Mrs HICKEY - 1995-05-16
Given that the Chief Minister is so arrogant that he does not believe that Territorians deserve to know his plans, and given that he hatches deals in Canberra with the contenders for his job but still refuses to tell Territorians the details - details which we presume have come horribly unstuck - will he tell us whether he was able to paper over the mess last night at the Doctor's Gully barbecue? Can Territorians look forward to something better or simply more of the same leaderless inaction that has become the trademark of this government?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I can only repeat, because obviously the member for Barkly is not listening, that the meeting which she and the Leader of the Opposition allege took place in Canberra did not take place. I do not know what other words I can use because, unfortunately, I am `unilingual', if that is the term, and I cannot explain it in any other way. However, I also say to her that I am very fussy about the company I keep and about whom I invite to my establishment to share a beer with me. Thus, I am sorry but the members opposite are not on the list, and they will have to guess at what may have transpired during the course of what I consider was a very pleasant and convivial evening.
I will not waste more of the time of the House on this matter. It is really sad that, at a time when the issues facing the Territory are so numerous and important, all the opposition can do in this Assembly is make a song and dance about leadership speculation. When I decide to go - and it will be my decision and nobody else's - I will let members of the opposition know You will not have to be all in a tizzy about it and you will not have to be nervous about what is to happen. Just relax and I will tell you.
Mr Ede: Nothing is happening.
Mr PERRON: When it is to happen, I will tell you.
Mr Ede: Nothing is happening. It is paralysis.
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Both sides of the Assembly are a little unruly at present. Question Time is being broadcast and I would appreciate a little more quiet. The member for Barkly has asked a question and the Chief Minister is attempting to answer it.
Mr PERRON: Mr Speaker, with the indulgence of the Assembly, I would be happy to tell you what is happening, but it could take a few minutes of Question Time and members opposite might object. The Leader of the Opposition interjected that nothing is happening. Would you like me to tell you what is happening now?
Mr Ede: You have gone fishing.
Page 523
Mr PERRON: How much time do you want to spend on it? There is plenty happening. I am happy to tell you, but you usually complain when Question Time is used in that way.
Mr Ede: You have the lightest ministerial portfolio of any Chief Minister in history.
Mr PERRON: What have I been doing over the last 12 months?
Mr Speaker, I will continue to respond to members opposite. I am sure it is in the spirit of Question Time and the parliament, having regard to what they are trying to get at. It is amazing that anybody, including opposition members, should suggest that nothing is happening in the Northern Territory, that the government is in some kind of comatose state and that the public service is bewildered and looking for leadership. Members opposite are like a flock of trained budgies. They are simply echoing a particular journalist who has been running this line for a little while. They should realise that, when they read the writings of some of these political columnists, they have to read between the lines. They need to see where the journalist is coming from before they put too much weight on what is being said. If members opposite walk around the streets of the Northern Territory, and yet still say that nothing is happening, they must walk about with their eyes and ears closed because the Territory is bristling with activity.
We are in an economic surge the like of which we have not seen since the post-cyclone reconstruction period. Activity worth $1000m is both under way and coming off the drawing board today - $1000m in a community of 180 000! All our industries in the Northern Territory are stretched to the limit. Tourism is running at record levels. Mining activity is high. New mines are being opened - I know that because I am out there opening them - and current mines are being expanded, in some cases manyfold. Employment in the mining industry is huge. The pastoral industry is buoyant with record levels of turn-off and record levels of exports. We are sucking cattle in from the states, and that is something that we have not been able to do in the past. Agricultural production is leaping forward every year. Huge advances have been made in our horticultural industry. Aquaculture has a production level of $50m a year in the Northern Territory.
Members opposite will say that this is all private enterprise at work and has nothing to do with the government. However, I am afraid that it does have something to do with the government of the Northern Territory. Whilst it is true that it is private enterprise at work, it does not just happen of itself. It takes government to create an investment climate. It takes government to build the infrastructure, to conduct the research, to pave the way into the markets and to promote our attractions. Those few words cover huge amount of this government's activities. We do it proudly. It is our responsibility and it has an effect. The effect is that we are creating jobs for Territorians and an environment of which Territorians are very proud.
As for the public service being adrift and without direction, what a load of nonsense! Every one of our 14 000-plus public servants in the Northern Territory knows exactly what his or her role is and where their departments are going. If there are any with any doubts, they ought to search their souls as to why they do not know why they are turning up for work each day. Perhaps they are the kind of public servants we do not really need.
Page 524
Mr Ede: You pick the CEOs.
Mr PERRON: We pick them, we move them and we replace them. As honourable members are aware, we have a few new ones. The bureaucracy of the Northern Territory is constantly undergoing reform and improvement. We have new faces as CEOs. In the Department of Health and Community Services, we have a person whom I consider to be quite a brilliant woman. She now heads our biggest spending department. I believe its budget is $310m a year. She was recruited recently from Victoria and I believe this is an outstanding person who will do an outstanding job in a most difficult area. We have a new head of the Tourist Commission and a new head of the Department of Lands, Housing and Local Government. We have a new Commissioner of Police, a new Auditor-General, and a new Ombudsman. There are new heads of the Departments of Mines and Energy and Transport and Works, and of the Power and Water Authority.
The recent police review was a thorough examination of policing in the Northern Territory, and actions will flow and are flowing from that. Treasury has established the Treasury Corporation which is operating under the guidance of private and public sector board members. In relation to that department, there is major financial reform legislation in the form of the Financial Management Act, the Audit Act and the Procurement Act. These will result in improved accountability and take the Northern Territory Treasury to the forefront among governments in Australia in its financial practice. The Public Sector and Management Act is under review. New enterprise bargaining negotiations are under way. Workers' compensation arrangements have been revised. The Work Health Act will be amended during the course of these sittings. New government business divisions have been established - NT Fleet, NT Construction Agency, the Government Printing Office and the Darwin Bus Service.
The public service is in a continuous state of reform. It is moving rapidly these days with modern information technology and modern management techniques. The training schemes for our budding senior executives are hailed by those who participate in them as first class. We are grooming those Territory public servants through those executive development courses to be the leaders of the public service of tomorrow. We are not sitting back waiting until a vacancy occurs and then plugging the gap. It does not work like that. This government is actively managing the public service and the Northern Territory.
Initiatives taken over the past year include major social reforms in the gambling industry, in the poker machine industry and major changes in our home loan schemes. A huge public service effort has been directed to the bureaucratic quagmire of the native title issues, and I mentioned them earlier this morning. However, if the Leader of the Opposition is talking about what public servants are doing, an increasing number of them are embroiled sadly in the huge bureaucratic quagmire surrounding the Native Title Tribunal. In fact, I hear on the grapevine that the Native Title Tribunal is in such trouble with the log jam that it has asked Canberra for 130 staff to be put on its establishment, and let us bear in mind that this organisation is in its embryo days only at this time and struggling to get on its feet to do the job it has to do. It is just beginning to realise how big that job is. However, I am not worried about the Commonwealth's problems. Unfortunately, the fact is that every state and territory in Australia, particularly those like the Northern Territory, will face a huge bill.
Mr Bell: Your minister for Aboriginal affairs won't open his mouth.
Page 525
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member for MacDonnell.
Mr PERRON: A huge bill will face Territory taxpayers and those in other states. I feel sorry for Western Australia and Queensland. I believe Wayne Goss has placed another 30-odd people in his Native Title Unit just to start to cope with the bureaucratic mess that the native title process is making.
Those are the types of things that public servants are doing. Unfortunately, they are not particularly productive areas of work, but those things have to be attended to. We are also forcing the statehood issue on the Commonwealth. We are progressing the railway. We are dealing with our Asian neighbours, and my colleague's brilliant advances in the BIMP-EAGA area of international cooperation between the Territory and other countries is setting the pace for this country.
Mr Bailey: We are still subsidising exports.
Mr PERRON: If you do not realise that we are setting the pace, when you are in Canberra, ask Gareth Evans what he thinks the Northern Territory government is doing in a small area from which we could probably be asked to step back. It is almost foreign affairs - Asian relations. However, we are thanked by the federal government and we are thanked by the Gareth Evanses of the world for the role we are playing.
Mr Speaker, let me simply say that there is only one group of people that I know in the Territory who are not doing their job, and they sit opposite us in this Chamber. Where have they been in the last 12 months? The suggestion is that the Northern Territory government has not been doing much. What has the opposition been doing? I did not think that they were coming back from holidays at all over Christmas. We heard so little from any of them. It is simply incredible. They really should not throw stones.
Mr Ede: You were in America.
Mr PERRON: I was still waiting for you to come back. I had returned from leave. The opposition did not seem to.
If there has been a vacuum in the Territory, it is a vacuum that appears to be on-going if we can have any regard to the matters raised by the opposition today in Question Time in this forum where it has the opportunity to put the heat on the government and to ask us probing, searching questions. What have members opposite done? They have waffled about media speculation and nothing else.
Mr Ede: Sit down and we will tell you.
Page 526
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I can only repeat, because obviously the member for Barkly is not listening, that the meeting which she and the Leader of the Opposition allege took place in Canberra did not take place. I do not know what other words I can use because, unfortunately, I am `unilingual', if that is the term, and I cannot explain it in any other way. However, I also say to her that I am very fussy about the company I keep and about whom I invite to my establishment to share a beer with me. Thus, I am sorry but the members opposite are not on the list, and they will have to guess at what may have transpired during the course of what I consider was a very pleasant and convivial evening.
I will not waste more of the time of the House on this matter. It is really sad that, at a time when the issues facing the Territory are so numerous and important, all the opposition can do in this Assembly is make a song and dance about leadership speculation. When I decide to go - and it will be my decision and nobody else's - I will let members of the opposition know You will not have to be all in a tizzy about it and you will not have to be nervous about what is to happen. Just relax and I will tell you.
Mr Ede: Nothing is happening.
Mr PERRON: When it is to happen, I will tell you.
Mr Ede: Nothing is happening. It is paralysis.
Members interjecting.
Mr SPEAKER: Order! Both sides of the Assembly are a little unruly at present. Question Time is being broadcast and I would appreciate a little more quiet. The member for Barkly has asked a question and the Chief Minister is attempting to answer it.
Mr PERRON: Mr Speaker, with the indulgence of the Assembly, I would be happy to tell you what is happening, but it could take a few minutes of Question Time and members opposite might object. The Leader of the Opposition interjected that nothing is happening. Would you like me to tell you what is happening now?
Mr Ede: You have gone fishing.
Page 523
Mr PERRON: How much time do you want to spend on it? There is plenty happening. I am happy to tell you, but you usually complain when Question Time is used in that way.
Mr Ede: You have the lightest ministerial portfolio of any Chief Minister in history.
Mr PERRON: What have I been doing over the last 12 months?
Mr Speaker, I will continue to respond to members opposite. I am sure it is in the spirit of Question Time and the parliament, having regard to what they are trying to get at. It is amazing that anybody, including opposition members, should suggest that nothing is happening in the Northern Territory, that the government is in some kind of comatose state and that the public service is bewildered and looking for leadership. Members opposite are like a flock of trained budgies. They are simply echoing a particular journalist who has been running this line for a little while. They should realise that, when they read the writings of some of these political columnists, they have to read between the lines. They need to see where the journalist is coming from before they put too much weight on what is being said. If members opposite walk around the streets of the Northern Territory, and yet still say that nothing is happening, they must walk about with their eyes and ears closed because the Territory is bristling with activity.
We are in an economic surge the like of which we have not seen since the post-cyclone reconstruction period. Activity worth $1000m is both under way and coming off the drawing board today - $1000m in a community of 180 000! All our industries in the Northern Territory are stretched to the limit. Tourism is running at record levels. Mining activity is high. New mines are being opened - I know that because I am out there opening them - and current mines are being expanded, in some cases manyfold. Employment in the mining industry is huge. The pastoral industry is buoyant with record levels of turn-off and record levels of exports. We are sucking cattle in from the states, and that is something that we have not been able to do in the past. Agricultural production is leaping forward every year. Huge advances have been made in our horticultural industry. Aquaculture has a production level of $50m a year in the Northern Territory.
Members opposite will say that this is all private enterprise at work and has nothing to do with the government. However, I am afraid that it does have something to do with the government of the Northern Territory. Whilst it is true that it is private enterprise at work, it does not just happen of itself. It takes government to create an investment climate. It takes government to build the infrastructure, to conduct the research, to pave the way into the markets and to promote our attractions. Those few words cover huge amount of this government's activities. We do it proudly. It is our responsibility and it has an effect. The effect is that we are creating jobs for Territorians and an environment of which Territorians are very proud.
As for the public service being adrift and without direction, what a load of nonsense! Every one of our 14 000-plus public servants in the Northern Territory knows exactly what his or her role is and where their departments are going. If there are any with any doubts, they ought to search their souls as to why they do not know why they are turning up for work each day. Perhaps they are the kind of public servants we do not really need.
Page 524
Mr Ede: You pick the CEOs.
Mr PERRON: We pick them, we move them and we replace them. As honourable members are aware, we have a few new ones. The bureaucracy of the Northern Territory is constantly undergoing reform and improvement. We have new faces as CEOs. In the Department of Health and Community Services, we have a person whom I consider to be quite a brilliant woman. She now heads our biggest spending department. I believe its budget is $310m a year. She was recruited recently from Victoria and I believe this is an outstanding person who will do an outstanding job in a most difficult area. We have a new head of the Tourist Commission and a new head of the Department of Lands, Housing and Local Government. We have a new Commissioner of Police, a new Auditor-General, and a new Ombudsman. There are new heads of the Departments of Mines and Energy and Transport and Works, and of the Power and Water Authority.
The recent police review was a thorough examination of policing in the Northern Territory, and actions will flow and are flowing from that. Treasury has established the Treasury Corporation which is operating under the guidance of private and public sector board members. In relation to that department, there is major financial reform legislation in the form of the Financial Management Act, the Audit Act and the Procurement Act. These will result in improved accountability and take the Northern Territory Treasury to the forefront among governments in Australia in its financial practice. The Public Sector and Management Act is under review. New enterprise bargaining negotiations are under way. Workers' compensation arrangements have been revised. The Work Health Act will be amended during the course of these sittings. New government business divisions have been established - NT Fleet, NT Construction Agency, the Government Printing Office and the Darwin Bus Service.
The public service is in a continuous state of reform. It is moving rapidly these days with modern information technology and modern management techniques. The training schemes for our budding senior executives are hailed by those who participate in them as first class. We are grooming those Territory public servants through those executive development courses to be the leaders of the public service of tomorrow. We are not sitting back waiting until a vacancy occurs and then plugging the gap. It does not work like that. This government is actively managing the public service and the Northern Territory.
Initiatives taken over the past year include major social reforms in the gambling industry, in the poker machine industry and major changes in our home loan schemes. A huge public service effort has been directed to the bureaucratic quagmire of the native title issues, and I mentioned them earlier this morning. However, if the Leader of the Opposition is talking about what public servants are doing, an increasing number of them are embroiled sadly in the huge bureaucratic quagmire surrounding the Native Title Tribunal. In fact, I hear on the grapevine that the Native Title Tribunal is in such trouble with the log jam that it has asked Canberra for 130 staff to be put on its establishment, and let us bear in mind that this organisation is in its embryo days only at this time and struggling to get on its feet to do the job it has to do. It is just beginning to realise how big that job is. However, I am not worried about the Commonwealth's problems. Unfortunately, the fact is that every state and territory in Australia, particularly those like the Northern Territory, will face a huge bill.
Mr Bell: Your minister for Aboriginal affairs won't open his mouth.
Page 525
Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member for MacDonnell.
Mr PERRON: A huge bill will face Territory taxpayers and those in other states. I feel sorry for Western Australia and Queensland. I believe Wayne Goss has placed another 30-odd people in his Native Title Unit just to start to cope with the bureaucratic mess that the native title process is making.
Those are the types of things that public servants are doing. Unfortunately, they are not particularly productive areas of work, but those things have to be attended to. We are also forcing the statehood issue on the Commonwealth. We are progressing the railway. We are dealing with our Asian neighbours, and my colleague's brilliant advances in the BIMP-EAGA area of international cooperation between the Territory and other countries is setting the pace for this country.
Mr Bailey: We are still subsidising exports.
Mr PERRON: If you do not realise that we are setting the pace, when you are in Canberra, ask Gareth Evans what he thinks the Northern Territory government is doing in a small area from which we could probably be asked to step back. It is almost foreign affairs - Asian relations. However, we are thanked by the federal government and we are thanked by the Gareth Evanses of the world for the role we are playing.
Mr Speaker, let me simply say that there is only one group of people that I know in the Territory who are not doing their job, and they sit opposite us in this Chamber. Where have they been in the last 12 months? The suggestion is that the Northern Territory government has not been doing much. What has the opposition been doing? I did not think that they were coming back from holidays at all over Christmas. We heard so little from any of them. It is simply incredible. They really should not throw stones.
Mr Ede: You were in America.
Mr PERRON: I was still waiting for you to come back. I had returned from leave. The opposition did not seem to.
If there has been a vacuum in the Territory, it is a vacuum that appears to be on-going if we can have any regard to the matters raised by the opposition today in Question Time in this forum where it has the opportunity to put the heat on the government and to ask us probing, searching questions. What have members opposite done? They have waffled about media speculation and nothing else.
Mr Ede: Sit down and we will tell you.
Page 526
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016