Globally recognised business ethics expert, Professor Mayowa Babalola, has used the pages of the Australian Financial Review to ask Corporate Australia a question: why is greenwashing treated as an ethics failure, while Indigenous misrepresentation is still managed as a compliance issue?
Published in the AFR's Opinion section, and speaking directly to Australia's mining industry - a sector recognised as the country's single largest deployer of Indigenous procurement spend, at $1.65 billion in 2024–25 and 28% of all Indigenous procurement nationally.
Professor Mayowa draws on recent research by Christian Eva, revealing that more than 12,800 contracts worth $7 billion were awarded to over 900 Indigenous firms under the Indigenous Procurement Policy in its first eight years, with just 16 businesses winning half of all spend.
In the opinion piece, Professor Mayowa prescribed three things:
Stop accepting "hit the target" as the answer. A 51 per cent ownership threshold on a self-declaration is a floor, not a finish. If your procurement team cannot show where the money goes after accounts payable, a compliance liability is waiting to be discovered.
Look outside the company for operational verification. Independent, Indigenous-led verification at the project level — assessing governance, cultural accountability, and flow of contract value — is the missing layer. Third-party assurance that is rights-holder-run is increasingly credible over internal certification alone.
Watch which competitors voluntarily submit to verification — and which don't. When a firm absorbs the cost of independent scrutiny, it signals something to the market. There will be a name, a contract, and a board claiming it could not have known.
For IBIR, Professor Babalola's piece confirms what our verification work has shown on the ground for years. The mainstream business press is asking the right question. The solution - independent, rights-holder-led verification grounded in professional standards = already exists.
Read the full AFR opinion piece here: [https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/corporate-australia-cracked-down-on-greenwashing-why-not-black-cladding-20260526-p600rp] (Subscription may be required)