Joseph Wallace On Inspiring Community Development With Indigenous Business Models
Joseph Wallace is the Managing Director and Founder of Multhana Property Services; a Supply Nation Certified Indigenous business, founded to create economic sustainability for First Nations Australians across Queensland.
Known as ‘Joey’ to his clients, employees, and the community, Joseph identifies as an Aboriginal man from the Jirrabal Rainforest and Juru Traditional Owners in Bowen, North Queensland. Joseph’s dedication to creating better, more sustainable outcomes for First Nations Australians stems from his personal experience and over two decades working in the education and government sectors.
Joseph discusses the positive ripple effects of providing employment for Indigenous Australians and how community development is instigated through Indigenous business models and policies.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Indio Myles] - To start off, please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in the social enterprise space?
[Joseph Wallace] - I was born and bred in Cairns and I’ve travelled all around Queensland through various workplaces over the years. What drove me to social enterprise is that I spent many years working in State and Federal Government departments in Cairns, Townsville, Lisbon and Canberra. Having worked in juvenile justice correctional centres for both adults and youth, I've seen a lot of Indigenous men go to prison for petty crimes that they have committed.
I looked at how everyone needs a second chance in society through giving opportunities to my community.
With Multhana Property Services, it gives an opportunity for people to get an entry level job in both cleaning and landscaping, which is a good entry level job. I know many years ago when I left school I wanted to go to university and get an apprenticeship, so I'm about giving back to make sure that everyone gets an opportunity.
Joseph, you're the Managing Director of Multhana Property Services. Can you please share a bit about the enterprise itself and where the concept for it originated from?
It was established in 2017 in Cairns, and then I moved to Brisbane, and had the opportunity to meet a company that was on the lookout for an Indigenous influence in their company. If we fast forward to just over four years to now, we sit at over 220 employees across South-East Queensland. We look at three core business areas which are cleaning, landscaping and ground maintenance, but also, we now do minor building. What we have built over the last four years includes large civil contracts. One is with the CPB, which is working on the Cross River Rail being built in Brisbane. We perform all the commercial cleaning on that project. We started off working 30 hours a week, now we do over 1500 hours a week. We have 30+ full-time and part-time cleaners on that project.
We also work with the Brisbane City Council buses. We had an opportunity under their social procurement projects to tender for the works, so we clean 1000-1200 buses per night across seven areas.
We've had that contract since March last year. We have over 90 cleaners that work across that project. We also have a big landscaping project, so we do a lot of ground maintenance for NDIS clients. We also work with Tier 1 companies such as John Holland, Hutchinson Builders and St. Hilliers that build a lot of infrastructure, schools and roads in and around South-East Queensland.
Where do you see opportunities on a national scale to be more inclusive and considerate of Indigenous Australians?
I think that to address the past history of Indigenous Australia there are a lot of policies that affect Indigenous people today, especially around youth and the stolen generation. However, you also have issues such as incarceration, mental health, domestic violence and higher unemployment rates. I try to make an inroad into that to support Indigenous people. I know how hard it was on myself to get a job, and being an Indigenous company today is all about the community giving opportunities around employment.
Other companies might give employment opportunities, but our contribution is towards preventing a young 17-year-old from getting into crime by giving them somewhere decent to work.
Through this, they are able to take a step forward and then understand the value of getting up for work, saving money for a car and paying their way with their parents. Being able to be part of society and feel that their self-esteem is lifted because they have got somewhere to go every day for work is our goal.
What are the strengths of the social enterprise or Indigenous business model to create sustainable social change?
I think people don't realise that when you get your first job opportunity, to buy a nice place you have to save towards a deposit and car to provide a roof over your head. Furthermore, families want to give opportunities for their kids to go away on football or netball carnivals, creating a ripple effect of positives, rather than negatives [such as] drug and alcohol abuse which turn into domestic violence, incarceration and suicide.
We give an opportunity for a family to feed everyone, to make sure that kids can go to school with lunch, et cetera.
They're the ripple effects from us being a part of Indigenous and social procurement.
How can people best work together to create meaningful developments within their community?
I think it needs to come from the community and there has to be an ownership and buy in from the community. Everyone needs to play a role rather than acting as individuals, because it's a community effort. It's also important that everyone is there for the common goal of the community rather than personal interests.
You would be surprised when you put people together, businesses actually see the bigger picture and what the finished product will look like.
If we connect that to the work that you're doing with Multhana Property Services, how do you through that organisation bring people together and how do they create those developments?
The way you create developments is actually getting out and meeting people face to face.
What I've learned over the last four years is that people buy from people, so it's about talking to people.
You become surprised that the people you connect and partner with also have personal connections.
When you start by putting two heads together and growing to twenty heads, this becomes twenty ideas from twenty different people that will operate in different ways.
You would be surprised at the bottom line and goals you can achieve.
What are a few inspiring projects or initiatives that you've come across recently which are creating a positive social change?
When we were awarded the contract to clean the Brisbane city buses last year during COVID-19, we had 90 cleaners that we had to transport from Woodridge and outer Logan. A lot of them were single mothers and/or long-term unemployed, so we had an opportunity to give those people help, and they still work today 18 months later. There were a couple of people that were also with an employment agency that worked for us. At that point in time, they didn't have their kids because they were involved in substance abuse in terms of drugs and alcohol, so their kids were taken away. Now they're both full-time in that job and have their kids back. That's a massive ripple effect that I've seen in terms of an opportunity that the Brisbane City Council gave us, therefore I had the opportunity to employ someone from a high-risk area such as Woodridge.
The impact that has had today is that two people, a mum and dad, have jobs and their kids back. You can't beat that.
To finish off what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners if they want to learn more about Indigenous business, social enterprise practices or your work?
What I'd encourage is to talk to people. It's about networking and getting out there, getting a feel and asking the question of who's active in the space and how do I get involved? We start being involved with big corporate companies that don't know where to start. Usually, they don't know where to go or they need to contact our team around how they engage Indigenous businesses. It's quite common that a lot of non-Indigenous people don't know where to look and get a feel of how to involve Indigenous people from the community.
