PAT DODSON, SENATOR FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Pat Dodson, I'm the senator from Western Australia Labor.

MALARNDIRRI MCCARTHY, SENATOR FOR THE NORTHERN TERRITORY: Hello I'm Malarndirri McCarthy the senator for the Northern Territory and I'm just in the estimates process today.

DODSON: Senate Estimates today is about First Nations Affairs and public spending.

MCCARTHY: We're looking into the funding for First Nations programs across Australia. And I did want to find out about theindigenous advancement strategy (IAS) and whatI've found out so far is that there are200 funding decisions to be made sinceJuly this year and there's around $567 millionin total for the IAS, but only 40 percentof those 200 programs have been advanced. Ithink it's really important that the government puts on the table what those programs are, where they are, which ones are being funded which ones are not which ones are continuing because it'sthe one area that were certainly hearingconsistently across the country of organisations and community organisations really concerned about their future when some of the funding cuts are occurring in relation to the IAS.

DODSON: But the other people that came along was the Land and Sea Corporation which is now getting traction over the use of funds for of the sea and obviously
bringing benefits to our communitiesthat have water and sea interest. We see that about $10.5 million has been spent on projects in that direction which is heartening but also tosee that they've got a commitment towards land purchase aquisitions probably on a diverse basis,it's not just out in the remote areas but in the regional areas and then where larger populations of place of spending money on land and acquiring properties for First Nations. About $50 million annually over the next over the next
three years so that means that they've got a good capital base and they're getting good returns on theirinvestments a lot better than what they were getting previously and they should be complimented on the work that they're doing and the vision that they'rebringing to bear on the new way.

MCCARTHY: And clearly we're having a look at a whole lot of other issues but that wasparticular one so far I have to head back now because we've got more issues
to look atin Senate Estimates this afternoon.