Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—The government opposes this motion. The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs has released a comprehensive report on the Northern Territory Emergency Response redesign consultations. The consultation process involved feedback from several thousand people at more than 500 meetings and workshops covering 73 remote Northern Territory communities and town camps between June and August 2009. The consultations were also independently audited. The government contracted the Cultural and Indigenous Research Centre Australia to review the engagement and communication strategy for the NTER design consultations and to observe a number of the consultations. Their report considered the openness and integrity of the consultations. This independent report is also publicly available. Given the scale of the consultation process, one of the largest with Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, it would be a significant use of administrative resources to provide to the Senate the materials requested. If the Senate has any specific questions about any of the detail in the report, the government is only too willing to respond to those questions.

Question negatived.