomes.

Third, right for how long? Decisions are not static. The people appropriate for an initial agreement may not be appropriate for ongoing oversight. Governance designed around a single point of engagement – a signing ceremony, a board seat, a consultation meeting – misses the temporal dimension of accountability.

Organisations that work through these questions systematically tend to build governance that lasts. Those that assume 'right people' is self-evident tend to discover otherwise when decisions need to be made under pressure.

FNA Resource of the Month

Foundations of Cultural Legitimacy Course

This course examines what cultural legitimacy means in organisational, governance, and decision-making contexts where First Nations rights and interests are present. It focuses on how legitimacy is established, undermined, or misrepresented through structures, authority, and processes, rather than through surface-level engagement or activity.

The course is designed to build institutional literacy around cultural authority, governance integrity, and accountability, supporting organisations to recognise where legitimacy is required and how it must be embedded to support credible decision-making.

Climate, Finance, & Policy

The Productivity Commission's 2025 Closing the Gap Annual Data Compilation Report observed that 'shared decision-making' arrangements are frequently undermined by ambiguity about who holds authority on each side of the table.

Where First Nations parties are concerned, the report noted, governments and industry often default to engaging with incorporated entities such as prescribed body corporates, registered native title bodies, or community-controlled organisations. These are necessary counterparts. But they are not always sufficient.

Incorporated entities carry legal standing. They may not carry the cultural authority required for certain classes of decision. When the two misalign – when those with legal standing lack cultural authority, or those with cultural authority lack legal standing – governance produces decisions that later unravel.

Not necessarily a problem of bad faith but certainly a problem of design. And it is surfacing across climate adaptation planning, renewable energy approvals, and the allocation of transition finance, where the pressure to move at speed routinely overrides the work of establishing who the right people actually are.

First Nations Affairs