Understanding emerging models of financial benefit-sharing and co-ownership
Dr Kathryn Thorburn and Dr Lily O’Neill, University of Melbourne
April 2025
Traditional Owners have been negotiating land access and benefit sharing agreements over access to their Country for over 30 years in Australia. Nearly 1500 Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs) are currently registered with the National Native Title Tribunal, predominately for resource extraction, pastoral activities, and other infrastructure. Agreements made for clean energy projects (particularly solar and wind farms) are a small, but growing, category of agreements made for Country.
Very few agreements, of any type, are publicly available. What is known about the detail in clean energy agreements is gathered from research where access is given to the agreements themselves, or people with specific knowledge about what is going into these agreements, speak with researchers about the agreements’ broad themes. The information contained in this paper is from interviews with people who have detailed knowledge about the clean energy agreements being negotiated in Australia.
Clean energy agreements being negotiated in Australia with native title and other Traditional Owner groups in the clean energy space are breaking new ground on a number of fronts. While these agreements typically include a range of benefits, including with respect to employment and training, this paper focuses on new methods for sharing the financial benefits of clean energy projects and equity and co-ownership arrangements.
This paper aims to canvass some general considerations for native title holders and Prescribed Bodies Corporate (PBCs) to understand the potential risks and rewards of various models of participation in clean energy projects. Please note that the information contained in this paper is general information only. Financial arrangements in land access and benefit sharing agreements are often extremely complicated and highly dependent on the interests and concerns of PBCs, their internal governance structures, and the nature of the proposed project. This paper provides a non-exhaustive outline of some of the considerations PBCs should bear in mind. Any agreement should only be entered into after detailed legal and financial advice.