Mr EDE - 1994-08-23
The Chief Minister will be aware that the Liberal leader, Alexander Downer, worked hard on his last visit to the Territory to establish a reputation of agreeing with the last person to whom he had spoken. Given this, is it a fact that the only commitment that the Chief Minister could secure from Mr Downer about statehood was some wishy-washy answer about holding some discussions somewhere at some time? How does the Chief Minister rate his influence when he seems to be the only person who cannot get Mr Downer to support his policies even if only for a few hours?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, may I advise the Leader of the Opposition that the very brief statement made by Mr Downer during his visit to Darwin in relation to statehood for the Territory is ahead of the commitment on the same subject by the Prime Minister of Australia, notwithstanding the fact that we have been working on him for some years in this regard. Therefore, I suggest to the honourable member that, having regard to the length of time that Mr Downer has been federal Leader of the Opposition and having regard to the limited opportunities that we have had to date to sit down and address a range of Territory issues with him, of which statehood is certainly one of the more significant, I believe he has an open mind on the subject, and that is more than many federal politicians have. I refer particularly to those in the Labor Party who keep trying to remove this subject from the agenda.
One of these days, we may hear some of the background to the preparation of the Kirner Report. The Leader of the Opposition might inquire into the machinations involved in including in that report the suggestion that COAG should consider the establishment of a committee of Commonwealth, state and territory representatives to address the question of statehood for the Northern Territory, how the country might implement such a proposal and under what conditions. I am pleased that the suggestion did appear eventually in the Kirner Report, but I understand that that occurred despite the wishes of some in the federal government. Hopefully, the entire Kirner Report will be discussed by COAG at its next meeting. It was not scheduled for discussion at the recent COAG meeting. In fact, we did not complete even the first agenda item which related to roles and responsibilities. In fact, that first agenda item was hardly addressed, much to the frustration of the Premiers, although I am sure that the Prime Minister was quite delighted to have completed the meeting without it being dealt with.
I will be saying more about the Hilmer Report at a later time during these sittings but, after many hours of debate, we were able at least to slow the Commonwealth steamroller of intrusion into state affairs. The Prime Minister obtained eventually a very shallow degree of support for his agenda for COAG. I am sure that he left Darwin in a most frustrated mood in that regard.
The federal Leader of the Opposition, Mr Downer, has been to the Territory on his second visit. We hope to see him on many more occasions because it will give us further
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opportunities to reinforce the case for statehood in the Northern Territory and to discuss other issues. Given the little time that we have had with him this far, I am pleased to have had an encouraging response from him even though it fell far short of him saying that he believes the Territory should become a state by a particular date. However, he is well in front of the Prime Minister at this point.
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ANSWER
Mr Speaker, may I advise the Leader of the Opposition that the very brief statement made by Mr Downer during his visit to Darwin in relation to statehood for the Territory is ahead of the commitment on the same subject by the Prime Minister of Australia, notwithstanding the fact that we have been working on him for some years in this regard. Therefore, I suggest to the honourable member that, having regard to the length of time that Mr Downer has been federal Leader of the Opposition and having regard to the limited opportunities that we have had to date to sit down and address a range of Territory issues with him, of which statehood is certainly one of the more significant, I believe he has an open mind on the subject, and that is more than many federal politicians have. I refer particularly to those in the Labor Party who keep trying to remove this subject from the agenda.
One of these days, we may hear some of the background to the preparation of the Kirner Report. The Leader of the Opposition might inquire into the machinations involved in including in that report the suggestion that COAG should consider the establishment of a committee of Commonwealth, state and territory representatives to address the question of statehood for the Northern Territory, how the country might implement such a proposal and under what conditions. I am pleased that the suggestion did appear eventually in the Kirner Report, but I understand that that occurred despite the wishes of some in the federal government. Hopefully, the entire Kirner Report will be discussed by COAG at its next meeting. It was not scheduled for discussion at the recent COAG meeting. In fact, we did not complete even the first agenda item which related to roles and responsibilities. In fact, that first agenda item was hardly addressed, much to the frustration of the Premiers, although I am sure that the Prime Minister was quite delighted to have completed the meeting without it being dealt with.
I will be saying more about the Hilmer Report at a later time during these sittings but, after many hours of debate, we were able at least to slow the Commonwealth steamroller of intrusion into state affairs. The Prime Minister obtained eventually a very shallow degree of support for his agenda for COAG. I am sure that he left Darwin in a most frustrated mood in that regard.
The federal Leader of the Opposition, Mr Downer, has been to the Territory on his second visit. We hope to see him on many more occasions because it will give us further
Page 40
opportunities to reinforce the case for statehood in the Northern Territory and to discuss other issues. Given the little time that we have had with him this far, I am pleased to have had an encouraging response from him even though it fell far short of him saying that he believes the Territory should become a state by a particular date. However, he is well in front of the Prime Minister at this point.
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Last updated: 09 Aug 2016