The government supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs, just like other business owners. However, help for them often follows their own ways of doing business. Two main sources of support are the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) and Indigenous Business Australia, which offer grants and loans for their businesses. Joint ventures The Gumatj Corporation is a partnership between investors and traditional landowners. It represents the Gumatj people, who live in the Miwatj area near Darwin. The corporation runs various businesses in Gunyangara and Gove Peninsula to create local jobs. A cooperative is a business model where customers or workers own and control the business together. Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander entrepreneurs like this model because it helps them grow while keeping a community focus. In a cooperative, everyone beneýts from the business’s success, not just the owner.
CASESTUDY Muru Ofýce Supplies
Muru Group was founded in 2012 by Mitchell Ross, a Bidjigal man from La Perouse in southeast Sydney. In 2014, a partnership was formed between the Muru Group and Complete Ofýce Supplies (COS) to found Muru Ofýce Supplies (MOS), a 100 per cent Australian-owned national Supply Nation–certiýed workplace supplies provider. The business sells ofýce supplies including brochures, stationery, prints, labelling, and ofýce and desk essentials among other things for the workplace. MOS describes itself as a purpose-driven, community-focused organisation that contributes a percentage of all proýts to education, employment, and health and wellbeing initiatives that support Indigenous communities. For example, the business supports an early childhood education program that operates three days a week. The aim of the program is to improve literacy and numeracy skills through structured play. Over 30 Indigenous children receive free access to this program. In 2017, Muru partnered with KPMG to fulýl a contract to supply. The contract includes supplying KPMG with products such as copy paper, ofýce supplies and kitchen supplies, as well as printing and promotional items. Source: https://supplynation.org.au/stories-of-success/mos-kpmg/ and https://muruofýce.com.au/
17.7 SkillBuilder activity INVESTIGATING
Clothing The Gaps is a social enterprise from Victoria, co-founded by Laura Thompson (Gunditjmara) and Sarah Sheridan (non- Indigenous). The business has 81 per cent of its staff from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. It uses its proýts to support health programs in Aboriginal communities and help close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. 1. a. Clothing The Gaps is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business with an objective other than proýt. Explain what this business aims todo. b. Propose attributes that the owners of Clothing The Gaps are likely to have.
FIGURE4 Clothing The Gaps founders Laura Thompson and Sarah Sheridan
614 Jacaranda Humanities Alive 7 Victorian Curriculum Third Edition
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