Peter Dutton fails to find support for audit of government’s Indigenous spending

Peter Dutton used the referendum result to attack the government’s Indigenous spending, unsuccessfully calling for an expenditure audit. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

The Coalition’s push for an audit of government spending on Indigenous Australians is set to fail, with Labor, the Greens and the senator David Pocock opposed.

Even the independent senator Lidia Thorpe, who has backed a more limited review of the “governance processes of organisations that are meant to represent” First Nations people, has distanced herself from the Coalition’s call for a broader review of all spending.