Djarindjin Aboriginal Corporation chairman Brian Lee has told the resources sector to stop treating Aboriginal employment as the benchmark of economic success. He told delegates at the AEMEE 2026 conference in Rubibi (Broome) this week that ownership has to become "an outcome".

Key points:

• The question Djarindjin’s chairman put to a room full of resource companies
• 8 million litres of fuel, 70,000 passengers, one community-owned airport
• Why a Kimberley corporation pays for its own financial counsellors

Lee gave the Gold Sponsor Address on the conference's opening morning, 4 November, and put a question to the room.

"When did we decide that getting an Aboriginal person a job was the ultimate measure of Aboriginal economic success?" he said.

"Sometimes along the way we've confused participation with prosperity. We've confused employment with empowerment. We've confused consultation with genuine decision-making authority."

Lee spoke for Djarindjin Aboriginal Corporation (DAC) and its subsidiary Djarindjin Airport Pty Ltd (DAPL). This year the two became the inaugural Legacy Partner of Aboriginal Enterprises in Mining, Energy and Exploration (AEMEE).

He said employment and training still mattered, but Aboriginal communities should aim far higher.

"We should be building businesses, owning infrastructure, acquiring assets, generating wealth and, most importantly, having the authority to determine how that wealth is used to benefit our people," he said.

"We don't just want to sit on somebody's aircraft. We want to build our own airport, operate the airport."

DAPL already does. The community-owned business on the Dampier Peninsula supports offshore oil and gas aviation. Since 2022 it has supplied about 8 million litres of aviation fuel and handled 70,000 passenger movements.

"We operate in an environment where safety, compliance, reliability and commercial performance are not negotiable, and that's exactly how it should be," Lee said.

"We don't expect special treatment because we're an Aboriginal-owned business. We expect to be judged on our ability to deliver."

This year DAPL won the Expand Award for businesses with 11 to 20 employees and the overall Business of the Year at the Broome Chamber of Commerce and Industry Business Excellence Awards.

Lee said the corporation counts its success by what the airport's revenue funds back home.

"Commercial success is not the destination. It's the vehicle that helps us get there," he said.

"What's the point of owning a successful business if the community that owns it continues to live in the same disadvantage? What's the point of generating profits if those profits never translate into better services, healthier families, stronger cultural connections and improved living conditions?"

That thinking sits behind what Lee called the Djarindjin Way, and behind DAC's 20-year vision and its Binimal Aambooriny strategy. The corporation runs the Goolboo Jawal Financial Hub and funds its financial counselling service itself.

"We identified the need, developed the service and invested our own money into supporting our people," Lee said.

DAC is also developing the Aalga Goorlil (Sun Turtle) renewable energy project, which it intends to keep in 100 per cent community ownership. It is building further work across housing, logistics, essential services and community infrastructure.

"These aren't isolated projects," Lee said. "They're connected parts of a much bigger picture."

Lee thanked the resource companies and contractors that gave DAPL its start, and set out the terms he expects from partners.

"A successful partnership is not one where one party continually gives and the other continually receives," he said.

"Industry needs capable, reliable and commercially competitive service providers, and Aboriginal businesses need genuine opportunities to build commercial capability, acquire assets and grow. Not dependency, not charity, but genuine commercial relationships built on mutual respect, performance and shared opportunity."

Aalga Goorlil 'Sun Turtle' Djarindjin Community Power Project will be WA's first 100% First Nations-owned solar battery power station. Image: Supplied

He took the same approach to the conference gifts. DAC paid Bolo Angus to make riji for every delegate.

"At Djarindjin, we talk a lot about supporting Aboriginal businesses, but we also believe that we need to put our money where our mouth is," Lee said.

"Supporting Aboriginal businesses isn't always about multi-million dollar contracts or major resource projects. Sometimes it's about recognising the talent and capability that already exists in our own backyard and making a conscious decision to invest in it."

Lee gave industry a new set of measures to report against.

"How many Aboriginal businesses are acquiring real assets? How many are building equity? How many have genuine decision-making authority?" he said.

He told government it needed "systems that enable Aboriginal commercial ambition rather than continually creating barriers to it". He also had a message for Aboriginal businesses.

"We need to be ambitious. We need to build capacity and we need to support one another," he said. "We need to be prepared to take calculated risks, and we need to stop allowing others to define the limits of what we're capable of achieving.

"If we're serious about the next era of Aboriginal economic development, then ownership has to become more than a talking point. It has to become an outcome."

He said the Legacy Partnership with AEMEE would last well beyond the two days in Broome.

"Legacy is what you leave behind when the conference is over, the speeches are finished and everyone has gone home," he said. "It's the businesses that continue to grow, the assets that remain in Aboriginal ownership, the partnerships that endure."

He closed with Djarindjin's own position.

"We're not waiting for somebody else to build our future. We're getting on with building it ourselves."