Professor Marcia Langton AO has urged the Commonwealth Government to restore the Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) to its original standards and end departmental exemptions that she says have undermined accountability across government spending and weakened the policy's intent.

Speaking at the Aboriginal Enterprises in Mining, Energy and Exploration (AEMEE) Conference in Darwin, which marked the organisation's twentieth anniversary, Ms Langton said the procurement framework that once transformed Indigenous business participation had become diluted over time through inconsistent application and bureaucratic avoidance.

"Seventy per cent of Commonwealth spending is now exempt from the Indigenous Procurement Policy," she said. "Departments simply write their own exemptions because they do not want to deal with us."

Ms Langton said the policy's purpose had been clear from the outset: to drive Indigenous participation through measurable targets, transparent reporting and enforceable obligations.

"Every department should procure Indigenous goods and services, and report on them in full," she said.

"That means reporting on the number and value of contracts, and the number of Indigenous people employed - not vague indicators."

Ms Langton said the success of Indigenous businesses in recent decades was proof of what works when governments and industry act with intent.

"Procurement policies are what changed the game," she said. "But those policies must be properly enforced."

Ms Langton also used her address to highlight the billions of dollars in capital held by charitable trusts established under Native Title agreements, saying those funds were being left idle instead of being strategically invested in Indigenous-led ventures.

"When we did an inquiry with Treasury, there was at least four billion dollars sitting in those trusts," she said.

"It would be far more now. That is capital, but it is locked away because accountants and fund managers tell the trustees not to take risks. Those trusts could be investing in the very projects that Indigenous people are trying to get off the ground."

Ms Langton said this situation represented a "structural barrier" to self-determination. The current model, she argued, allows large sums of Indigenous wealth to sit in low-risk, low-return funds while Indigenous entrepreneurs continue to face barriers to capital access.

"It is not that the capital doesn't exist," she said. "It is that it is controlled through structures that discourage investment in Indigenous enterprise."

The issue, she said, was not only financial but cultural - a reflection of continuing paternalism in the administration of Indigenous economic assets.

"Those charitable trusts were often established under conditions imposed by resource companies during native title negotiations," Ms Langton said.

"They were designed to be safe and conservative, not transformative."

Ms Langton's remarks came during a retrospective discussion on the growth of Indigenous business over the past two decades.

She traced progress back to the early 1990s, when she was commissioned by Rio Tinto to review its relationships with Aboriginal communities in the Pilbara.

"At that time, there was one Indigenous-owned business in the Pilbara," she said.

"It was a man with a water truck who had borrowed money from his family and the bank. He got the loan because a mate at Rio Tinto wrote a letter saying there would be work for him."

That review led Rio Tinto to establish one of the first Indigenous procurement policies in Australia - a step Ms Langton described as pivotal.

"That changed the game," she said. "Other companies followed, including Fortescue Metals Group, which launched its own billion-dollar procurement policy."

Ms Langton said those early policies created an environment in which small Indigenous enterprises could grow into major contractors.

"Within a few years, the number of Indigenous businesses in that region jumped from one to sixteen," she said. "Today there are thousands."

According to the University of Melbourne's Dilin Duwa Centre for Indigenous Business Leadership, there are now more than 13,600 Indigenous-owned businesses operating nationally.

Collectively, they generate an estimated $16.1 billion in annual revenue, pay $4.2 billion in wages, and employ nearly 117,000 people. The Centre's research also shows Indigenous businesses employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at a higher rate than any other sector in Australia.

Ms Langton said those achievements were the product of deliberate policy settings, not coincidence.

"Procurement policy is the lever that drives employment and enterprise growth," she said. "When the rules are clear and enforced, Indigenous business flourishes."

She linked the evolution of Indigenous enterprise to a broader national policy trajectory spanning several governments. Ms Langton advised Andrew Forrest during his review of Indigenous employment and training under the Abbott government, and her academic work helped inform reforms to the Charities Act and the taxation treatment of Native Title payments.

"Each of these reforms aimed to give Indigenous people greater control over their economic futures," she said. "But policy drift and bureaucratic interference have continued to slow progress."

Ms Langton said her current focus is on ensuring Indigenous communities can build wealth through the control of their own capital.

The newly established Mabo Centre at the University of Melbourne, which she helped establish, is designed to equip native title holders with the knowledge and partnerships needed to develop businesses on their own lands.

The Centre will work to connect Indigenous corporations and charitable trusts with viable commercial opportunities in sectors such as renewable energy, construction, tourism and agriculture.

"The capital exists," Ms Langton said. "What we need are pathways to invest it in productive, Indigenous-led ventures."

She said the goal of all these reforms - from procurement to capital management - is parity.

"Parity in education, business ownership, housing and wealth," she said. "Enough money in the bank for a family to take a holiday each year."

Ms Langton said parity would not come through slogans but through sustained policy integrity and a commitment to measurable outcomes.

"It does not cost more money to do the right thing," she said. "It just requires governments and corporations to act on what we already know works."