Wadjarri people to build on trust
Wadjarri People’s Trust has poured the foundations of the first house in its property investment plan.
The pouring of its first house pad in Cape Burney represents the start of the trust’s plan to invest land rights royalties rather than “payout money for nothing”.
Acting chairman and Wadjarri man Colin Hamlet said the “concrete foundations of these investment properties are symbolic of new providence by investment into diversification, creating a portfolio of assets that will remain the exclusive property of the Wadjarri people.”
Trustee Abul Shahid, who controls over $1.5 million of the trust’s money, said he had invested over $600,000 in land and would be building six homes.
He said the rest of the money was held in term deposits.
“Wadjarri was the first trust to undertake such a strategic investment program,” Mr Shahid said.
“We will also be looking at donations and spending money on cultural items and a dialysis machine for Mullewa which is needed,” he said.
“We are also looking at scholarships and ways we can help the elderly.”
Mr Shahid said the investment plan was necessary to ensure the long term sustainability of the trust.
He said the payments to more than 40 beneficiaries of the trust would be reduced from an estimated $2500 per annum last year to about $1000 this year as a result of the investment plan.
“People were coming to me with silly things like cars or cosmetic surgery,” Mr Shahid said.
“We are investing for the long term, this is an investment for the beneficiaries of the trust,” he said.
“We have reached a great deal with Redink Homes to build each house for $240,000 and I have negotiated no stamp duty on the title sales from the State Government,” Mr Shahid said.
Former chair Robin Boddington said Mr Shahid had been instrumental in coming up with the plan.
Mr Hamlet said the plan embodied sustainability which he said is an “indigenous concept.”
“The Wadjarri people have exercised the concepts of sustainability over thousands of years, long before the pyramids of Egypt were built, long before any recorded history,” he said.
“The Wadjarri people exercised constraint and foresight and with frugal and cautious management of scarce resources to a position of relative abundance that could be truly described as sustainable.
“What we see here today is the embodiment and continuous application, a real application rather than lip service, to our ancient concept of sustainability.”
ALEX McKINNON
