Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows

I rise to speak on the various Appropriation bills under debate here today.

In so doing I have to say from the outset that as a Territorian I was, and remain most disappointed by this budget.

Can I say at the outset that I think my colleague David Tollner picked up the wrong speech in his way out of the office to speak on these Bills. He spent most of his time rambling about the Land Rights Act rather than boasting about the benefits of this budget to his electorate further evidence that he was not even aware of what he is talking about most of the time.

But he did suggest that the NT budget allocation tends to be higher per capita than elsewhere. What he fails to fully explain is that costs in the NT are usually far higher than most other areas and that this higher allocation per capita is just a part of fiscal equalisation.

Neither does he make any mention of the fact that the NT is one of the major production areas for so many of our valuable resources – minerals, tourism and pastoral. We contribute hugely to the National Income and to the tax take of this self aggrandising government.

I do want to concentrate on the Federal budget and how it fails Territorians.

Firstly of course it fails Territorians in the tax cuts which are given in the one hand but gone almost before they reach any hand or pocket. They are gone with the higher interest rates we are now paying. They are gone with the higher petrol prices we are now paying. They are gone with higher private medical insurance premiums allowed to be introduced by this government.

In the NT we have what must be among the highest petrol prices in the nation. Even in Darwin we are paying $1.42 a litre for unleaded petrol. In Nhulunbuy it is around $1.50 a litre. In Tennant Creek around $1.65 a litre. In the most remote places it is closer to $2.00 a litre.

This government refuses to do anything to reduce this very high cost.

With this high cost of fuel, freight prices have also gone up, reflected in the prices in our stores for most of our basic necessities.

Let me perhaps here use some figures from my colleague in the other place, where he quoted some prices taken from the NT Government market basket survey in April to June 2005 ( before petrol prices hit their present levels). Using Darwin prices as the base their survey found that basket of goods was 52% more expensive in the Barkly Region. It averaged 32% more expensive across the more remote communities.

That is a fairly heavy impost and one that this budget does absolutely nothing to alleviate. In fact as you will see later, for those needing child care this budget makes those costs even higher.

So the meagre tax cuts received by most people have more than gone – they get us nothing. Not even the milk shake and sandwich of a past tax cut. They have disappeared into the ether without even touching our pockets. Territorians don’t even get to see them.

Then I could talk about the lost opportunity once again to invest in our future – this budget gives nothing extra to Higher Education or Vocational Training.

Even the much vaunted Australian Technical College promised to Darwin is, like many others lagging behind and is not yet even off the ground. Here was an example of wasting funds in pursuit of an ideology when so many existing TAFE and other training providers could have been up and running with plenty of trainees if the ATC funds had gone to them.

The decision to fund ATC’s was one made entirely as a whim, ideologically based, to heavily involve business in the area of education. It is proving to be a totally ineffective and poor decision on the way to do this.

Indeed, even worse, what I consider to have been an important, if not financially large, initiative has been cut completely – the Women in Training program has gone in this budget.

This budget has cut $52 million in incentives to support women apprentices in training in traditional trades and rural areas. Some $38.5 million of this has gone from the women in trades program.

Then we might look at road funding in this budget for the Territory. Despite the huge budget surplus, this budget does little for our roads – certainly nothing new or major. The Victoria Highway, under Auslink, will get a $30 million upgrade for flood mitigation. But this project has been on the agenda for some time. The recent cyclone and consequent flooding made this project even more urgent.

Some other roads will get funding under Roads to Recovery, but with our enormous mileage of roads to maintain, these funds are never really enough and local councils are always playing catch up.

These councils will be happy to receive these funds and will already have projects in mind to use and benefit from these funds. However we also still have some 9000 kilometres of roads on unincorporated land which get none of this funding.

Our beef producers turn out great numbers and great value in cattle, but the beef roads get nothing. Many producers and transporters are complaining about the poor state of those roads and the damage done to both cattle and trucks. Damage which imposes even higher costs on them by poor roads on top now of fuel prices.

So despite the value of NT product to the national economy, whether tourism, minerals, cattle or horticulture, this budget does very little to improve transport, communications or infrastructure.

So how the Member for Solomon can think this is a generous budget – one of great largesse – for the Northern Territory, is beyond me.

It does nothing for the Territory taxpayers, little for roads, little or nothing for any other communications or infrastructure, nothing for higher education or training.

Of course it must be said equally that this budget does nothing for any average Australian worker. The Government’s extreme Industrial Relations laws take away any job security, take away most employment conditions, then the budget gives precious little in tax cuts which are already gone in higher interest, higher fuel prices and so on. God help the workers, for John Howard, Kevin Andrews and Peter Costello will not.

Neither unfortunately does the Government do anything to help child care. Nothing in this budget will do anything for child care in the Northern Territory.

In fact the opposite will be true in many cases since changes to funding arrangements of community child care centres will in fact mean they have to raise their charges or go out of business.

Many people in these regional and remote areas are low and middle income earners – the battlers – and they will simply not be able to meet the increased cost and will be forced to drop out of the workforce.

This will of course have flow on effects not just for individuals and families but for employment in regional and remote areas – it will become harder to recruit and retain staff in these areas.

But then this government shows no caring for regional and remote Australia and never has done.

And finally let me talk about the sad state of affairs with the budget for Indigenous people, who have been much in the news of late. The government has done a good deal of beating of the breast, and talking tough, but this budget does nothing for Indigenous Australians.

What the issue of Indigenous affairs recently HAS done is enable the government to have another go at Indigenous Australians. It has sadly enabled them to make a lot of noise about Indigenous problems whilst covering up the facts that this budget has gone down a bit like a lead balloon, and workers are starting to feel the bite of the so called Workchoices legislation.

Estimates has shown that this government policy of mainstreaming, whole of government and COAG trials simply has not worked, certainly not in the Northern Territory.

The COAG trial at Wadeye has achieved little or nothing. Many Indigenous projects show that Federal mainstream government departments spent as much or more on their administration fees as ever got on the ground in terms of projects to improve the living standards of Indigenous people.

Funds allocated nationally for domestic and family violence programs have been largely unspent.

Minister Brough’s Department has spent nothing in Wadeye since 2004 from its $37 million Family Violence Partnerships Program budget. Department officers admitted in estimates that nationwide only $5.6 million or a sixth of the money has been spent in the first two years of the program. The program was promised as an outcome of the Prime Minister’s roundtable on family violence with Indigenous leaders in 2003.

The Minister recently announced $30 million dollars for Alice Springs town camps, but when we get down to the nitty gritty we find that the government intends to take $10 million of this from the ABA. This latter is money set aside, under the Land Rights Act, into that account from mining royalty equivalents, for the use and benefit of Aboriginal people, and to be administered by them. So the federal Government just steps in and grabs a few million.

A further $10 million is the NTG contribution from their housing money, and the $10 million Federal money comes from a program announced back in 2004. So this budget gives no new money here.

This government has done what it is good at. It has made a lot of noise, it has talked tough about imposing law and order. Ministers have indicated support for taking “customary” law out of court decisions. They have indicated they think taking culture out of school curricula is worth considering. They are looking at the viability of homelands.

What they have not done is to come to grips with actually talking to Indigenous people, listening to them, and actually treating the causes rather than the effects.

The facts are too well known to bear repeating here, but if you were living 17 or 18 to a house, you might just get cranky. You might get stressed out, especially if you had no job or only a few hours a week on CDEP. There might be stresses leading to family violence.

Don’t get me wrong – it is probably good that the Minister for Indigenous Affairs has been out and about and raised these issues, but we don’t need just talk about tougher law and order. We don’t need more summit meetings to talk about the problems (and how many Indigenous people will be involved here? I hear no Indigenous representatives are invited to the summit).

We need on the ground action, and this budget just does not achieve that.

This budget contains little for Indigenous Australians. It lacks any overall coherent approach, and like everything under “mainstreaming” and “whole of government” is a piecemeal approach with no real strategy for addressing the real problems.

So this budget is, for the Northern Territory, a complete non event. The NT gets very little from it. Tax payers get nothing; Indigenous people get nothing; higher education and training get nothing.