Ms WALKER - 2010-11-25
- One of the key facets of A Working Future is providing employment opportunities and healthy homes for Indigenous Australians across the Territory. Can you inform the House what is being done in the Housing portfolio to ensure these commitments are being met?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Nhulunbuy for her question. SIHIP is just not about building houses. As I said last night, we are on target in this calendar year to meet 150 new houses and 1000 refurbishments and rebuilds.
It is also about Indigenous employment, very importantly so. The partnership agreement had a minimum of 20% Indigenous employment as part of this program. It is averaging 32% across the whole program, and that means much at the local community level to local people and local families. It is great to travel around and see people engaged in construction. Here is a picture of workers at Nguiu …
Mr Giles: Yes, you have a picture of workers in yellow shirts! You have the yellow shirts out.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Dr BURNS: You are always negative. How about you go and tell …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Order! Member for Braitling!
Dr BURNS: How about you tell each one of those blokes who are working here they should not have a job? Another one, a picture of a worker at Nguiu …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Giles: That cost $500m.
Dr BURNS: Well, you deride it. You are always negative. You are going around trying to pull it to bits …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Braitling!
Dr BURNS: This is a very important program for over 300 Indigenous people throughout the Territory who are gaining employment, member for Braitling. You can sit back in your leather seat and point arrows at it, but the fact of the matter is, people are working, people are learning a trade, people are having career opportunities, people are having a career development plan. All you can do is be negative ...
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Braitling!
Dr BURNS: Here is a bloke from Tennant Creek, he looks pretty happy. They are doing great work in Tennant Creek. The members of the opposition laugh at this. It just shows just how …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Braitling!
Dr BURNS: It is contemptible, the way they go on, Madam Speaker, in their attitude to Indigenous people gaining employment in the Northern Territory .…
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Fong Lim!
Dr BURNS: If you got out you would see a few. If you got out a bit more, you would see a few instead of confabulating and fabricating all the figures. We went through it last night. You were in here in August talking about $240m missing from SIHIP - completely wrong. Like this one here, you could not even read the national partnership agreement. You are a joke!
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Braitling!
Dr BURNS: It is great to see all of these houses being built across the Territory. I commend the employment component of SIHIP. The opposition can just thrash around and can be completely irrelevant in all of this.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016