Aboriginal Outcomes and Impact Strategy

Our commitment

At IPART, we act in the public interest by helping ensure people across NSW have access to safe, reliable services at a fair price. We recognise that our decisions across pricing, licensing, compliance and advice can have real and lasting impacts on Aboriginal peoples, communities and Country. 

We are committed to listening, learning and working in genuine partnership with Aboriginal peoples, and to embedding Aboriginal perspectives in our decision making. This includes recognising Aboriginal peoples as rights holders, supporting self determination, and respecting the central importance of culture, community, Country and reciprocity. 

Through this, we aim to ensure our work contributes to fairer, more informed outcomes for Aboriginal peoples and for all people of NSW.

Our Aboriginal outcomes and impact strategy

Our Aboriginal Outcomes and Impact Strategy sets out how we are strengthening the way we listen, learn and work alongside Aboriginal peoples, and how we reflect those perspectives in our decisions.

At its core are three connected areas of focus. They are not separate or ranked. Each one supports the others to help create meaningful, lasting impact.

This strategy focuses on strengthening how we:

• Empower voices – strengthening how we listen and include Aboriginal perspectives in decision making
• Enable Aboriginal led outcomes – aligning our work to support outcomes driven by Aboriginal peoples and organisations
• Build capability and our workforce – growing the knowledge, skills and cultural capability of our people.

Empowering Communities

Our artwork Empowered Communities tells the story of IPART’s responsibility in working with Aboriginal peoples to support and strengthen outcomes across NSW. At its centre is a large meeting place, representing IPART itself.  Around it, are symbols for our core principles: Aboriginal rights and self-determination, Country, culture and community, and reciprocity and sustained relationships. These principles ground our work and guide the way we seek to create a meaningful impact.  Scattered throughout the artwork are cultural elements that tell the story of ongoing connection and care for Country.  The artwork was generously donated by our Chair, Carmel Donnelly.

The artist Caitlin Trindall is a proud Gomeroi woman with family ties to Narrabri, NSW and born and raised on Dharawal Country. Caitlin is an artist and founder of Mirii Art, creating works that celebrate connection to Country, culture, and community. Her practice uses colour, symbolism, and storytelling to explore themes of identity, relationships, and self-determination, while supporting meaningful engagement with Aboriginal perspectives. Through her work, Caitlin aims to create spaces for learning, reflection, and connection.

What we are doing

Engagement and relationships

Our engagement vision is for IPART to proactively build, nurture and sustain genuine relationships with Aboriginal communities, organisations and businesses. We are strengthening how we engage to ensure our work is informed by lived experience, local knowledge, strong relationships and a place based understanding of the communities we work with.

Through this, we provide engagement that is:

• culturally appropriate and respectful
• meaningful and inclusive - creating space for Aboriginal voices
• place based - recognising local context, priorities and knowledge
• influential - shaping our decisions, recommendations and findings.

By doing this, we aim to ensure Aboriginal perspectives are genuinely reflected in our work and that we deliver better outcomes for Aboriginal communities across NSW.