2004-10-12
Madam Speaker Braham took the Chair at 10 am.
The CLERK: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 100A, I inform honourable members that a response to petition No 64 has been received and circulated to honourable members. The text of the response will be included in the Parliamentary Record.
Mr MILLS (Opposition Leader)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I inform the House of changes to the Shadow Ministry. The member for Blain, Leader of the Opposition, will have responsibility for Territory Development; Tourism; AustralAsia Railway; Indigenous Affairs; Arts and Museums; Young Territorians and Senior Territorians.
Dr Richard Lim, member for Greatorex, Deputy Opposition Leader, has responsibility for Treasury; Employment, Education and Training; Racing, Gaming and Licensing, and Central Australia.
Denis Burke, member for Brennan, has responsibility for Business, Industry and Resource Development; Corporate and Information Services; Communications; Asian Relations and Trade; Police, Fire and Emergency Services, and Defence Support.
Jodeen Carney, member for Araluen, has responsibility for Attorney-General and Justice, and Health.
Johan Elferink, member for Macdonnell is Opposition Whip, with responsibility for Community Development; Housing; Local Government; Sport and Recreation, and Regional Development.
Sue Carter, member for Port Darwin, has responsibility for Family and Community Services; Environment and Heritage, and Women’s Policy.
Stephen Dunham, member for Drysdale, has responsibility for Transport and Infrastructure; Lands and Planning; Parks and Wildlife, and Essential Services.
Fay Miller, member for Katherine, has responsibility for Ethnic Affairs; Mines and Energy, and Primary Industry and Fisheries.
Dr TOYNE (Stuart)(by leave): Madam Speaker, during debate last week, I found myself having to ask for members on the other side to repeat their questions and statements. The acoustics in this Chamber are not good on any day, however, I ask for the forbearance of members of the Assembly, during this sittings in particular, as I have recently been diagnosed as having some hearing loss accompanied by tinnitus. Tinnitus is a condition which masks hearing and, in my case, it is rather like having a tree full of cicadas inside your head. I expect to receive some assistance for this condition when I see an audiologist soon after these sittings. Until then, I seek the forbearance of members in this regard.
Madam SPEAKER: I remind members, for the sake of Hansard, not to bang on your desk or crunch up paper. If you listen to the broadcast in any of your offices, you will understand that all ambient noise goes through the sound system. It would be appreciated if you would make as little extra noise as possible.
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Madam Speaker, I was pleased to announce on 17 September, last month, my government’s decision to award preferred consortium status to the Darwin Cove Consortium for the Darwin City Water Front project. It is a major project by any measure. When the government announced it was taking the project to the marketplace in September last year, the value of the development was estimated at $600m. The latest estimate from the Darwin Cove Consortium values the development at $1bn.
I would like to talk about the Darwin Cove Consortium and who are the partners in it. It is led by ABN AMRO, and its major partners are Sitzler Brothers, Barclay Mowlem, Henry Walker Eltin and Toga Pty Ltd. Honourable members will recognise a substantial local presence within this group.
The operator of the convention centre is Ogden, one of the most experienced operators in Australia and the region. Architects Hassell and TVS, Crawford are joined by local architectural firm MKEA. Other key advisors with local offices include Connell Wagner/Mott MacDonald, Rider Hunt and KPMG.
Furthermore, local industry participation will be an important focus of the negotiations leading up to financial close with contractual obligations based on the preferred consortium’s bid to be incorporated into the project documentation.
I am confident that there will be significant further opportunities for local contractors and consultants, not just those already associated with the consortium, to participate in the project as development proceeds into the major stage II precinct work centred, as it will be, on the great bulk of residential development. Of course, local employment will be an important priority in this regard.
Whilst it is pleasing for me to make this report today, it is important for the Assembly to note the current status of the project. At the risk of stating the obvious, the preferred consortium has been named. The detailed negotiations phase must be concluded before the successful consortium is known. The master plan itself is yet to be finalised, with both public consultation processes as well as statutory processes; the latter also incorporating periods of public comment, yet to be concluded. I am encouraged by the positive response to the master plan from the community to date.
Community engagement has involved extensive consultations with the Darwin City Council, industry and union representatives, the Planning Action Network, the National Trust, the Larrakia Nation, and a number of other community representative groups and leaders. The government has also been consulting for more than a year now with the Department of Defence regarding the project. It acknowledges the importance of Defence in its capacity in the defending of the North as well as its local economic role. The needs of Defence can be accommodated with the overall development and we are very confident of that.
Our target for financial close with the preferred consortium is in the first half of 2005. Stage I, worth around $250m, will begin soon after that financial close and will include the Darwin Convention and Exhibition Centre; a controlled body of water within Kitchener Bay; a serviced apartment hotel; Stage I residential and associated retail services; significant swimming opportunities including a wave pool; and a cultural centre, promenade walks and car parking.
Stage I is expected to be completed by 2007 with the convention centre programmed for opening in the first half of 2007, and the balance of this stage progressively completed by the end of that year, making for a self-contained and operational sub-precinct in itself. The balance of the development, being predominantly residential, is expected to be developed sequentially from 2008 through until 2015 subject to market conditions.
As I have previously stated, detailed negotiations remain before a contract can be awarded and construction commenced. As part of this process, the Multiplex consortium and the Wharf Link consortium are in reserve. I expect to make a full statement to the Assembly on the outcome of the negotiations once concluded.
Having said that, the government has sign-off on the process to date from both its probity auditors, being the Darwin-based Merritt Partners and the Sydney-based Deloitte, as well as from its legal advisors, Mallisons Stevens Jacques, who also provide a probity advice.
Madam Speaker, this is one more example of success achieved by the hard work of government. When we came to power three years ago our economy was struggling. We had the difficult task of rectifying government’s financial position while working hard with the private sectors to turn around the economy overall.
Mr Elferink: Rubbish!
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell.
Ms MARTIN: I am pleased to say that we have achieved this dual task, an achievement acknowledged by independent commentators of the standing of Access Economics. It is particularly pleasing for me to see our key resources sectors of the economy now flourishing as well as being able to note the rebound in such economic sectors as the residential property in retail markets. Despite the comments of the opposition, I look forward to making further reports to the Assembly on the project.
Mr MILLS (Opposition Leader): Madam Speaker, well may the Chief Minister say all these great achievements under the reign of a Martin Labor government when in fact we have had two years of zero economic growth and probably the most significant achievement that burns in the minds of Territorians is swimming pool fencing legislation. They have not forgotten.
However, moving to the report, Chief Minister, it is welcome and acknowledged, particularly for the effect that this will have on the number of contractors and Territory workers who will be able to find meaningful employment in this project. That is what it is about: actively engaging Territorians.
In order for the opposition to participate fully in this debate, it is only right that we have an opportunity for a full briefing. I acknowledge that we have had a briefing from your department, however I ask, in the spirit of full cooperation from the opposition, for the opportunity to have a briefing with the preferred consortium so that we can have active debate and participate fully in this great project, so I ask for your approval for a briefing with the preferred developers.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, I welcome the Chief Minister’s report on the water front. I support the water front development, which will be a great boost to employment and industry in the Northern Territory. However, I am disappointed that somewhere along the line, the public could not be involved in at least being allowed to give an opinion on the three architectural designs for the water front.
One billion dollars is a huge amount of money to spend on our land and the least we could have done is allow people to at least comment on the other designs. That is part of being open and transparent. That is part of involving people in it. I admit that government, in the end, has to make the final decision, but it would have been much better if people knew what was being proposed for the water front. After all, it is our water front.
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Madam Speaker, I thank the members for their comments. I appreciate that the Opposition Leader had a briefing, which we offered very quickly. What the Opposition Leader received at that briefing was full account of where we are at this stage.
It is disappointing that the Opposition Leader does not understand that this is a very complex process and we have a consortium, the Darwin Cove Consortium, that is at preferred developer status. When the office is opened in the mall, which will display the design and offer the chance of talking to those involved, I hope the Opposition Leader will be interested enough to visit and to ask those questions.
There is a lot of detailed work to go on between now and financial close. We are very confident of going to financial close, but there is a lot of detail to go on. It is simply not appropriate that I get involved or you get involved. I have a lot of trust in the expert group doing that, and we will report fully when it all happens.
Dr TOYNE (Health): Madam Speaker, better education and training for all Territorians is a key commitment of this government.
As part of this government’s Jobs Plan announced by my colleague, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training last year, we are lifting the training effort to create 7000 new apprentices and trainees over the next three years.
As Minister for Health, I am pleased to outline the way in which my department is progressing this commitment. The Department of Health and Community Services has exceeded this year’s target of 18 apprentices by an additional four. Of these 22 apprentices, 16 are Aboriginal. This has enabled the department to implement a diverse range of apprenticeships in areas such as patient care, food services, including the use of bush tucker, Aboriginal liaison officers, ward clerks, ground maintenance and business administration.
This is the first time apprentices are being trained in the roles other than business administration. For 2005, we have set a target of 23 apprentices and already, 19 nominations have been received. The department has also increased its cadet intake from 10 to 11 for 2004 under the National Indigenous Cadetship Program. Two of these cadets are from remote areas of the Northern Territory. Three cadets will graduate this year in the areas of Bachelor of Psychological Science, Bachelor of Indigenous Studies (Aboriginal Health) and Bachelor of Nursing Pre-registration.
In addition, this year will see the department’s first Aboriginal Behavioural Science graduate and Aboriginal Studies graduate. Nominations for 2005 have been completed, resulting in five nominations in the areas of health promotion, social sciences policy, women’s health, oral health and information management.
The Assembly should also note that Trish Jones, a senior Aboriginal officer, is being sponsored by the Office of Aboriginal Health, Family and Social Policy to complete an Executive Development Program. Trish will travel to Dili, East Timor for the next EDP module. The module will be conducted under the auspices of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Charles Darwin University and the Universidade Nacional Timor Leste. Dili was chosen as the location for the next EDP module because it provides an opportunity to proactively engage with East Timor and examine practical ways the Northern Territory can assist their public sector.
On completion of the program in February 2005, Trish will be the first Aboriginal officer to have completed this program at the newly-accredited Masters level, a first for the Department of Health and Community Services, and a first for the NTPS.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Speaker, I am delighted to rise in my very recent appointment as shadow Minister for Health. I have been shadow minister formally for only a few hours, Madam Speaker, but I have been able to survey the state of the Territory health system, and the performance of this minister over his less than 12 months in his position.
I wish the apprenticeship idea the very best, however, this minister needs more than just apprentices. In fact, an advertisement in this morning’s Centralian Advocate says: ‘Wanted: 10 new doctors’. There is a chronic shortage of nurses in the Northern Territory, and the way this minister has handled that and other crises in health is to his eternal shame.
The government closed the Darwin Health Centre in the city centre about 12 months ago. For many months, it has continued to pay $2000 a day for a specialist anaesthetist to fly from Brisbane in Alice Springs. There are bed shortages in Darwin and Alice Springs. Government said three years ago that there would be no bed shortages under Labor. Doctors are working 100 hours a week, and sometimes 72 hours straight. Labor promised 75 new nursing positions prior to the last election and, only months ago, commenced a recruitment and retention drive.
The bed shortage at RDH is critical. One morning, there were 27 patients waiting on trolleys under the stewardship of this minister. Shortages of beds will continue unless government provides additional funding.
In May, the government provided $2m for the Alice Springs Hospital for 12 months. There are 20 junior doctors in Alice Springs. There should be 27. This minister has attacked the AMA for asking for an inquiry to be held in relation to the doctor shortage at Alice Springs Hospital. This is the government that closed the Palmerston 24-hour medical service early on. There are still staff shortages at the Palmerston Health Clinic.
The list goes on, and I will run out of time, Madam Speaker. I look forward to this shadow portfolio, and I look forward to seeing which portfolio this minister handles the worst of all, whether it is Justice or Health; I suspect he handles both of them very badly indeed.
Dr TOYNE (Health): Madam Speaker, I can say I can look forward to as ill-informed critique of what we are doing in Health as we have had in the agency of Justice from the member opposite.
I will say one thing about her: if she wants to make assertions about this portfolio or any other, she had better get her facts right because she has form for not only misinforming this House, but also …
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker! He cannot allege that my colleague has misinformed this House other than by way of substantive motion, and I suggest he withdraw.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, you know that. Withdraw.
Dr TOYNE: Madam Speaker, I withdraw that. However, I look forward to exposing some of the false claims that she is in the habit of making in this House.
Ms Carney: And I look forward to showing you as the slippery grot you are!
Dr TOYNE: I also look forward to examining her …
Mrs AAGAARD: A point of order, Madam Speaker!
Dr TOYNE: … of insulting our public servants with the things she says in here.
Mrs AAGAARD: The comments of the member for Araluen just made towards the Attorney-General are completely unparliamentary and I ask that she withdraw.
Mr Dunham: What were they?
Mrs AAGAARD: I am sorry; I am not willing to repeat the comments.
Madam SPEAKER: I am sorry. I did not hear.
Members interjecting.
Mr AH KIT (Community Development): Madam Speaker, the inaugural State of the Regions Territory 2004 Conference was recently convened in Alice Springs on 3 and 4 September. As I believe you would agree, Madam Speaker, the Alice was an entirely appropriate venue for such an important meeting as it is the Territory’s largest region.
A commitment was given in the Building Stronger Regions, Stronger Futures strategy that a State of the Regions Conference would be held every second year. As the first of these conferences, it was decided the most sensible primary objective should be to allow for discussion, feedback and recommendations on the scope of evaluation and indicators needed to measure regional development progress.
Some of this material was pretty heavy going for some of the delegates, but it was seen to be very important that there be discussion of the way that we will measure our progress in this area in the future. Outcomes from the workshops that discussed, particularly, evaluation strategies, will provide the basis of the first State of the Regions report to be tabled in the Legislative Assembly.
The conference was attended by 168 people from five regional development boards, local government councils, Territory government agencies, Commonwealth government agencies, and non-government organisations. Participants were supportive of conference themes and demonstrated a willingness to work with government; first, in firming relationships between boards and the wider community and, second, in establishing dialogue around what regional indicators are needed to measure progress within their respective regions.
Keynote speakers’ topics covered five main areas: the role of regional development boards within the Northern Territory’s development agenda; reports from each of the regional development boards outlining their activities to date; discussions of the ways in which it is possible to link regional development practices and community development practices; discussions of key issues and opportunities in realising regional development outcomes; and discussion on how regional development might be measured and evaluated.
To be honest, I had initial concerns that some of the boards felt they were just window dressing and they were not established to achieve progressive outcomes and change. From what I witnessed, it became evident that the boards, as their members rose to give their presentations and as they listened to other boards’ ideas and views, felt they were genuinely part of a Territory-wide movement for regional development. There was a real sense of optimism.
The Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs designed this conference directly from the Building Stronger Regions strategy. Strategies need to provide analysis of the progress being made against the stated outcomes in a transparent, accountable manner. A report of the conference will be tabled in the Assembly in due course. This will provide us with recommendations from that first conference and clear indications to us all on ways in which we may be able to move the Territory ahead through regional development.
The first conference was necessarily a trial. There has been some very useful feedback from conference delegates about the way they would like to see future conferences run. One possibility now being considered is that each regional development board be given the responsibility in turn to organise the conference in its particular region, something of which I am supportive.
Madam Speaker, I thank the 50-odd Territorians who are serving on regional development boards. I think I speak for members on both sides of the Assembly in commending their work to date.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, I am nothing shy of astonished at this report from the minister. He has reported on boards that have met and discussed how they are going to measure their outputs in to the future.
This idea of regional development boards, which is a very good one, has left me a bit surprised in that the best that the minister has been able to offer this House is not a single outcome. The only thing he has told this Chamber in five minutes that the regional development boards have achieved is that they have met and had a conference and discussed how they will measure the outcomes. Not one outcome has been described by the minister. He has described the meeting and what the meeting has done, but he has not told me about one single project that has been achieved. He has not told this House about one brick or one piece of mortar that has been laid.
This minister has said: ‘I have the structures in place and we are all ready to go’, and what they have achieved at the last meeting was that they decided on ways that they are going to measure the things that they are going to achieve in the future.
Sadly, this minister, since coming to government has been trying to build artifices around himself rather than make real change. He has tried, and we all saw the cover of the Australian newspaper, to describe an environment in which he was going to be the saviour of all these welfare issues in remote communities. I see no change.
This minister has run dead and part of the problem is that the vehicle he is trying to use is not effective. You cannot use local government to make these sorts of changes. The minister has committed himself to making vast social change without having a vehicle to do it and, effectively, what he is trying to do is tow a road train with a Hyundai. People in local government on the ground are starting to rail against the pressure the minister is applying.
Mr AH KIT (Community Development): Madam Speaker, I thought the shadow minister, the member for Macdonnell, started off in fine form, and I was about to welcome his support.
Then he took the other 90 seconds to torpedo what is being developed by this government. He has a short memory and that is pretty selective, no doubt, in that we inherited the situation out in the regions. It was terrible. We are doing something about it. We are doing something positive. Before the regional development boards were established, we had regional economic development committees that were toothless tigers. They had no support. There was dysfunction out there. There still is dysfunction out there. You have a lot to answer for. We are going to move forward by working with these regional development boards in a positive way to seek the outcomes that we are all looking for to progress the Territory.
Mr VATSKALIS (Ethnic Affairs): Madam Speaker, since 1987, the Office of Ethnic Affairs has been providing free-of-charge sessions on cross-cultural awareness in response to requests from government and non-government agencies.
In general, the cross-cultural awareness sessions aim to improve outcomes for both agencies and clients, with particular emphasis on public contact staff in order to develop their understanding of cultural diversity in the Northern Territory and how this diversity impacts on service delivery and access.
2004-05 marks the 18th year the Office of Ethnic Affairs has provided cross-cultural awareness sessions and in that time it has delivered over 400 such sessions to more than 8000 participants. So far this financial year, nine sessions have been delivered for 176 participants, while in 2003-04, 35 sessions were delivered to 797 participants.
Training modules are tailored to agency requirements and the length of sessions varies according to the audience and agency requirements. For example, the shortest session is a 30 minute presentation as part of the Northern Territory government Service-Wide Induction Program, whilst the longest training takes place over two full days provided under the title Making Justice Culturally Sensitive and forms part of national competency based training for all new police recruits in the Northern Territory. So far this year, training has been provided to two squads of recruits consisting of 54 potential new police officers.
Examples of topics covered in cross-cultural awareness training have included the following: the population composition of the Northern Territory and its migrant refugee components; why people migrate to Australia; the settlement adjustment process; refugee settlement; general and specific cultural behaviours; cross-cultural communication; bridging cultural barriers; overseas qualifications; racism; migrant and refugee health issues; and working with children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
This list of topics is not exhaustive. Training topics are developed and moulded to fit with the issues of importance and relevance to a particular agency. In preparing and conducting cross-cultural awareness sessions, the Office of Ethic Affairs collaborates with individual migrants and refugees, ethnic community groups, interpreters and translators, and relevant service providers. This is done in order to present a variety of perspectives and hold balanced discussions. The sessions, which are delivered using both theoretical and experiential methods, enable service providers to develop and implement strategies for effective interaction and communication.
During the training sessions, there are opportunities for empowering service providers to be at ease when dealing with people from other cultures. The sessions also assist service providers in appropriately communicating with clients who have difficulty in communicating in English or are deaf.
The Office of Ethnic Affairs works in conjunction with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service and the Commonwealth Translating and Interpreting Service to deliver Working with Interpreters training sessions, which provide practical, hands-on experience in engaging and working with on-site and telephone interpreters. For training participants who have never worked with interpreters before, and who often struggle with their non-English speaking clients, such sessions have proved to be extremely useful. Instead of relying on family members, friends and other relatives, these sessions reinforce the message that professional interpreter services are available and should be utilised by service providers, particularly Northern Territory government agencies.
I encourage government and non-government agencies to consult with the Office of Ethnic Affairs for any cross-cultural awareness or communication training that may be required for their staff. I also publicly giver credit to the Office of Ethnic Affairs for its ongoing commitment to provide and, where possible, improve the delivery of cross-cultural training across the Territory. It is part of our commitment to valuing diversity, ensuring fair access, encouraging participation and fostering mutual respect, an important part of our unique Territory lifestyle.
Mrs MILLER (Katherine): Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his report. As he is aware, this morning is the first morning I have risen to speak in reply to a report. I am looking forward to this portfolio. I am well aware there are over 100 ethnic groups in the Northern Territory and, of course, we have to work in harmony in our community.
Cross-cultural induction is very important across all areas, especially in nursing and teaching where we need a greater understanding of each other’s cultures, and we must be very aware of the indigenous culture induction. I look forward to having many briefings in the next few days and discussing issues with the minister.
Mr VATSKALIS (Ethnic Affairs): Madam Speaker, I welcome the member to this exciting portfolio. The multicultural diversity of the Northern Territory is a very important portfolio. Cross-cultural awareness workshops are very important and, from my previous life, I recall one case where I was presenting cross-cultural awareness workshops as a member of the Health department.
I could see that many nurses especially had great difficulty dealing with aged migrant people because they could not understand the cultural sensitivities, how a male nurse could not attend a female patient or the opposite. Another thing I would like to point out is the difficulty some migrant people have with trusting police in the Northern Territory and Australia; bearing in mind that quite a few of them came from countries where police were used as an instrument of oppression. It takes a while to realise that our police operate within a constitutional framework and the police here are trusted, are friendly and are here to help and serve, rather than serve the government to oppress people.
This is very important and I am very pleased that my Office of Ethnic Affairs offers these workshops. I encourage any member here to have a briefing, and certainly the member for Katherine in her new shadow portfolio. I would be very happy to provide any briefing she requests.
Reports noted pursuant to Sessional Order.
Mr HENDERSON (Leader of Government Business)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion referring a matter to the Standing Orders Committee.
Motion agreed to.
Mr HENDERSON (Leader of Government Business): Madam Speaker, I move that this Assembly, noting that -
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker! One would assume that a matter like this that is being referred to Standing Orders Committee would be circulated to members. I am totally unaware of this letter. I am totally unaware of this motion, and one would think that it would be circulated.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, the letter will be circulated.
Madam SPEAKER: It is being circulated now.
Mr HENDERSON: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
(a) whether the Assembly’s Standing Orders need to be strengthened to provide persons other
than members of the Assembly with a mechanism to respond to allegations that they believe
unfairly impugn their reputations; and
using parliamentary privilege to advance such assertions; and
Madam SPEAKER: Leader of Government Business, before you go on, I believe the letter needs to be circulated.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, I table the letter concerned.
Madam SPEAKER: Would the attendants circulate the letter, please?
Mr HENDERSON: This is unprecedented, Madam Speaker. It is a very serious issue that I bring before the House today. I have certainly sought advice not only from officers of the Legislative Assembly, but back through the Parliamentary Record since the time of self-government, and I am confident in saying this is the first time that senior officers in our public service have written to the parliament complaining about the way debate ensued on particular legislation, and the offence that senior public servants have taken to their professional capability and capacity to do their work in terms of serving the people of the Northern Territory.
It was an issue which I raised at the time during the second and third reading debates. It was an extraordinary four-hour tirade of abuse during debate on an issue that should have had the full support of the 25 members in this House. I will read this letter into the Parliamentary Record. It is addressed to me as the Chairman of the Standing Orders Committee:
Dear Mr Henderson,
Members interjecting.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, this is very serious. I ask members opposite to hear this correspondence in silence because it has been raised in an extraordinary way. I quote again:
Signed:
Gale Jamieson, Parliamentary Counsel.
Madam Speaker, this is a very serious issue, and I can inform the House that my office has spoken to the relevant officers concerned and they agreed to this letter being tabled in the House.
We have a fundamental principle of government in Australia under the Westminster system in that the public service - and in the Northern Territory we have a great and very capable public service - serves the government of the day without fear or favour. It is an important part - in fact, it is a vital part - of our system of democracy. There is a fundamental tenet that you would attack - and none of us, as ministers on this side of the House, shy away from robust debate in the parliament - ministers on their competence or otherwise, but you do not attack public servants.
Many of our public servants, particularly at the policy level, work extraordinary hours. They work long hours, are very hard-working, capable people trying to do their best to serve the government of the day and the people of the Northern Territory. To have their professional capacity and capability impugned in the way that the member for Araluen did the other day, certainly seems to filter through the public service.
We have a big enough problem in the Northern Territory, as it is, trying to recruit people to senior areas of the public service competing with all the other states. For public servants to come here, they must be able to feel free to go about their work without fear or favour. However, this letter shows that the public service is listening to the debate in this House and, in regard to the bill the other day, have taken great offence to the member for Araluen’s comments.
The referral to the Standing Orders Committee is to see if there are any mechanisms deployed in other parliaments around Australia or within the Westminster system whereby public servants or other members of the public can, if they feel so aggrieved, have some sort of mechanism to put their contribution on the Parliamentary Record or to respond to comments made in parliament, or whether the Speaker can provide further guidance on the appropriateness of using parliamentary privilege to advance such assertions.
However, this is not the only incident. The opposition, since the change of government, has a long-running, sorry history of attacking public servants. I have a few other examples here. These public servants want to go about serving the government of the day without fear or favour. That means the government of the day, the parliament of the Northern Territory, without fear or favour. I have a number of examples here; there are many more.
This is a Parliamentary Record of 16 June, in a proposed censure of the Chief Minister in regards to the METIS …
Mr BURKE: A point of order, Madam Speaker. In speaking to these sorts of motions the other day, you made a point of saying, and this was led by the Leader of Government Business, that the debate has to be centred on the motion. The motion, in this case, is that we are talking about one particular debate in the Assembly last week. For the minister to range widely, I believe, is outside of the terms of reference.
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, there is a point of order. We are speaking to this motion and you should stick to the motion.
Mr HENDERSON: Obviously, the opposition is sensitive, and these issues will be debated during consideration of this by the Standing Orders Committee. This is not the first time; there has been a series of attacks on public servants.
However, this is the first time that we have had senior public servants write in such a way to this parliament seeking a referral to the Standing Orders Committee to try to provide them with some protection.
Not only did senior officers within government take offence at the member for Araluen’s comments, but Susan Lowry from the Victims of Crime Northern Territory has written to the Attorney-General regarding the same debate. I will table the letter from Sue Lowry, who, everyone in this parliament would know, is a very respected advocate for victims of crime in the Northern Territory. In speaking to Sue this morning to see if she was prepared to have this letter tabled, she said that she was and wants to inform the House that she wants to be involved in policy debate. Her organisation wants to have the ability to have input into legislation to further protect victims of crime, but wants to be able to do so in the knowledge that Victims of Crime Northern Territory and their position is recorded accurately in parliamentary debate. I will read the letter into Hansard. It is addressed to Dr Peter Toyne, Attorney-General:
Dear Dr Toyne
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The motion of the Leader of Government Business deals with public servants. I wonder if he is seeking to amend it or whether this is irrelevant to this motion.
Mr HENDERSON: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, the motion states:
(a) whether the Assembly’s standing orders need to be strengthened to provide persons
other that members of the Assembly with a mechanism to respond to allegations that
they believe unfairly impugn their reputations; …
Madam SPEAKER: Accepted. There is no point of order.
Mr HENDERSON: No wonder they are sensitive, Madam Speaker.
Yours sincerely …
Madam Speaker, this is a serious issue. Every one of us here wants to see children who are the victims of sexual abuse have their day in court without over-the-top cross-examination and intimidation. Every opportunity was afforded to every member of this House to have input into the development of that legislation.
That the member for Araluen should seek to use parliamentary privilege to attack the competence, the capabilities and the motives of hard working public servants and victims groups that have contributed to the development of this legislation does the member for Araluen no credit whatsoever. There are a number of other examples of attacks on public servants; public servants have been accused of lying in this House without any form of redress.
This is an appropriate motion to send this issue to the Standing Orders Committee for consideration as to what vehicle can be afforded to public servants and members of the public if they see fit to respond to allegations such as this that are made in this parliament under parliamentary privilege.
By no means does the government seek to, in any way, curtail debate and freedom of speech for members in the House. Parliamentary privilege is an important part of the Westminster system. However, when we receive correspondence such as this from public servants who are trying to do their job without fear or favour, it is important that the Standing Orders Committee consider the request and report to the parliament in the first sittings next year.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Madam Speaker, it is certainly unprecedented that the government would show such sensitivity in this matter.
It is interesting that the sensitivity of the public servants is about words such as the legislation was ‘a mess’, a ‘dog’s breakfast’, ‘absurd’, ‘not properly thought through’ etcetera, etcetera, and that was of such objection to the experienced senior CEO of the Department of Justice that he himself would sign the letter, Richard Coates, Chief Executive Officer. You said that Richard Coates, Sue Oliver and Gale Jamieson, who are the signatories of this letter, are listening to this debate. I hope they are because I would say: ‘Oh, poor diddums! Poor diddums!’
If that is the attitude of senior public servants who are responsible for drafting legislation for debate in this parliament, that the comments of the shadow Attorney-General in interrogating this legislation is such that you feel compelled to write not to the Chief Minister, not even to the minister who is your direct superior, the Attorney-General, but to the Leader of Government Business, it smacks of some sort of encouragement, frankly.
Members interjecting.
Mr BURKE: It seems to me that Richard Coates, who served me during my time in government, would not be so sensitive. Frankly, I would like the opportunity of having Richard Coates and others on oath in the parliamentary standing committee so we can interrogate exactly the extent of their concerns and why they felt so compelled.
It is worth airing the fact that if it is such an unprecedented situation where public servants’ names have been used - in fact, the names where not even used. There was not a name mentioned. Richard Coates’ name was never mentioned, as I recall, but I do recall Ken Clarke’s name being used in this Assembly. I recall Jennifer Prince’s name being used in this Assembly when you made the most outrageous allegations, using public servants as your authorisation, about the conduct of the previous government. I have heard Bill Freeland’s name used in this Assembly, scurrilously, by the Labor government regarding his capacity as a senior public servant of the Northern Territory.
So bring it on! Bring it on if you are so confident in your outrage about the comments of the shadow Attorney-General. I would be quite confident that not only can she defend herself, but she and the public servants are quite adequately protected by the safeguards that are in place at the moment.
If one wants to refer to, say, the Commonwealth, does anyone recall the number of times a previous Secretary of Defence was mentioned in committees of the federal parliament to the extent where not only was he sacked, but he took action against the federal government because of the way he felt he was impugned?
In comparison to those few examples, what the shadow Attorney-General said in debate last week I believe was not only warranted, but also demonstrated her concern and capacity as shadow Attorney-General to interrogate whether this legislation was properly thought through, properly drafted and sufficient to provide safeguards that she wanted for children of the Northern Territory.
If a few public servants were, by implication, by suggestion, involved in the drafting of the bill, too bad! Richard Coates, grow up! Do not play politics in the Northern Territory. If you want to be respected as a public servant in the Northern Territory, Richard Coates, and you certainly have had my respect in the past, be a bigger man than signing your name to this garbage.
With regard to this motion, the opposition welcomes it, supports it and we look forward to the interrogation of these public servants on oath.
Madam SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. Deputy Chief Minister.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, it is instructive …
Mr BURKE: Madam Speaker, I move that the motion be put.
Madam SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be put.
The Assembly divided:
Ayes 11 Noes 13
Mr Baldwin Mrs Aagaard
Mr Burke Mr Ah Kit
Ms Carney Mr Bonson
Ms Carter Dr Burns
Mr Dunham Mr Henderson
Mr Elferink Mr Kiely
Dr Lim Ms Lawrie
Mr Maley Mr McAdam
Mrs Miller Ms Martin
Mr Mills Ms Scrymgour
Mr Wood Mr Stirling
Dr Toyne
Mr Vatskalis
Motion negatived.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, it is quite instructive that it was the member for Brennan who rose to contribute from the opposition side because the member for Brennan has form in this regard. You only have to go back to Estimates Committee hearings a couple of years ago and his vitriolic attacks on the newly-appointed Commissioner of Police. We have seen again in his contribution this morning how he goes further ...
Mr BURKE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! I ask the minister to either make the allegation by substantive motion or produce the transcript.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Brennan, you, in fact, did a similar thing mentioning public servants, so I will rule no point of order on this. However, minister, would you make sure you do not make allegations that you cannot substantiate.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, the member for Brennan further impugned the credibility, the honesty and integrity of one Richard Coates, where he demanded that he be brought in so ‘we can interrogate him’ in the good old military style, the good old jackboot style: ‘so we can interrogate him’.
That underlines exactly what this motion is about: all they want to do is cast aspersions on public servants. It is unprecedented for public servants to write to government to complain of being attacked in this Chamber - on the one hand being attacked and, yet, on a different quarter all together, alleging being misrepresented by a member of the opposition.
That is why the government seeks to refer these letters to the Standing Orders Committee for their consideration. The fact that the member for Araluen’s attacks on public servants and her verballing of another individual has resulted in letters from the public servants and individuals so affected underlines the imperative need for government to address these matters. The most appropriate forum is to send it to the Standing Orders Committee.
The member for Araluen’s actions shows three things about her and the Country Liberal Party. In the first place, they are bullies and their language underlines that. The parliamentary antics, the performance put on by her and her colleagues are all part of the one performance designed to belittle, demean and humiliate our public servants. It shows they have absolutely no respect for the fundamental principles underpinning democracy, our institution of the Westminster parliamentary system. It shows the type of minister the member for Araluen would be and the type of government she would be a part of - a government that bullies and blames public servants rather than work with them for the good of the Northern Territory.
We all recall the arrogance of the CLP in government; it was breathtaking. However, in opposition, that arrogance has not diminished one iota. They have not learned a thing …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, stick to the motion.
Mr STIRLING: The member for Araluen and her colleagues use this Chamber and the forum to bully, harass and pose. They treat this House and their own role within this House with contempt. They prefer to draw attention to themselves through poor behaviour, interjections and shouting. That is what we have seen over the past week.
The member for Araluen, of course, is well known for her posturing and posing. She was the subject of an editorial in her own home town as a result of her performance in parliamentary sittings in Alice Springs. We can all remember that.
They fail to adhere to this golden principle that runs through our democratic institution. It is a fundamental principle that government is responsible for the decisions. The minister is responsible for the decisions, not the public servants who are there to provide advice to ministers of the Crown. By attacking public servants in this way, the member for Araluen attacks that single fundamental principle and the sound basis for governing that it provides.
It is interesting and instructive, again, to note that when she does align her targets on members opposite, it is often in the most personal, demeaning and humiliating fashion. I recall some time ago when the member for Barkly was contributing to debate, in her most cynical fashion, she said: ‘Oh my God, three syllables’. That is designed to humiliate and demean the member for Barkly, but it reflects on her and it reflects on the mind set which says, ‘I am a trained lawyer. I have a law degree. I have the intellect to be able to put others down …
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, would you please go back to the motion.
Mr STIRLING: … if I so wish’. That is where she comes from. As recently as last week, the member for Millner and his pronunciation of the word ‘ask’ was also subject to ridicule by the member for Araluen.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, I have spoken to you – order, thank you! Minister, would you resume your seat for a moment? I am not going to say it again to you. You are wandering way off this particular motion by making a personal attack on the member for Araluen, which is not in the motion. Confine your remarks to the motion or I will have to ask you to cease.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, we can read a lot into the mind set. Those sorts of remarks are more demeaning for the member for Araluen than they are directed at members opposite. She has much to learn about respect, tolerance and human behaviour.
This is not the first time we have seen this from the opposition. I referred to the member for Brennan and his attacks on the Commissioner for Police. The newer, more recent Leader of the Opposition described those public servants in a demeaning fashion as ‘from down south’, singling out at that time the head of the Power and Water Corporation, Kim Wood. He was here last week in debate on 5 October:
The member for Araluen has previous form as well. She climbed into the Commissioner for Public Employment at Estimates Committee hearings earlier this year to have a go at the commissioner on a matter that was probably something on which she ought to have sought a briefing. These attacks, outside those on members of this House, which is where the attacks should rightly be, are on people who are unable to otherwise defend themselves, publicly or otherwise. It is simple cowardice. It is cowardly behaviour to come in here …
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The word ‘cowardice’ should not be alleged in relation to any member of this parliament because it is defamatory, it is untrue, and it can only be done by way of substantive motion. Please withdraw.
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, it is rather unparliamentary and I will rule it out. Deputy Chief Minister, withdraw please.
Mr STIRLING: I withdraw, Madam Speaker. The behaviour in general does demonstrate the sort of government if, God forbid, they were to win the next election. It would be a vengeful government; it would be out to punish anyone it saw as ever having worked and assisted the Labor government.
The public attitude of the member for Araluen probably demonstrates exactly what is undoubtedly being said by her colleagues, perhaps in a more discreet and private fashion. Given the chance to punish those public servants who have served this government, they would be in there, cutting their way and sacking their way through layers and layers of public servants.
She demonstrates again the arrogance of her colleague, the member for Drysdale. He said a Labor government keeps the CLP from their rightful inheritance. That just about says it all.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, you are wandering far from the motion ...
Mr STIRLING: The same arrogance from the member for Greatorex who said: ‘This is our flag; get your own’.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, I call you back to the motion, thank you. You are wandering too far away from it. The Leader of Government Business responded by saying that we are referring it to Standing Orders Committee to protect people who do not have the mechanism to do respond and that is what you should be speaking to.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, I am happy to and say that in government, it is the public service that has shown us the ropes. We are very appreciative of their work with the new government and getting on top of how government operates. I am proud, and this government is proud, of the men and women of the public service who work with this government to move the Territory ahead as distinct from the attitude to the public service and the public servants shown by attack after attack by members opposite.
You never hear them acknowledge it after 26 years in government. They did it all; they never acknowledged the work of the public service over their history. We are happy to credit the public service and say that we are proud of them. They have learnt nothing from their time in opposition. They do need more time thinking things through.
In the meantime, the Standing Orders Committee can consider these letters, has to consider these letters, given the fact that they have taken the time to write to you, Madam Speaker, the Leader of Government Business, and the Attorney-General. It is up to the Standing Orders Committee to see what they can make out of these letters, and what action they can propose to prevent a recurrence of this sordid mess.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, I agree with the Member for Brennan: let us bring this on.
There are many public servants who come to me and complain bitterly about the politicisation of their jobs and their departments. This government is asking this House to go down a path to bring public servants into an arena where they are going to be politicised. The first steps have already been taken. We have signed letters from public servants tabled in this House. Now we are talking about it, their names are being mentioned. It has always been a taboo in this House to go down that path because it is a sticky road. Now that the government is going down that road, let’s explore what is going to happen.
I introduced several bills last week. Those bills were criticised. Where did I go to get advice on those bills? To those public servants who now have signed a letter of complaint to the Leader of Government Business saying that their integrity has been impugned. Surely when the government attacks an opposition bill - because the opposition member sponsoring the bill has gone to the same public servants who write the legislation - that must be seen by the same public servants as an attack on their professionalism.
My bill was criticised last week because my bill ‘does not provide a solution to the problem it seeks to address,’ according to the Leader of Government Business. Surely, that is a reflection on the professionalism of the public servant who drafted the bill because I am not a lawyer so I sought professional advice. The professional from that lawyer was this: I will draft a bill which will attend to what you want the bill to do. We will create the legislation.
The government roundly criticised that bill for its shortcomings. This is the same public servant who now signs a letter saying that her bill was attacked. Now, this is difficult for her. This puts her in an extremely difficult situation, and the minister’s attempt to pursue this course is going to cause further grief. Now we are setting up a fight within the public service because Parliamentary Counsel, who had signed the letter that the minister tabled, was criticised by legal people within the police department because the Leader of Government Business, the person promoting this argument, has said:
That is a criticism from one legal team of another legal team. Is this really where the government wants to take the public service? Does the government want to take the public service down this road of beating up on each other and taking the public service into the political arena, which is this arena?
Traditionally, the public service has been very heavily quarantined, but now let us talk about the exercise that we have seen from members opposite. Not so long ago, the public service took an operational decision in the police department to breath-test people inside public houses. Without going to the merits of that one way or the other, the minister, the very man who brings this motion into the House ...
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker. I do believe, based on your observations of straying from the motion before us, the member is straying.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I draw your attention to subparagraph (a) of the motion, which clearly places this inside the ambit of it.
Madam SPEAKER: There is no point of order, but do stick to the motion.
Mr ELFERINK: Absolutely, Madam Speaker. The minister issues a media release saying that the Commissioner for Police is not following Labor Party policy.
Mr Henderson: Government policy.
Mr ELFERINK: Labor Party policy; that is what it said. That, effectively, put the police commissioner in a very invidious situation. The minister for Police had said that the Commissioner of Police was not competent to do his job effectively and was not following the policy. Oh, my God!
Now, if the opposition had not realised that it was such a monumental stuff-up on the part of the minister, we should have called for the police commissioner’s head to roll, and it would have placed the police commissioner in a very awkward situation. Did the opposition choose to do that? No. In fact, the opposition very carefully stepped through it and said: ‘We understand that there was a difference, it is not a very smart thing to do, but we have full confidence in the competence of the police commissioner’. We stepped in to save the minister and his commissioner a great deal of embarrassment.
Madam Speaker, the Minister for Community Development has demonstrably used his position to place public servants in an invidious situation by pursuing the Anderson stuff.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell, I will not allow you to go down that line.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, he …
Madam SPEAKER: No, not down that line, thank you.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, it makes it very difficult because, under subsection (a), there are several public servants whose reputation …
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, I know, but I have allowed people a fair amount of leeway, but I will not allow you to go down that path.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, then I would ask what evidence the member for Johnston, because of his actions in relation into an investigation into his son, those public servants are allowed to bring before this committee.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I also point …
Madam SPEAKER: Order, thank you! Resume your seat when I am speaking! I will not allow members to bring personal family matters into this House. It is not on, and you all know that. This is getting a little bit too wide, member for Macdonnell. Just be warned, otherwise I will not allow you to continue.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I am worried about those public servants who need a mechanism to respond to allegations that they believe unfairly impugned their reputations. That is the purpose of this motion. I am speaking directly to the motion, but I am also pointing out to members opposite the road that they are taking us down, and I ask them, in all genuineness, to reconsider where we are going with this.
Madam Speaker, last week, the Attorney-General said that a citizen who had been convicted of nothing should keep an eye on his rear view mirror, thus suggesting that the police force of the Northern Territory will be used in a vendetta against an individual. Should a police officer arrest this person, for whatever reason …
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell, where is this going?
Mr ELFERINK: Where it is going …
Madam SPEAKER: Get to your point. I am not going to allow this sort of debate for much longer.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I want to remind the government where they are going with this and where it is going to end up.
Madam SPEAKER: All right.
Mr ELFERINK: By pointing out a few examples, I hope that the government will wake up to itself and realise that the politicisation of the public service actually starts with this motion.
I have grave reservations about where the minister and the government want to take us on this. If they want to take us down that road, we go down that road, but the parameters that are outlined by the Standing Orders Committee when we invariably find ourselves in there must be broad enough for all public servants to bring their concerns about the way that they have been treated at the hands of government and parliament so that they can bring evidence to that committee so that we can actually hear what goes on in the public service.
I have expressed my concerns. I am on the record. Now that the government is taking us down this track, we will have to go down it. I support that we go down this track in the sense of this one thing: these things do need to be investigated, but they have to be investigated, as the government says, without fear or favour. It will be very interesting to see if they are capable of creating a terms of reference that will enable the committee to fairly and justly look into the grievances of all public servants in relation to the way they have been treated at the hands of these people.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, there has been talk in parliament today about behaviour in parliament and also that some actions by some members have caused ill feeling amongst the public service.
I am not happy with some of the behaviour. In fact, I was talking to one member on Thursday night, and we felt that the behaviour in parliament was very poor and there was a lot of ill feeling. It was sad to feel that on Thursday night.
However, that is not really the issue before us. The issue is about the motion giving public servants the right to some method of refuting allegations that they believe have been made against them. We have to be very careful here. One, surely, should be able to criticise departmental policy. I have criticised the department of planning on several occasions. However, I hope people do not take that as personal offence. There is a fine line. The public service should not be immune from criticism. After all, in a classic example, I asked during Estimates Committee hearings how long the roundabout at the corner of Lambrick Avenue and Temple Terrace took. It took twice as long as was scheduled and cost an extra $270 000. It would be fair for me to criticise whoever designed that roundabout for lack of planning because, as I mentioned in the question, someone did not identify high voltage electrical lines underground. We have to be careful that we do not get too polite, but, on the other hand, I do not believe members of this parliament should be personally attacking public servants.
I am not going to support this motion for the reason that it has been hurried though parliament. Hurrying motions through parliament should be done on very serious matters. This matter, whilst it is important, I do not believe is serious enough to be rushed through. On General Business Day, members of the opposition and I tried to pass I do not know how many motions for matters to go to committees. I had one on cotton and Mr Anderson, and there was hospital waste and quite a few others. They had been sitting on the Notice Paper for months. Yet, today, we hear a motion at 10.30 am that government wants to put this to the Standing Orders Committee - just like that.
I would like a lot more time to think about this issue. I know the Speaker has had a briefing about this issue, but I have not seen the full contents of the motion. The right of the public servants to reply when they feel that they have been attacked in this House is an important issue. It would have been appropriate to dealt with this as a normal motion so we could have spent a little more time putting more thought into what we were going to say.
As I said, I am not opposed to the motion as such, but it should not be rushed through in such a manner. The danger of what is happening today is that it becomes political and point scoring. It is an important motion, but we should have just left it to the normal processes of parliament rather then rushing it through. If this is a precedent, I hope to see many private member’s motions put through to committees on General Business Day.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Madam Speaker, the member for Nelson finished on the point at which I will start: the committee system.
The committee system has been abused by this government because it is very difficult to have anything other than matters of the government’s agenda put before it. We are in agreement with the government on this issue. We think that these people, who are so aggrieved, should have the opportunity to talk to either this parliament or the committee in a public hearing on sworn, transcribed evidence, and they should be able to put their case so that it is able to be …
Mr Stirling: Be interrogated!
Mr DUNHAM: Interrogated is the word. It is a verb meaning to check the veracity of things. The three public servants who have put their names to this have said they are quite happy to come before the parliament or a committee of the parliament to put their case. I believe there will be robust questioning of that, and that should be commended. I was a member of a committee that looked at a letter signed by a CEO named Paul Bartholomew to the then Health minister, Mrs Aagaard, the member for Nightcliff, which went to the Chief Minister. That letter referred to both me and Ken Clarke. Now, apart from me and the Chief Minister, all of those people have been sacked - all of them. Think where you are going with this. Clarke was sacked. Bartholomew was sacked. The member for Nightcliff was sacked.
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! It is on the record time and time again that these officers have not been sacked.
Mr DUNHAM: Okay, let us call them forward to give evidence because …
Mr KIELY: They have given evidence.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Drysdale, withdraw it.
Mr DUNHAM: I withdraw the fact that they have been sacked. The member for Nightcliff is no longer the Health minister, Mr Ken Clarke is no longer the Under Treasurer, the CEO of Health, Mr Bartholomew, is no longer the CEO of Health. That is where we are going.
When you insinuate public servants into the political landscape and debate, it is an immensely dangerous thing. That is where we are going with this. I am a public servant of 20 years standing. I have worked for the Commonwealth government and the former CLP Territory government, and I have advised ministers. We were very careful about using public servants to make public statements. The protocol, when I was Health minister, was that if it was a matter of fact and science or expertise, you would use that particular scientist or expert. If it was a debatable or contentious matter, the minister should stand and deliver. That was the protocol.
We have now seen, under this government, public servants pushed out into the limelight as some sort of human shield to stop attacks on the government. We thought, given the pronouncements of the Chief Minister about the railway, that it was a matter entirely of her architecture and her leadership that it happened right up until it turned in to a muck-up and then out comes poor old Mr Tyrrell. He said: ‘Oops! The whole thing was actually me. It was not the Chief Minister; it was me’. You used him as a hostage to go out the front to say: ‘We do not need to be bashed up on this. Let us use Mr Tyrrell’.
It is now a very unfortunate state of affairs in the public service in the Northern Territory that public servants are being used in this way because they were not hitherto. It was particularly ironic that the Leader of Government Business brought this on because we do not have to go too far back in Hansard to see his record. This is the man who said there were no intentensivists with qualifications at Royal Darwin Hospital and we were going to lose accreditation. The only way to answer that is to have a poor public servant with ‘doctor’ in front of his name and intensivist qualifications after it stand in front of a camera and say: ‘It is not really true because I do have the qualifications’. That is an attack. Attacks about the competence of Royal Darwin Hospital were made time and time again when this man was the shadow, and they are attacks on public servants.
This parliament still hears that this government brought in a budget and it had ‘for presentation purposes’ on it. We know the author of those words, ‘for presentation purposes’, was Mr Ken Clarke. We know that the advice to the Treasurer about how the numbers were handled was advice from Mr Ken Clarke. We have it in evidence; it is on oath. For the government to continue to attack various matters relating to the past and say: ‘Well, that was all the government …’. For instance, the Deputy Opposition Leader said: ‘Twenty six years of government and they never acknowledged the public servants’. That is untrue. We often acknowledged the public service.
The difficulty is, when you have member such as the member for Arafura who stands up and says: ‘This neglect in child welfare, in child abuse, in renal failure …’
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Drysdale, I have to say that we are not discussing the member for Arafura. Get back to the debate.
Mr DUNHAM: No, we are talking about a process of using public servants and defaming them …
Madam SPEAKER: We are talking about a motion referring this matter to the Standing Orders Committee.
Mr DUNHAM: Yes, sure.
Madam SPEAKER: Get back to it.
Mr DUNHAM: I am quite happy to acknowledge the work of the public service in the 27 years of CLP government. I am happy to say they were deeply embedded in much of our advice, policies and plans. You have to remember that every time you attack and defame those years of NT government, you are attacking and defaming public servants as well.
Just remember the high moral ground that you assume, now that you have, where you cannot say anything nasty about public servants, but everything you did for 27 years was entirely a matter of political making and devoid of any public service input. That is just nonsense.
If we go now to how we draft policy, go to the debacle of pool fencing. Not only did the minister amend it on his feet in committee, but the act was so deficient that it has come back to this parliament. If you want to run the case that if legislation comes into this parliament and is so perfect that you cannot ever criticise drafting instructions, how many times have we amended things in committee? How many times has this parliament gone into committee and made amendments? Do not run this case that there is such perfection in how legislation is drafted in this place that it can never be attacked because that is just nonsense.
I also look to some of the debate we have had. For instance, recently there was an instance at Port Keats where a clinic was closed. Who came out to talk about it? A doctor. This department has a sorry history of insinuating public servants into the political landscape and debate. It is very bad. I agree with my colleague, the member for Macdonnell, that when this committee sits - and I hope these resolutions are passed; I hope there is an opportunity for public servants to use the processes of a committee to put an alternative case. You have to remember that privilege is also conferred on people who give evidence. If a public servant gives evidence in a committee that the government is doing the wrong thing and if that public servant then suffers any detriment, that is a severe departure from privilege and should censure the government.
Let us say to public servants: ‘You can say anything you like. It will not impact on you’, and there is an open invitation now for all people, including the people who signed these letters, to give evidence about things that might have impacted on them. I hope that Bill Freeland is one of them, and I hope that Ken Clarke is one of them. We can hear whether he jumped or was pushed in evidence.
I am sure there are many public servants who are going to be very keen to turn up to this committee and, with the full protection of parliament - in other words, if they suffer any detriment at all, it is a gross departure from privilege - we will have a number of witnesses who turn up, put their hand on the Bible and give evidence about things that might have impacted on their career. We look forward to it. We hope that they advertise widely in the newspaper for public servants to come forward. We hope that they describe the method in which they are able to give evidence and describe fully the protection that this parliament affords them. I hope they set aside several weeks because there are many public servants out there who are pretty keen to talk.
At Royal Darwin Hospital, there are a number of public servants who believe that there are issues of bullying and they have written letters to the newspaper with ‘name and address withheld.’ Why would that be? Why would they not divulge their name and address? It is because they are worried about victimisation. That is what they are worried about. There is a significant issue at the moment at Royal Darwin Hospital, as members opposite would know, about a new media advisor to the department who has come from the NT News and is aware of those names and addresses withheld. People know that is a fact. The government must know because we know.
Let us support this in the best interests of parliamentary democracy and openness. Let us say that these matters should go to a committee for open hearings. Let us not leave it to the three who chose to sign their names to this letter. Let us open it to any public servant who wishes to divulge matters that offend them and let us also have a look back through the Parliamentary Record at whether the offence shown by the Leader of Government Business is in fact genuine or some sort of last minute stunt to capture the imagination of this parliament about perceived or real offence.
Madam Speaker, we support the motion and look forward to the hearings.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, I am a member of the Standing Orders Committee, and I look forward to the deliberations of the committee in regard to this motion.
This is such a charade by the government. I said before that for three years, they have had their collective fist around the throats of public servants, creating a culture of fear, and now they are starting to woo the public service; trying to tell people: ‘This is the way we are going to go. We are going to support you now,’ and using a charade to attack member for Araluen.
If there was serious debate about this, where are the rest of the members? We have four members on this side of the House talking about this issue. The Chief Minister is not prepared to do that. The Chief Minister is silent on this issue.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Greatorex, get back to the motion.
Dr LIM: When the public service drafts policies or legislation, at the end of the day, the minister has to take ultimate responsibility. The minister has to read through the draft legislation, and introduce it. When there is criticism of the legislation or the draft or the bill, it is the minister who has to take the responsibility, and, if it is a dog’s breakfast, it is the minister who has to take the responsibility that it is a dog’s breakfast. To think that public servants who have drafted this would take personal umbrage, to me, is stretching the imagination.
We have the Public Service Code of Conduct. We are going to go past this and bring them to the Standing Orders Committee to ask them what the issues are. We are going to that, I assume, because the motion says that we are going to try to discuss how we are going to do it in the Standing Orders Committee, to develop a set of rules so that public servants or other persons feeling aggrieved can respond.
It will be an interesting exercise to get them to front the Standing Orders Committee and hear what they have to say. Are they going to be prepared to say it freely, without fear so that, once the committee process is over, this government will target them again? That is the issue you need to think about. The charade is going to be very transparent. People are going to see through it very quickly and it is not going to be of any value.
Motion agreed to.
Continued from 18 August 2004.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Madam Speaker, I understand I have 30 minutes to conclude my comments, and, given the importance of this legislation, my comments should take no more than five minutes because this legislation protects the Northern Territory against an issue that does not exist.
It not only does not exist as an issue, we have been assured by the Howard government which, with the strong support of the Australian population, has been re-elected to another term in government, that the option of a nuclear dump, not only in the Northern Territory but in any other state of Australia, is off their agenda and they are pursuing other options. The reality is the Northern Territory was never on the Commonwealth government’s agenda, and if it was on any government’s agenda, it was on the agenda of a number of previous Labor governments because this issue has been around since 1992.
I said when this legislation came before us that it was high farce and nothing but a scare campaign to run a political issue in order to mislead Territorians and gain votes on an issue that had no substance and did not exist. I am very pleased that, notwithstanding the concerted campaign that has been run by the Labor government of the Northern Territory, using the clout and capacity of the Chief Minister as their lead speaker on this issue in the media during an election campaign, that Territorians have returned the object of their allegations and derision back with an increased majority - not only the Howard government, but Mr Tollner himself. It is pleasing that Territorians have seen through the spin and recognised the exact nature of the statements that he made, and with the benefit now of evidence that came to the public’s attention at the end of last week, he has been proved to be correct, certainly in saying that there has been radioactive waste lying around the Northern Territory that is not properly stored.
I believe that the real issue for the Northern Territory government is to do what they were asked to do when this bill was first introduced. I asked them if they wanted a mature debate on this issue to present information to the public, to Territorians, about what the current storage standards are in the Northern Territory; where the dumps are in the Northern Territory that contain radioactive waste; whether those dumps comply with legislation that exists in the Northern Territory or Australia-wide, and what audits have been done on those storage methods.
The government gave the impression to the general public that they were going to introduce this legislation, which was very important in their mind, had the opportunity to do so last week, gave every indication they were going to bring the legislation on last week, and did not do so. The reason they did not do so is beyond me, but it demonstrated one thing: the legislation had no real importance in the government’s mind.
As I said at the outset, they gave it to a junior minister to run in the parliament. It was only ever a political exercise, and it deserves appropriate importance: it is a non-issue for the Northern Territory. When it comes to dumps anywhere else in Australia, that is for other states to argue.
From the clear statements by the federal minister responsible, there is no dump going to be established in the Northern Territory so there is nothing to fear. What he did say, and what Territorians need to know, is what confidence they can have in their Northern Territory government as to what dumps they have and what standards they are applying to make sure that there is no danger to the public or to our environment from those wastes.
The ultimate hypocrisy is that the minister who has carriage of this legislation, the member for Arafura, ran a scare campaign amongst Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and knew that she had radioactive waste in a shipping container in Kakadu, in her own electorate, and chose not to tell anyone. That is the allegation I make against the member for Arafura. As far as credibility goes, you have none; you have absolutely none.
I hope the member for Arafura reflects on the statements that she made in this parliament last week with regards to radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. This is the minister responsible who has been consistently running a scare campaign in Aboriginal communities on the damage that could be caused to our environment by radioactive wastes being improperly stored when she either knew that there was waste in her own electorate in Kakadu National Park, or, I hope this is not the case, was sadly unaware of it. She said in this parliament that where deficiencies in legislative controls have been identified, it has been this government that has fixed them through the new Radiation Protection Act. The current Radiation Safety Control Act sat on the books since self-government in 1978. Within three years of coming to government, Labor has completely overhauled these controls, introducing new legislation which reflects modern best practice.
I would like the member for Arafura to tell me under what standards, and what act in the Northern Territory or otherwise, does it allow radioactive waste to be stored in a steel shipping container in Kakadu National Park and whether she would like to retract the fact that Labor, within three years of coming to government, has fixed them because that is clearly not the case.
It was only in the ABC news on the day of the federal election that we heard the report that said that, while Labor was campaigning heavily against a Commonwealth nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, the government has now confirmed it has two licensed low-level waste storage facilities. Royal Darwin Hospital is storing about 2 m of nuclear material, while the disused Mt Todd mine site houses about 15 contaminated industrial mining gauges. The government says both are safe and secure facilities. However, the Territory government has blamed the Commonwealth for storing radioactive mining waste in shipping containers in Kakadu National Park.
It seems to me it is a government that is good at blaming everyone else, but does not even know how to attend to its own backyard. If you have been three years in government, have such a concern about radioactive waste in the Northern Territory and have been charged by the Commonwealth, clearly, not to worry about nuclear or radioactive waste from any other jurisdiction in Australia, but to attend to your own radioactive waste properly, and you run a scare campaign amongst Territorians that we should be scared of Commonwealth action, you are absolutely silent when it comes to any information of any worth as to what you are doing with your own radioactive waste. It is only by discovery that Territorians find out that we have radioactive waste in a steel shipping container in Kakadu National Park. If that is not an embarrassment, what is? It is not good enough to say: ‘That waste has been there for years’.
You are the government that said it is a whole new era of enlightment since Labor came to power. You are the government that said that you have the utmost concerns for the environment. You are the government that said that you have the utmost concern that any radioactive waste would be stored properly in the Northern Territory. Yet you are the government which has been exposed in ensuring that Territorians were not aware of what waste was being stored in the Northern Territory.
You are the government that had every opportunity, and you can check the Hansard debate for my call - and I said it publicly - to give us the information. If you want a mature debate, give us the information. I suggest that you get some experts to look at previous reports. I also said in the debate I knew that there was at least one report that referred to radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. This government, which talks about transparency and honesty, chose not to give anything to the public except some statement from the minister in the House last week when she was speaking on another issue, and somehow suggests that because she is a minister who can parrot a text that has been written for her, that we should have confidence.
Tell me, minister: if you did not know that radioactive waste was stored in a shipping container in Kakadu National Park, in your own electorate, how can we have any confidence that radioactive waste being stored at Royal Darwin Hospital is being stored to the appropriate standards of the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory? How can you possibly stand up, notwithstanding anything you say in this Chamber today, and expect any Territorian to believe you? They won’t. You have no credibility. Your credibility has gone. I told you that you were a sucker and a monkey when you ran this legislation and you were given carriage of it.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Brennan, withdraw that remark! Just withdraw it. It was unparliamentary.
Mr BURKE: I withdraw it
Madam SPEAKER: Yes.
Mr BURKE: In my defence, in the context of the organ grinder and a monkey, the Chief Minister has taken the responsibility of being the lead in the public on this issue. She is the one who has had her face in front of the television cameras and ads against David Tollner in the last election. In fact, it still needs to be discovered whether that breaches any electoral law because she has used public money, I believe, to run …
Ms Lawrie: Wrong!
Mr BURKE: … a political campaign. Right. Okay, paid for by the ALP. When it comes to carriage of the legislation, it is the minister for the environment who has carriage. The Chief Minister is missing. That is why I say one can hardly see the importance of this legislation in terms of its carriage when the Chief Minister is absent. One cannot see the importance of this legislation when the …
Ms LAWRIE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! The member for Brennan well knows the standing order in relation to the presence or absence of members in the Chamber.
Mr Dunham: He did not say she was absent from parliament. He said she was absent from the debate.
Madam SPEAKER: Absent from the debate is the way I took it.
Mr BURKE: What is particularly telling in this whole tawdry episode is that the government, that has had every opportunity to present information to the public, notwithstanding the history as to what government was in control in at the time, about what is the true state of radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. Is there any chance of our environment being affected? The map that I saw of the waste that is in Kakadu indicates it is right on the banks of the South Alligator River.
If the minister says: ‘Oh, yes, but there is no chance of it leaching into the environment’, how can you have any credibility? You have none, absolutely none.
I ask the question: as the Minister for the Environment and Heritage and having carriage of the health portfolio and a minister who has been around to say to the Aboriginal communities that radioactive waste is a danger in the Northern Territory and we are going to protect you from it, what has she done in the three years that she has been in government to investigate whether or not potable water being used in Aboriginal communities breaches international radioactive standards? Does she know that communities are concerned? Has she taken any interest in those issues, or has she been a puppet to run a radioactive argument of which she has no knowledge and no capacity?
The legislation is irrelevant. As I said, it purports to protect the Northern Territory against an issue that does not exist. It was always a political exercise and continues to be a political exercise. We said that at the outset. The effort that government has put behind this legislation demonstrates that clearly. The fact that it is being debated today, after the federal election when they had every opportunity to demonstrate to Territorians their interest in this, demonstrates that fact.
We did say that the legislation was not only high farce, but if it purported to have any capacity at all, clause 5(1) needs to be removed because it says:
The legislation has no bearing whatsoever if it is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth. In layman’s terms, that says if the Commonwealth wants to do it, has the capacity to do it, can legislate to do it, this legislation has no bearing, merit or standing. We wondered why you would include that clause in the bill.
We proposed an amendment. We have been told that, on the advice of the Solicitor General, by removing that subclause, it would be in contravention of the Australian Constitution, but no information other than that. This is a government that works on media releases; it does not provide any information of any worth to the opposition.
If I may digress, the issue that the Leader of the Opposition raised today is a classic case in point: Territorians and the opposition need to be informed properly. The water front development may be a great development, but we have the responsibility to be properly informed, which does not mean briefings by ministerial staff or media releases.
This is a classic example, too. The government says the opposition’s amendment has no standing because the Solicitor General says it may breach the Australian Constitution. I would like to see that advice. I hope the minister tables it. More than that, we would have liked the opportunity to spend more time looking at the advice and seeking further advice. If it were any other legislation, I guess we probably would, but because this is nothing more than a political stunt, and we know that the government has no real interest in it, the political opportunity has now passed, we are just going through the motions, who would really bother?
I ask the question: why doesn’t every item of legislation introduced in the Northern Territory parliament have that disclaimer? By virtue of the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act being subordinate to any act passed by the federal government, it is a given. Why doesn’t any other legislation in this parliament have that disclaimer?
I ask a further question: on the one occasion when the Northern Territory felt that it really would bring on a fight with the Commonwealth government on an issue that we knew would involve the debate and interest of Australians fully, it was called the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. That act was subordinate to the Commonwealth if the Commonwealth decided to act arbitrarily on it. Where was our disclaimer in that legislation? Would we have proposed an act that we felt could have been dealt with onerously by the Commonwealth? Do you imagine a guy like Marshall Perron would say: ‘We had better include a subclause, when we introduce the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, that says “but this act has no bearing if it contravenes any act of the Commonwealth”.’ We did not. It seems to me that the Solicitor General’s advice is unsatisfactory, and I have not even seen it, in logic, and I wonder why he would or give that advice.
However, assuming it is there, I would like to have interrogated it further, but I have no interest in doing it, and I am sure that the government does not really have any either. This legislation is on the parliamentary agenda. It will be passed today. We do not really care what you do with it, frankly. It has no bearing, it has no merit, it has no worth and it is a waste of time, Madam Speaker. So, proceed. You will not have our objection.
Debate suspended until after Question Time.
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, we have some visitors in the gallery. Our visitors are Year 7 students from Casuarina Street Primary School in Katherine accompanied by their teacher, Ms Anna Absalom. On behalf of all members, I extend to you a warm welcome.
Members: Hear, hear!
Continued from earlier this day.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, I want to add my comments on this bill. The fact that it has been a charade all along, the deceit that this government has tried to put on Territorians in the lead-up to the federal election is bad and pathetic. It is really a shame that the government has to resort to such acts to get some mileage for their federal campaign.
I draw members’ attention to the minister’s comments when she introduced the bill in August. She spoke about protecting the environment, the health of Northern Territorians, the industry and protecting the wonderful reputation of the Territory in having all these pristine places.
If we were protecting the Territory, you would think that the government had a full inventory or knowledge of all of the repositories that we have spread across the Territory. Following today’s Question Time, it is evident that the minister, the government, is not fully aware. For the government not to be aware and then try to pretend that it is there to support Territorians and their view that we should not have repositories in the Territory in the misleading way that they have done it, to me, is most unprincipled.
If you go back some 12 years ago, let me read to you from a paper that was produced by the federal parliament, titled A Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Methods for Choosing the Right Site. In its introduction, and I will read a couple paragraphs:
So it is something that side of the House and their party started some 12 years ago. It describes a process where they were going to identify areas around the country. It has three phases to it. Phase one was a study, which is the one I am reading from, that was to be undertaken over June to September 1992. Phase two was going to be 1992-93 and, finally, phase three in the year 1993-94, when a site was going to be identified.
With that study came several papers produced by eminent scientists and parliamentary committees to look into it. It was 1995 when Bob Collins, in fact, tabled the document as the then Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, and I read from the publication National Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Site Selection Study - Phase Two 1994 and a report on public comment, November 1995. From page 2 of the report:
This is not something that is new. This has been around for well nigh 12 years. At the end of the day, the federal government, in the name of Minister Ian Campbell, came down and said: ‘There is not going to be a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory imposed upon it by the federal government’. He assured Territorians without any equivocation.
On the same day that Ian Campbell made that statement, we had the Chief Minister who, in an ad in the federal campaign, had this to say. It is a Northern Territory Labor Party 2004 election advertisement, which was televised on Channel 9 TV in Darwin, spoken by the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin:
She already had the reassurance of the federal minister that this was not going to happen. For her to then continue with that ad, over and over again, is nothing but deceit. This is not truthful. This is misleading Territorians every time the ad ran on Channel 9. For them to say: ‘Well, the party paid for it so that means it is all right’, is not all right for someone like the Chief Minister to articulate such a point. It is deceitful of the Chief Minister to do that.
Then, last week, when this matter was the first item on the agenda for Government Business on the Wednesday following General Business Day, this matter was postponed on the Notice Paper all together until today. Had they been serious about this matter, they would have debated it last week; and they did not. You have to ask the question: why? It makes you feel very cynical when this government decides, time and time again, when they do things; it is really not for the betterment of Territorians.
Last week, we debated the storage of hazardous material and, at that time, I made a few comments. I had briefings from officers from the Department of Health and from WorkSafe about how radioactive material had been handled. You will recall a point that I made then: that radioactive ore is transported from Ranger uranium mine to the Port of Darwin at least once a month in 44 gallon drums that are loaded into 40 foot shipping containers. I have not worked out how many drums would be in each container but, obviously, there are quite a few drums, therefore making up several containers, which will then be lined up at the port. When I asked the officers at the briefing what the ambient radioactive level is outside the containers, the answer was that they did not know. When I asked if you happen to have two rows of containers side-by-side with a small aisle in the middle for inspectors to walk between the two rows of containers, what would happen to them - would they be exposed to a level of radiation that is not acceptable - the answer was that they did not know. I have yet to hear from the department as to what those levels are going to be.
Interestingly, over the weekend, we found out that there are two containers of radioactive waste material sitting in Kakadu at Gunlom Falls. At the briefing, I was not told about these two containers. Either the officers knew about it and did not tell me, or they did not know. When I put the question to the minister this afternoon asking what he knew about it, his answer was he did not know. Really, he used lots of words, but what he said was he did not know what was there and what efforts or procedures had been used to get those containers at Kakadu checked out.
Obviously, this government has no control over this. The Minister for Employment, Education and Training does not know. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, who has been going around scaremongering in Aboriginal communities about radioactive waste material, was not aware either because she did not tell us anything about it when she presented the bill six weeks ago during the August sittings.
You need to ask: what is this government up to? Is it trying to scare Territorians, using ‘radioactivity’ as an emotive word, ‘nuclear waste dump’ as emotive words to make people to react? ‘Not in my backyard’, is the most common reaction you will hear. If the government did that to frighten people, to politicise the argument rather than using the argument to ensure that we are going to get the best form of management of nuclear waste, then it is the wrong thing for the government to do.
There are at least 2 m of radioactive waste material that has been stored in the basement of Royal Darwin Hospital. To date, I have not seen it myself. I only have the words of officers to assure me that everything is in order. If I have not been informed properly about these two containers that are at Gunlom Falls, then can I also rely on the officers’ advice that the repository in the basement of the Royal Darwin Hospital is safe? I don’t know. Perhaps it is something that needs to be further investigated and the minister needs to come in here and give us assurance that it is a safe place. Until you know that, you are not going to be satisfied that we are going to be living with a radioactive lump of whatever in the basement of the hospital for the next four or five generations of Territorians. That would not be adequate at all.
It is important for the minister to understand that if you want to try to bring this sort of thing into legislation, you have to be able to reassure Territorians that you have the best method of control, and that you have the department and the officers there doing the work that is necessary to be done. At the moment, as the minister said, there are four or five departments all having various levels of control over radioactive material.
Wouldn’t it be better if you can bring it together under one agency and then the other agencies, which have something to do with it, can at least then report to the single agency in over-arching way? Until you do that, you are not going to be able to assure Territorians that you have the right institution there.
With those few comments, Madam Speaker, I suggest to you that this legislation was put together by this government in a hurry during the federal election campaign just to make political mileage. Then, at the end of the federal campaign when they saw that this thing was going to fall off its wheels, they decided to abandon it all together and leave it until this week to debate the matter out.
As you saw, the minister was very keen to jump to her feet to try to gag the rest of the debate that should occur. This is clearly a sign of a government that is not honest in its dealings with this matter. They want to try to get it over quickly and for the minister to gag debate as quickly as she can so that no one hears what the reality is.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, this is very important legislation, despite attempts by the opposition to somehow link it with the federal campaign.
The problem is we had a federal member who said on public radio that it was our obligation to accept radioactive waste from the rest of Australia. We do not think so, Madam Speaker. We have no problem with storing our own nuclear waste. After all, we use some of these radionuclides or isotopes for medical reasons. We use some equipment that has nuclear material in it in the mining industry, and we have no problem at all with storing that in our area, and we do that very well.
We object to the assertion that we have an obligation to store national nuclear waste. After all, other states did not think it was a good idea to have national nuclear waste stored on their sites. South Australia was one where we saw bipartisan support; both the Labor and Liberal parties objected to the attempt by the Commonwealth to impose upon South Australian a nuclear waste site or repository, as they call it. In Western Australia, exactly the same thing happened.
I am not at all pacified by statements by Senator Campbell that they are not going to establish a nuclear waste site onshore in the Territory. I am alarmed. Let’s not forget that, for immigration reasons, the Commonwealth excised our islands so illegal immigrants arriving at the Tiwi Islands cannot claim to have arrived in Australia. To tell you the truth, I would not be surprised if they decided to excise one of the 800 or so islands we have offshore from the Territory for a nuclear waste dump. That would be very alarming news. It is the last thing that we need here.
Many people do not object to the fact that there is a need for a national waste dump. What they object to is the way the Commonwealth went about trying to impose this waste dump on any state or territory. It would be a better idea if the Commonwealth had the guts to sit down with the Territory and the states and discuss the whole issue.
Coming back to the discussion today and Question Time, I am alarmed. It looks like the opposition is attempting to prepare Territorians to accept such a national repository site in the Territory and they are trying to prove that there are already nuclear waste sites in the Territory.
A few days ago, we heard that the Royal Darwin Hospital site that was not very safe until Senator Scullion came out and said it was a state-of-the-art storage area. I recall members on the other side saying that some of the nuclear waste was incinerated, which is totally and absolutely untrue. After all, the incinerator at Royal Darwin Hospital has not operated for a number of months now because the hospital is using an autoclave.
Then they tried to prove that there is a nuclear waste disposal site at Mt Todd. That is absolutely untrue. The case at Mt Todd is that there are 15 gauges that have been used in the past in the mining industry as density measures, flow meters, or to measure the density and quality of welding. These gauges use radioactive material. They can be used tomorrow and should a new mine open tomorrow that requires this kind of equipment, my department is prepared to provide these gauges to the mining operators to be utilised for the purpose of their construction. That is the reason they have not been decommissioned or destroyed. We choose to keep them all together at Mt Todd because it is a mining site falling under the Mining Management Act and regulations. There is sufficient storage area, and it is under the protection of an enclosed environment and can be supervised by competent personnel.
Returning to nuclear waste, there are two types of radioactive or nuclear waste. There is the naturally occurring radioactive material, known as NORM, and waste materials containing nuclear reactor products. These are the isotopes and the material that we use for medical diagnosis or, in the case of cancer, for treatment. The NORMs are waste from the mining industry and relate to mine tailings, particularly from uranium mining. Let us not forget that until the 1970s, there were a number of uranium mines operating in the Territory, all of them under the control of the Commonwealth, not the Northern Territory government. The only one that does operate under the Mining Management Act is the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu. That is the only facility that currently operates under the terms of the Mining Management Act.
At the end of the operation of uranium mines in the Territory, most of which are within the Kakadu National Park area, the Commonwealth undertook a rehabilitation program. I recall that the first time I became aware of the problems in the Gunlom area was 1998 when my family went camping and I came across a sign, which had on it the international radiation symbol and warned people not to stay for extended periods of time in the area because some of the tailings from the old uranium mine had been uncovered by rain. The Commonwealth intended to undertake cleaning and rehabilitation of the site.
In 2000, the Commonwealth, within the Commonwealth-administered Kakadu National Park, excavated the tailings, placed them into drums, put the drums into containers and put these containers in interim storage in a fenced compound in the Gunlom area of Kakadu. They are managed and monitored by the Commonwealth.
That was the year 2000. In the year 2000, the party in power was the CLP. When this operation took place by the Commonwealth, there are two possibilities: either the CLP government of the day and the department assessed the waste and found that the tailings, the waste, had very low levels of radioactivity; or they did not, or were unable to apply their act because it was on Commonwealth land.
The reality with NORMs, such as tailings, is that the radiation levels are very low and, in some cases, so low that if they are placed in a drum, there is no radiation detected outside the drum or, if they are placed in a container or even in a compound, you cannot detect radiation. In some other cases, such as Rum Jungle, the Commonwealth cleaned up the mine, they buried the waste and then sub-contracted the Territory to construct a cutting to cover those wastes effectively so no radiation will be emitted, or no water will be find its way in to the tailings and, in turn, contaminate the water table or water courses.
To try to blame this government now, in 2004, for something that happened under their government is very hypocritical, to say the least. Once again, I say that what happened in Kakadu took place under the authority of the Commonwealth. The rehabilitation was done under the Commonwealth, as it was their obligation because they operated the mines under Commonwealth control and authority, and they are currently under the control and monitoring of the Commonwealth and of the Office of the Supervising Scientist.
Other forms of radioactive material that we have in the Territory are drill samples from the uranium project at Coronation Hill. They are stored at El Sharana camp in the south of Kakadu. We are talking about samples of drilling. These samples of drilling are used every day in the mining industry. What you get out of these samples has an extremely low percentage or content of uranium and it is uranium that is not enriched. It is uranium that has not been processed, and is naturally occurring in the area. The radiation levels from these cores are extremely low.
Even in the Ranger Uranium Mine, processed uranium is extremely low in radiation emission because after the uranium oxide has been put into drums and containers, it has to be exported to processing plants in Asia, America and Europe to be enriched, and it is the enriched uranium that emits a significant amount of radiation that is significantly dangerous to the environment, human beings and other animal forms. So we are talking about an extremely low content of naturally occurring uranium in the area.
There are other radioactive core samples - we have some in the Cold Store in Darwin and we have a purpose-designed facility to house this material. We are proceeding with construction of an upgrade of the storage facilities.
To say that in the Territory we already have a radioactive material waste site is absolutely untrue. The only ones we have are two licensed sites. Let me rephrase that: to say we have a waste disposal site the way it is proposed by the Commonwealth, or the way that it is alleged by the opposition is untrue. We have two licensed sites. One is at the Royal Darwin Hospital that houses medical waste with a very short half-life, or very little radiation emission, and we have the other one at Mt Todd that houses 15 mining gauges that are not waste; they are equipment that has been taken apart. They are still there and are still going to be operated. They can be utilised by other mining operations.
Madam Speaker, the purpose of the legislation we are putting in place is to stop any other material from outside the Territory coming to the Territory for storage in a national waste disposal facility.
I was very interested to hear the comments by the member for Brennan regarding the amendment. I have been advised that the legal opinion with regard to the amendment was hand delivered yesterday afternoon to the Leader of the Opposition’s office. It was given to one of the Leader of the Opposition’s staff. It was mentioned that it was a legal opinion and the staffer commented that she was going to pass it to the members of the opposition because at the time, they were in a meeting. So that, Madam Speaker, shows that a letter was delivered. Obviously, it did not reach the Leader of the Opposition, but it was not the fault of the government and he probably should make inquiries with his staff members.
Again, it is amazing how the disposal of nuclear waste and the transport of nuclear material has become an issue in the Territory in 2004. I well recall in 1998 when a container containing iridium 192, a radioactive isotope, fell off the back of a truck at the Berrimah lights, and it was a big scare in the Territory at the time. We had the emergency services mobilised. The traffic was diverted. No one was allowed to stop there because, quite rightly, we were afraid that the way the isotope was transported was not safe. If the container had ruptured, the area might have been contaminated with a significant cost to the Territory and we would not know who was contaminated. The incident was so bad, and the legislation was so bad, that some of my colleagues in Environmental Health worked very closely with the people in the Health Department to redraft the Radiation Act to cover the transfer of radioactive material. Today, we have modern legislation and, to their credit, they did an excellent job.
It is amazing how everything was right then but everything is wrong now, especially having the member for Brennan as our Health minister, because I was working then in the Health Department, come out publicly and say there was nothing wrong, everything was fine with the act, and everything was safe for the disposal and storage of radioactive material. All of a sudden, it has become an issue not for any other than political reasons.
To blame us for the comments made by the member for Solomon is very unfair. I recall at the time I was in Katherine and, driving back, I heard on the radio a statement made by the member for Solomon talking about a large number of drums with radioactive material disposed all around the countryside in the Territory. I was surprised about it because I have been around in the mines, and the Territory generally, and I never came across abandoned drums somewhere in the bush, in Kakadu or anywhere else. I was aware of the cleaning that took place in Gunlom. I was aware of the drums that were full of tailings from the cleaning up. Tailings are not concentrated radioactive material. It is soil that can be or may have been contaminated by some of the uranium ore excavated from the mine sites. I was certainly aware that these drums were housed within the containers in the Kakadu area.
Regarding the points made about the Ranger uranium mine and the spill of contaminated water, the water was actually processed water. The Office of the Supervising Scientist found out that there was no significant effect impacted upon the environment from the release of this water. There has to be an ongoing investigation and assessment of the possible effects on human beings who consume that water, but certainly Magela Creek and the area did not show any changes in the presence of uranium in the water.
Again, most of the contaminated processed water from the Ranger uranium mine is actually within the mining lease, as expected under the Mine Management Act. Under the act, mines have to supply a Mine Management Plan every year to the Department of Mines. The plan is assessed and the Department of Mines continues its assessment and audits on an annual basis or more frequently if required.
The other radioactive material, which is actually core samples, is stored in Jabiluka at Djarr Djarr, which, again, is in the Jabiluka lease area. Because it is a mining lease, they have to provide a Mine Management Plan to the department. The department will assess the Mine Management Plan and conduct audits at regular intervals in order to ensure compliance with the Mine Management Plan and to ensure that there is not any possible contamination of the environment by some of this radioactive material.
Once again, I stress that, in the case of Ranger, the naturally occurring uranium is very low, extremely low. From that point of view, you do not have any contamination; only when it is converted to uranium oxide. Uranium oxide content is low. It still has to be processed and enriched in certain plants in America and Europe in order to become suitable for use in reactors.
The legislation is very good. As I said, we have no objection to storing our own nuclear materials. We have an obligation to store our nuclear materials that we use in the Northern Territory for medical purposes, for treatment or diagnosis. We have an obligation to store the material we use in mining operations. However, I do not feel obliged to have a waste site here in the Territory to store materials that are produced or utilised by other states and territories in Australia.
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, I acknowledge the presence in the gallery of students from Milingimbi Community Education Centre accompanied by their teacher, Mr Stuart Porteous. On behalf of honourable members, I extend a warm welcome to you.
Members: Hear, hear!
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, it is curious that last week this high priority legislation, which was so important immediately prior to the federal election, suddenly slipped from number one to number five on the Notice Paper, effectively killing it off for debate last week.
Second, it is curious that the Chief Minister was so passionate about this issue that she had to take advertising, paid for, according to members opposite, by their own party, and had to absolutely drive this message home. I am curious as to whether we are going to hear from the Chief Minister during this debate now that the federal election has come and gone.
What is nuclear waste? What is this stuff that we all find so interesting that we are prepared to spend money, taxpayers or parties’ money, taking out advertising about it? Ever since we have been making bombs out of this stuff, hysteria has surrounded this material. Once upon a time, when Marie and Pierre Curie were playing with pitchblende and such products, creating radium, it was considered the miracle stuff, the light you had when you did not have visible light; the stuff that made X-rays possible. From miracle stuff, it went to become very sinister when we realised how toxic it was and that you could make nuclear bombs out of uranium isotopes like U235.
There are all sorts of different disposable or waste items. You either have the isotopes themselves, uranium and its isotopes, iridium, as we have heard, and its isotopes, and the stuff that is contaminated, and that comes in all shapes and forms. If this stuff is so evil, why does the Northern Territory produce it? The reason is that not all nuclear products are necessarily evil. We all know someone who, at one point or another, has had cancer. How do we treat cancer? We can either do it chemically with chemotherapy or with a nuclear product. One of the many and varied isotopes produced in the Lucas Heights reactor, which is the reason that reactor runs, is used in medical treatment of cancer, and very successfully. Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is treated with radioactive isotopes. However, as a consequence of that, you have waste products.
It is curious how we pursue these waste products down the line to the point where they are finally stored. You have high, medium and low level waste products, and we are told that about how nuclear products are all very bad and the Commonwealth has to find a place to store the stuff, and not in our backyards and all that sort of thing. It becomes a matter of hysteria. Once you see the international symbol for radioactivity, as we saw on the Labor How to Vote card at the last election, once you see the word ‘nuclear’ crop up, people become a little bit nervous.
It is curious that the Territory government has repositories and the federal government has dumps. It is curious that the Northern Territory government produces by-products and the federal government produces waste. The fact is that if we want to use the vernacular generated by members opposite, there is a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the northern suburbs underneath Royal Darwin Hospital. If you want to use the vernacular in an attempt to generate hysteria in the last week leading up to the election, there is a nuclear waste dump in the middle of Kakadu National Park, and I have to say slightly up-hill in the catchment area of the South Alligator River.
I do not know about you, Madam Speaker, but it is my understanding that at least once or twice a year, it rains in Kakadu and as a result of that rain, water flows down hill and water would flow from this nuclear waste dump, or repository, towards the South Alligator River. Yet the government expects us to believe that the quality of their nuclear waste is somehow superior, different, more noble perhaps, than the quality of the nuclear waste that is produced by the federal government at Lucas Heights.
Radiation is radiation is radiation. I do not propose to suggest that the government has a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the northern suburbs. What I do propose is to suggest that the Northern Territory government has engaged deliberately and calculatedly in an effort to stir up hysteria about nuclear waste in the Northern Territory. That is what the campaign was about last week; it was not anything other than to stir up hysteria.
Why was it so important that this bill came on now? It was all part of the campaign. The government wanted to take this legislation in to the period leading up to the sitting week prior to the election. What did it want to do? It wanted to talk about the nuclear waste dump issue and how they were going to legislate it away and we were going to be tough and what were those miserable so-and-so’s from the CLP going to do in terms of looking after the federal government’s nuclear waste.
So bad was it that the Chief Minister spent Labor Party funds running advertising on the television. That is how bad this was all going to be. Now, why, if that is what the government’s intention was, was there suddenly an urge last Thursday to shift it from number one to number five on the Notice Paper? There is an interesting question. Two words, Madam Speaker: Senator Carr.
What did Senator Carr say to people in the Northern Territory about the Australian Labor Party’s policy for the future of biological material in the Northern Territory? What was the Labor Party’s policy for the Northern Territory in terms of biological material? This is interesting because it is another one that makes people a bit nervous, words like ‘anthrax’, ‘smallpox’, ‘SARS’ suddenly start to crop in to the vernacular.
Senator Carr, a member of the Labor Party, used the words ‘anthrax, smallpox’ and ‘SARS’, among a few others if memory serves me correctly, and he said it was the Labor Party’s policy to put a $60m institution here in Darwin to study these diseases. The minister came into this House last week and said: ‘Oh no, there are going to be no bugs there’. The fact is that there were going to be bugs there.
Ms Lawrie: No, there were not.
Mr ELFERINK: Oh, yes there were! He said so.
Ms Lawrie: No, he did not.
Mr ELFERINK: He did! The member for Karama said: ‘No, he did not say it’, but the fact is he did say it and he identified the bugs. So concerned was Senator Carr in terms of the bugs, he reassured Territorians about the filtration systems and other protections that would be in place so that there would be no such outbreak. This is curious. If the bugs were not going to be there, you only had the material to study, the files that were sent up from down south, maybe e-mails, and so sensitive are these e-mails and files that you needed special filtration systems and the like to protect Territorians from the bits of paper that were going to be studied. Rubbish!
Second, Senator Carr said that this was a potential terrorist target. Why did he say that? Because protections would have to be put in place to make sure that it was safe from terrorist attack.
Let us now talk about political opportunity. One would think that if members opposite were running this hysterical campaign about nuclear waste and Senator Carr promised to spend $60m introducing anthrax, SARS and smallpox to the Northern Territory, there might be some concerns raised by this side.
The government was fully aware of this at the time and that is why the matter was shifted from last week to this week. Why? Because now it is a dead issue. It has ceased to be interesting. It is curious how this sudden change happened, and that is the reason why the government stepped away from debating this last week, because they knew they would be inviting debate on this topic.
The government now has a bill before the House that says this bill is subject to anything that the Commonwealth basically wants to do. That is a fairly soft section, and without having seen the legal advice that was offered by the …
Ms Scrymgour: You received it last night.
Mr ELFERINK: Without having seen it. I can tell honourable members - well I can guess for honourable members how the Solicitor General made his observations: any legislation that a state has which is inconsistent with Commonwealth legislation, the Commonwealth legislation will have superiority so far as that inconsistency exists. That is pretty much how the Northern Territory legislation has been treated since the time of self-government. It also applies to a state, I might add.
The Commonwealth is fully capable of passing legislation forcing the Northern Territory and/or any other state into taking a nuclear waste dump. Now, they are certainly not going to do that, despite the scaremongering in which the member for Casuarina engaged by saying: ‘Which island off the coast of the Northern Territory is going to cop this?’. The federal government said they are not going to do that, and that was clearly outlined despite the fact that the government of the day, the Territory government, continued to run their fear campaign.
That inconsistency exists, but that applies to every single item of legislation in the Northern Territory. Not every single item of legislation in the Northern Territory has a disclaimer written into it saying the operation of Commonwealth legislation will have superiority. It is a given. Not every single item of legislation in every other state in Australia has exactly the same paragraph in it. It is a given and a patsy. The suggestion that in some way the legislation has been strengthened with this subordinating clause in it, I refute and I refuse to accept. It is just more guff from the members opposite to generate noise surrounding this issue, but taking away attention from their role in this matter, which was to try and take this stuff out as quickly as possible.
Just after lunch, the minister who has carriage of this legislation tried to jump up and finish the debate off as quickly as she could without any other member speaking.
Ms LAWRIE: Wrong! A point of order, Madam Speaker! The minister jumped at the end of Question Time to respond to a question so the member is misrepresenting the minister completely.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, I did jump because there was a question that was directed to me by the member for Port Darwin, and I had undertaken to provide that answer at the end of Question Time. I stood to give that answer, but the member for Greatorex, with all his greatness, stood up and did not want to have that answer put on record in responding to the member for Port Darwin. So stop standing up here with your misinformation, member for Macdonnell.
Madam SPEAKER: I can only assume that I misunderstood when you stood, thinking that you were standing to close debate, that is why I gave the call to the member for Greatorex. But you will be able to give that response later on in the debate.
Mr ELFERINK: Sensitive as they are, Madam Speaker.
Ms Scrymgour: No, it is not about being sensitive.
Mr ELFERINK: They cannot help themselves. They are jumping to their feet at the first available opportunity because they think they are beyond criticism.
Ms Lawrie: We prefer the truth, not your lies.
Mr ELFERINK: What a deceitful bunch!
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker!
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell, withdraw that remark.
Mr ELFERINK: I withdraw, but Madam Speaker, I am unsure as to what remark I am withdrawing.
Madam SPEAKER: You know what remark you are withdrawing.
Mr ELFERINK: No, Madam Speaker, I do not and I seek instructions.
Madam SPEAKER: You are not to call them a deceitful bunch.
Mr ELFERINK: I seek clarification, Madam Speaker. ‘Deceit’ is a word that has been used regularly and without restraint in this parliament, and I seek clarification.
Madam SPEAKER: The clarification is that when the Speaker deems that a phrase used in a context, and the way that it is delivered, is unparliamentary, it is so. I am ruling it out of order.
Mr ELFERINK: In that case, I accept that, Madam Speaker. I withdraw it. What a misleading bunch of people they are.
Madam Speaker, the fact is that they have realised that there was a classic flaw in their approach to the election and they wanted to avoid the issue that had been left for them by Senator Carr.
The government says: ‘This stuff was all inherited from you lot’. The fact is that we have also heard from the minister that we have better, improved acts. We changed them to improve the way that we do this stuff. Under this improved legislation, a shipping container full of nuclear waste sits in the middle of Kakadu National Park unmolested. This is their improved model; it has nothing to do with us. These are the improvements that they made. The fact is the improvements have not gone anywhere near fixing the things that they suggest need fixing.
They say: ‘These acts do not operate. These are all issues of the Commonwealth’. The last time I checked, the Criminal Code operates in Kakadu National Park, as does the Summary Offences Act, the Motor Vehicles Act, the Traffic Act, and all other legislation in the Northern Territory. Just because the owner of particular land inside the jurisdiction of the Northern Territory happens to be the federal government, that does not stop the operation of Northern Territory legislation in those areas. I can even name the High Court decision that dealt with the use of the Traffic Act inside the RAAF Base Darwin. That case was R v Svikart, if memory serves me correctly, and held that the Northern Territory Traffic Act operates on Commonwealth land. The principle is consistent in other legislation. To say that Northern Territory legislation does not apply inside Kakadu National Park is unconvincing. Unless I can be convinced otherwise, as far as I know, as long as Northern Territory legislation is not inconsistent with any federal legislation, the legislation under control of the minister and the rest of the government is active and workable.
Bearing this in mind, the Northern Territory government is already aware of that because, leached from the tailings dam of the Ranger uranium mine is something that has the Northern Territory government making very loud and public comments inside Kakadu National Park, on land which is under the control of the federal government. Therefore, the Northern Territory legislation does operate in those environments. Yet, the Treasurer in his role as Minister for Employment, Education and Training, with carriage of the appropriate legislation, seems to be blithely unaware of this.
Finally, we come to the legislation itself and the opt-out clause for the Commonwealth. This legislation is a three-ring circus and a political stunt. The clause makes no difference to how it operates in the Northern Territory. However, it is better to bring this three-ring circus into something closer to reality than what is being spewed forth by this government. This legislation was part of a political campaign. Rather than pulling it, the piece of garbage that it is, off the Notice Paper, this government is persisting with it because it feels obliged. They should not persist with it; it does not make any difference one way or the other. I will not be supporting it or opposing it because I do not care. It is meaningless tripe.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, if you look up the word ‘blasphemy’ in the dictionary, you will see that it means ‘irreverent behaviour towards anything held sacred’. This bill presented by the government to this parliament is surely, then, blasphemous. Why? Because this bill is nothing more than a piece of political trickery deliberately planned to be debated in parliamentary just before the election date.
Funnily enough, with sleight-of-hand, the bill was removed from being number one on the Notice Paper last Wednesday to not even being debated last week. I wonder why. This government shows that it is not interested in a reasoned debate on this important issue. What it wanted last week was a head-on fight with the Commonwealth government to try to enhance its chances of winning the seat of Solomon. We can see that that did not work. It is blasphemous because the government has used this bill to irreverently and cynically try to further its political goals instead of using this sacred House for a serious debate on an important issue …
Mr Kiely: This House is not sacred; it is not a church!
Mr WOOD: To some of you, it is not. Obviously, it is not sacred to you.
Mr Kiely: No, it is not sacred to me. No, it is not …
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Sanderson, order.
Mr WOOD: It is a place of respect, member for Sanderson.
Mr Kiely: No, it is not. Bringing your religious connotations in here.
Mr Baldwin: You will get your turn. Sit down.
Mr WOOD: Madam Speaker, the member for Sanderson might treat this place with disdain and disrespect, but it is a place …
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker, he is alleging actions and attributing convictions to me that are not true.
Mr WOOD: I said ‘might’, Madam Speaker.
Mr KIELY: You cannot say that sort of thing.
Mr WOOD: Why not?
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Nelson, will you withdraw that? Just withdraw it.
Mr WOOD: Okay, for the sake of peace and quiet, Madam Speaker, I will withdraw it.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Sanderson, I suggest you stop your interruptions because they are provocative.
Mr WOOD: Madam Speaker, proof of what I am saying could no more be validated than in the final sentence of the minister’s second reading speech:
I find it very difficult to debate this issue knowing that this debate is a bit of a joke and was really part of a failed federal election campaign, but debate it I will.
The matter before us highlights how parochial politics can get in the road of sensible outcomes to all Australians. I am proud to be a Northern Territorian, but parochial politics can reinforce myths and legends deliberately designed to scare and mislead the electorate in the belief that this will keep them in power. Parochialism does not assist good policy making. It is like a one-eyed football supporter giving his or her opinions on an umpiring decision, and I have first-hand experience of that. Objectivity goes out the door. Win at all costs comes to the fore. What we should be doing is crawling out of our parochial cocoons and realising that we are Australian.
We have an issue that affects us all and we need to work together to find a solution. Here is an opportunity for our nation’s leaders to sit down together and work out a solution. Surely, that is what leaders should be doing: working for the benefit of our nation. Sadly, this is not the case and it can be seen by the government’s rhetoric and the rhetoric from the Labor state premiers, such as the Premier of South Australia who turned what should have been a bipartisan agreement into a parochial battlefield. Mr Howard, in the light of that and an on-coming election campaign, told the states to look after their own waste. Again, politics.
Madam Speaker, what are we talking about? We are not talking about a nuclear waste dump. That is just emotional language deliberately used by the minister in this debate to muddy the waters, confuse the public, and, of course, hide the truth. As Matt Coffey wrote in correspondence to me:
What are we talking about? We are talking about a site 4300 m of stockpiled radioactive waste which is presently housed at 50 to 100 locations throughout Australia. Much of that is stored at the Lucas Heights site in Sydney. The Lucas Heights facility generates nuclear power and is involved in nuclear medicine and nuclear research for industrial and mining uses. Materials needed for medical use such as radioisotopes used in X-rays are produced here. Spent fuel rods are stored at Lucas Heights, and some of these rods are sent to France for re-processing. There is also 2010 m of contaminated soil in South Australia. Radioactive waste also comes from hospitals and medical facilities, from mining industries, universities, and even in things like exit signs and domestic smoke detectors, which the minister just said he is going to install in all public housing. Goodness me! I wonder if those people know what they are in for.
The federal government was looking to find a single waste repository for all this waste. Believe it or not, 4300 m is two cricket pitches long by 10 m high, by 10 m wide, which is a pimple compared with the area of Australia. We are talking about a very small area in a very vast continent. We did select a site, but, because of politics, that did not happen. In other words, we did not have the maturity to act as a nation to find a solution.
When the Territory government says that we should only look after our own waste, it conveniently forgets that many Territorians go south for medical treatment, especially treatment involving nuclear technology. Should we take our own isotopes with us when we go south? The minister said that the government is happy to manage our radioactive substances, but we obtained them from the Lucas Heights facility, so do we wipe our hands of a facility simply because it does not fit our political agenda? We cannot see past our parochial noses to realise that it is not John Howard’s problem, it is not the Commonwealth’s problem, it is our problem because it belongs to us as Australians.
I might be so bold to ask: is there more to this than the eye can see? Is it because Labor does not want to see the new Lucas Heights reactor obtain a licence to operate, knowing that if the Commonwealth cannot find a place to store existing waste or future waste, then it will not get a licence? Is this the cotton issue repeated, where we cannot move on and look at technology today, not years and years ago, where anything to do with the nuclear industry is so taboo to Labor that the whole issue is not negotiable, not to be discussed, and in the too politically hard basket? Just like cotton, the debate is run on public perception and we make sure that perception is fed, especially during an election campaign.
When I could not get a motion up to even look at cotton, not grow it, the L in the ALP standing for Luddites took over. When I heard the Chief Minister and the member for Wanguri give their off-the-cuff reasons for not supporting even a trip to investigate the cotton industry, I wondered whether I was standing in a prehistoric parliament with Fred and Wilma Flintsone at the helm. We are locked in, slaves to our political masters, slaves to our survival at the next election, but never free to open our minds, explore alternative ways, bite the bullet, or even try a bit of common sense.
This issue is about politics. It is as simple as that. To support this view, I would like to read an article by Lesley Kemeny in The Australian in August this year. Lesley is a nuclear scientist and engineer and is an Australian member of the International Nuclear Energy Academy. She said:
That reminds me: how may triples full of fuel drive between City Valley and Bayview every day, and no one seems to worry?
That is what this debate is about or what it should be about. It is interesting to read Leslie Kemeny on the relative risk. This government can talk about its perceived problems with radioactive waste, but what was ‘relative risk’ when it gave approval for the building of the biggest LNG plant within a few kilometres of the CBD? I bet the actual risk from an LNG plant, although relatively low, is nowhere near the relative risk of a radioactive storage facility built kilometres from anywhere.
The government does not seem to have a concern about leaving 15 radioactive gauges at Mt Todd. Has the government ever thought what would be the consequences of a mine opening up again or what would happen to the Gouldian Finch that breeds in the area? Should not these gauges have been stored at a hot mine where there is already radioactivity rather than left at a cold mine which could be developed again in the future?
I challenge the minister’s statement in her second reading that 90% of waste is stored at Lucas Heights. Using figures from the 2002 National Radioactive Waste Repository Draft EIS Main Report, there are 2010 m of the then – this is 2002 – 3700 m of low level and intermediate waste in Australia, and that 2002 m3 comes from contaminated soils in South Australia. So the statement that 90% of radioactive waste comes from Lucas Heights is wrong. It is more like 35% to 40%. It is nowhere as high as the minister has stated, as those figures demonstrate.
Radioactive waste and nuclear science is like cotton: a political taboo. No amount of logic, no amount of expert opinion is going to sway our government away from its implacable view of the world. It just goes to show that whilst we cheer on our Australian Olympians in Athens we, I hope, support our Australian soldiers in Iraq, we barrack for our Australian Wallabies against the All Blacks, but when it comes to dealing with an Australian issue in Australia, we all hide behind our parochial cupboards or stick our parochial heads in the sand and say: ‘No, thanks, not in my backyard’.
As Matt Coffey writes in today’s NT News:
I am interested in other people’s comments of Matt Coffey, who asked why not Montebello Island. Would not the government support this? It was a site for nuclear tests many years ago and is perhaps a good option.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, next time I hear the song I am Australian and the words ‘I am, you are, we are Australian’, I will say to those people: ‘Get real. Get a life’, because these words are nothing more than mere sentimental platitudes. This debate, or should I say farce, over such an important national issue could no more exemplify that very point. The score at full-time today will be: politics one, Australia nil.
Mr BONSON (Millner): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, some of the contributions we have heard today have been amazing. It is as if they want to rewrite history. The reality is that this issue arose because an individual representing all Territorians said that it was our obligation - our obligation - to take nuclear waste from other states and territories.
I am sorry, but the contribution from the member Nelson was one of the most self-centred, blow-wind-up-my-bottom contributions ...
Mr WOOD: A point of order, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker! If I can be censored by the member for Sanderson for saying some very mild things, I am sure you could ask the member for Millner to withdraw his comments.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Withdraw, member for Millner.
Mr BONSON: I withdraw my comments. It was a stand-on-my-soap box lecture. If someone had a good look at how the polling went in the member’s area, no doubt there is political pitch.
I would be very interested to know where this information and his speech was going because the there is a principle here. It is a very basic principle: we in the Northern Territory do not want nuclear waste from other states and territories in the Territory. That is it – bottom line. That is the principle.
We can listen to political speeches all we want from people on the opposite side, but the reality is we did not start this debate. This debate arose from an individual who made a statement. I am sorry. I am a Territorian. I was born and bred here and lived here all my life. My family has been here for generations, and I do not want a nuclear dump in the Northern Territory - bottom line! That is the bottom line, guys! The reality is if we have to look after our nuclear waste, we take that responsibility. However, to the blow-ins, I am sorry to say that we do not want nuclear waste here …
Members interjecting.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Millner, cease for a moment. There has to be some decorum in this House. Other speakers have been heard in relative silence, and I suggest that the same standards apply to the member for Millner.
Mr BONSON: Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. As a result of comments, it suddenly became an issue not only within the Northern Territory, but across the whole of Australia. What I fear is if the Northern Territory government did not take this up and make it a national issue, then we, as a Territory with only two seats in the House of Representatives, would have had to take on other states’ and territories’ nuclear waste.
This legislation is designed to flag to the Commonwealth government that we do not want nuclear waste from other places in Australia. As the member for Macdonnell pointed out, the Commonwealth of Australia has a constitutional right to make changes to Territory legislation, and they have done in the past. By presenting this bill, we are flagging that they, the Commonwealth, will have to legislate to overturn our legislation. This, in itself, has caused a political debate right across Australia.
We cannot rewrite history. The Northern Territory government did not come out and say: ‘We are against nuclear waste’. There was a reason; something generated this. What we have seen from both sides of parliament in the Northern Territory is a recognition that we do not want to be the identified site for nuclear waste and of all these issues that have been raised over the last weeks and months, that has to be a good point.
The member for Macdonnell said the bill is meaningless tripe. I do not think, member for Macdonnell, the bottom line that we do not want nuclear waste is meaningless tripe. I am of the view that individual states and territories should be responsible for their own nuclear waste. Therefore, we put the responsibility on them to minimise that waste and to look after their own waste.
We heard from the member for Greatorex that this is a political stunt. Member for Greatorex, all I can say to people who may not have a long-term interest in the Territory, but I certainly do, is whether it is in the northern suburbs of Darwin or out on remote areas of Arnhem Land or the Central Desert, Alice Springs, Katherine, there is not one individual Territorian who has walked up to me and said: ‘Yes, we want a nuclear dump. It is our obligation and it is going to create jobs’. Far from it.
This bill will deliver legislation very similar to that of Western Australia and South Australia. That is, we will look after own waste. We have less than 1% of the nation’s radioactive waste and it is of a low level. The Commonwealth government is looking for a site for 90% of the nation’s waste including all the nation’s highest grade waste. The threat of the NT being used in it is very real: low population and a low number of federal seats, as I have already mentioned.
I am not meeting people in my electorate or in wider Darwin on the doors or at the markets who want a nuclear dump in the Northern Territory. I believe that this bill is very much a case of this parliament representing the views of Territorians. I would argue that the majority of Territorians would support this bill. The opposition may not know, but, as I have already stated, the Australian Constitution allows the federal government to overrule our legislation. This will be a flag to them and will create a political debate across the nation about the Commonwealth government interfering in state and territory rights, as we have seen in the past.
Mr Dunham: Like the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act.
Mr BONSON: The member for Drysdale knows that we have seen it in the past and he knows the hoo-ha that it has caused. Now maybe they will come down with a cold hand from Canberra and they will put it on to the Northern Territory and they will make us take this nuclear dump. We cannot do anything about it. That is the reality. All we can try to do is flag to them that Territorians do not want a nuclear waste dump. I ask members opposite to question their constituents over this issue. They would have to represent the reflection that people do not want a nuclear dump.
As the debate developed, we saw in the last few weeks of the Commonwealth election, we did see some policy on the run from the Howard government. It is important to remind everyone that as part this, at no stage did the Prime Minister himself rule out the Northern Territory. The best he could do is not rule us out and not rule us in. The best we got was from the Minister for the Environment who ruled out the mainland of the Territory, but not our islands. I certainly hope he was not thinking of the Tiwi Islands or Groote Eylandt or any other place off the shores of the Northern Territory. People on our islands do not want it, just as people in the desert and Katherine do not want it. I am sure that fishermen do not want a nuclear dump on our islands near all the fantastic fishing locations that we have. I certainly do not want nuclear waste transported through our waters and offloaded onto one of our islands.
I believe that this bill will help to tell everyone in Canberra that the Territory will fight tooth and nail against such a proposal. In the heat of an election battle, the Labor Party did stand up and fight this. Rest assured that we will continue to stand up against any plans by anyone to place their nuclear waste in our Territory. This legislation is the strongest statement that the Northern Territory parliament can make on behalf of the NT people. It is very simple legislation; it bans the storage and transport of other people’s nuclear waste in the NT.
I do not understand the CLP’s position - only they do - but I cannot support it. The vitriol from the member for Nelson was one of the most political contributions I have heard him make in this House.
Mr Dunham: He is a politician; of course he makes political contributions.
Dr Burns: He doesn’t think he is.
Mr BONSON: Exactly! I pick up the interjections of the members for Drysdale and Johnston. He purports not to take political views and then makes political statements. They called it a political stunt before they even saw the legislation. They have called it a farce and they have called it Mickey Mouse. South Australia has it and Western Australia has it. Why does the CLP believe that the Territory should not do the same thing?
I understand their laziness in relation to remote areas and islands. They have never cared about these areas before, so why should they care about them now? I am amazed, though, that they have not stood up for Katherine. We have not heard a statement from them about the issue of Katherine and whether it is a good place to have a nuclear dump.
Nuclear waste is bad for business on a number of levels. Sure, there might be a couple of jobs involved in managing it, but hundreds of jobs would be at risk in the tourism industry if the Territory was known as the nuclear dump of the nation. Our pristine environment is what brings people here; it is our biggest asset. A nuclear dump would destroy this.
I listened to contributions of members, and I have not heard an opposition or Independent member say that they want a nuclear dump here. What I have not heard is those members argue that they did not have a representative who said that. It is on record that it was said.
In summary, I support this bill because the last thing that I want is to collect other people’s nuclear waste and for the NT to be a dumping ground for Australia. I cannot see any Territorian supporting such a concept. I have every intention of strongly supporting legislation that stands up for the Northern Territory.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise as the new Environment and Heritage shadow spokesperson, and I am delighted to be able to participate in the CLP opposition team to this extent. The environment is an incredibly important area and portfolio.
I have spoken to the minister already today, and we have discussed briefings and so on. I thank her for her support with that, and I know we will work constructively in the future.
In respect of this bill, I have to bring to the attention of the House the fact that last week I moved a motion that the government send to the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee a number of issues relating to waste products in the Territory, one of which is radioactive waste.
What we wanted to know through a reference to the environment committee was how much radioactive waste we have in the Territory, future expectations in relation to waste products, current storage of nuclear waste products, and what we will do now that the federal government has ruled out the fact that it will establish a national repository for low and medium level radioactive waste products.
In the Territory, we are going to have to organise our own storage place or places. We have heard, on and off, that we have the odd dump in the NT, but this ad hoc way of dealing with it is not good enough and we need to look to the future, given that we are not going to be able to utilise a national storage facility.
Despite the minister’s assurances in the debate last week, we did finally have confirmation via the Northern Territory News on the weekend that there is a radioactive waste dump of mining refuse being stored in at least one shipping container in Kakadu, and we pursued that matter during Question Time today.
The legislation before us, to my mind, is a sad effort. It was given just before Saturday’s federal election, in which, of course, we are all well aware the Martin Labor government ran a marketing campaign trying to frighten Territorians into believing that unless we elected a federal Labor government, there was nothing going to happen except that a John Howard-led Liberal government was going to create a national nuclear dump in the Northern Territory.
Despite what the Prime Minister and others said, whatever assurances could be given that this was not going to happen, the Martin Labor government, headed by Clare Martin and her advertising, went on and on in the media about it. It was obvious that this deliberately deceitful message was not creating the community stir in the urban areas that she was hoping for. That was reflected on polling day for me when only one constituent asked me about this matter, which was surprising, given the amount of money that had been spent on this campaign.
It is my view that the Labor Party in the Northern Territory did some polling and they found out that this issue was not biting, and that they were going to have to stumble around and find something else to pursue. However, that message was obviously coming through to them a bit late because we know that in the middle of last week, this bill was slated as being number one on the Notice Paper for Thursday’s debate, and then by the time we came into the Chamber on Thursday morning, it had dropped down to item five, and we all know that under the current government, it is incredibly rare for this government to be able to sit long enough during a sittings day to be able to get to item five on the Notice Paper.
Quite obviously, this bill had been deliberately dropped on the Notice Paper in an effort to get rid of it so that it did not cause any sort of messages in the media prior to polling day on Saturday. This really highlights to all of us, and should highlight to all Territorians, the fact that this bill is nothing more than a political stunt. It was one of the parts of a campaign designed deliberately to frighten Territorians into believing that something that was not going to happen was going to happen and, quite frankly, the government should be ashamed of themselves.
I have been advised, for example, that in some Aboriginal communities, people from the Labor Party or their colleagues were speaking to people along the lines of: ‘Did you know that the Liberal government, if elected, is going to put a nuclear waste dump here in your area?’ That was a shameful thing to do. You know it was not true, and yet people were being deliberately misled along those lines. It is an appalling trick to pull on people.
In conclusion, it is quite obvious that this bill is nothing more than a farce.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is good to speak late in a debate and hear some of the contributions, such as that of my colleague, the member for Nelson, whom I believe made a very level-headed contribution.
It is very difficult in Australia to talk about anything to do with nuclear activities. The Australian public seems to have a binary attitude to it; it is good or it is bad. It is very difficult to discuss degrees within that, and it is very difficult to discuss the science and unemotional issues attached to it because the debate quickly turns into an emotional one. I have said in this House before that I have been to some nuclear power plants and reprocessing facilities. I have seen it transported, I have seen it processed, and I have seen it turned into energy rods. I have seen where it is stored and I have seen how it is stored in water when it is hot.
When we went to some of those facilities, I was interested to find that the emissions outside some of the facilities must be zero. This Parliament House would not pass that test because the granite you walk on out there, the Mt Bundy granite, is hot. It emits radioactive particles. If you ran a Geiger counter over it, it would give you a beep. It is a naturally occurring material in the Northern Territory from which we make a lot of money.
The government is quite happy to talk about how good mining is, how much money comes from mining, and the prospectivity of the place. One of those commodities is uranium. Uranium is used for many purposes, the greatest preponderance of which is peaceful and related to the generation of power. If we are unable to get to the stage where we can talk about this in a logical way, we are back to the three-mine policy idiocy and lunacy about: ‘You can mine it in South Australia; that is good uranium. That is bad uranium there at Koongarra. We have our waste but that is someone else’s waste’. As my colleague from Nelson also said, there are Territorians who have been the beneficiaries of nuclear facilities in hospitals in other places.
I would have thought it is good to have a national approach to this. Indeed, people who are new to the debate might wish to look at some of these documents. They go back to 1992, and a federal Labor government. They are excellent documents: A Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Methods for Choosing the Right Site. A significant amount of activity was put into choosing a site.
My friend from Millner said: ‘We only have two federal politicians, so they will pick here’. There are the sites; they have picked them. They have identified them. They are there. You can see why South Australia was jumpy because there are several in South Australia. There are two here: Tanami and Bloods Range, both in fairly remote areas. Then they said: ‘Having picked those sites, let us look at their suitability’. There was a fair bit of work done. There was consultation with a variety of players including the Central Land Council, which made a submission. They looked at both of those sites and found them to be largely unsuitable. The sites that were under consideration by various federal governments, including the Labor ones, included Tanami. The Tanami region is considered to be unsuitable to host a national radioactive waste depository. Bloods Range, as stated for Tanami.
We can run an emotional argument that it is going to ruin tourism because it is going to be jammed into some place and dissuade tourists from going there. If you go to places where there are some radioactive emissions such as, for instance, the mine at Jabiru, you will see tourists are very keen to have a look. They do not have a massive problem with it. While I will not be so foolish as to say that there would be a tourist product out of going to have a look at a nuclear waste repository, these things do exist.
I talked about the power station in Normandy in northern France. They have devices in the shopping centre that show you all the independent monitoring on the water, the air, and various other things. I was pretty interested to see that there was a great fishing site near this power station because the power station produces steam, which is returned to the water and recirculated, and it is clean. It goes in as clean steam. Into that cold water goes hot water and, thus, creates a new fishing zone and people quite willingly use it. They do not have any great scare about having two heads or waking up in the night glowing or anything like that.
There has to be some capacity for us to debate these things. A pretty good effort was put in by a previous Labor government and the current Coalition government in having an approach where they talked to the people, called for submissions, looked at the geology and the accessibility of sites, contaminants to ground water, etcetera. Those reports make pretty good reading.
The reality is we produce nuclear waste. That is the reality. In the same way one of Labor’s more foolish policies of the good uranium in South Australia and the bad uranium in the Northern Territory, we now have the government saying we have a dump being considered for the Northern Territory, but ‘Any of the stuff that we store is low level, it is okay. Trust us on this’.
The Chief Minister was unconvincing this morning when she was asked why certain documents were sought at the start of this debate. I remember it well because it is quite unusual for a rejoinder immediately that a bill is introduced. Normally, it is adjourned for a month. The rejoinder came from my colleague, member for Brennan, who said if we are going to do this in a way that is transparently not a stunt, why don’t we get the data? So tell us where it is stored and how it is handled and all the rest of it, and we can have a thinking debate.
It is obvious that it was never ever the intention to have a level-headed, thinking debate. The only purpose of it was so you could paint up a corflute sign to hang out the front of an election booth. That is its entire purpose.
The trite contribution from the member of Millner about we are really a child of the Commonwealth but we will stand up to a man and tell them how to do things is the sort of stupid jingoism and parochialism alluded to by the member for Nelson. It is unhelpful for the debate. It is an unthinking contribution on the basis that we do not need to worry about anyone else’s problems in Australia because we are really not Australians, we are Territorians.
There is the capacity to have a better approach to this. Obviously, the current federal government is going to be reluctant to do that because it will be used in a negative way against them. That is the problem for the Chief Minister. Having decided that if you store nuclear waste, it is a dump, she now has to discuss with us her ‘dumps’. One of them is Royal Darwin Hospital. It is all very well to say to the people: ‘You don’t need to worry about that because it will have no injurious effect on your health’, but maybe that is not such a good site.
I would also like to know whether it has been audited. Has all the stuff that has gone in there remained in there? Has any been transported elsewhere and is it still secure? I would not be confident that the informal storage arrangements currently in place are periodically audited. I would not be confident to be able to say this material that went in there is still there and there have been stocktakes and various techniques to make sure it is still there. I would not be surprised if, by mistake, it ends up in land fill. It would not shock me because that sort of thing can happen if you have informal arrangements such as we have at the moment.
We can progress with this bill. We can put it on the statute books, but what the government has to tell us is whether this law will have any effect. We have been told that apparently Territory laws do not apply in an enclave in Kakadu National Park. It is the most specious argument I have heard in my life to say that you cannot have any capacity for Territory law to apply in Kakadu National Park when it comes to radiation facilities, but every other statute applies. That is just implausible. It just cannot be sustained as an argument.
This legislation, too, would seem to be a dust gatherer with no purpose. I would like to see a thinking contribution as a rejoinder from the minister that addresses where the sites are, the capacity for them to be audited, for stocktakes to take place, discussions about the security thereof, whether those sites, particularly the one in Kakadu where she took a couple of approaches at answering it, but it would seem from her first answer that she is not satisfied that it is an appropriate way to store waste in containers out at Kakadu.
We can probably dispense with this pretty quickly, but I suspect that there will be significant amounts of finger pointing and people will recall this for some future time, that our federal member was happy to sell out the Territory and let everybody dump their waste here willy-nilly. A debate of that type, quite properly, should rebound on the government, and it should rebound on the way that people say: ‘Okay, given that you produce nuclear waste yourself and you store it in a dump yourself, please tell us how that occurs’.
It is a matter for this government to hang its head in shame how this was used as a fairly crude and stupid, blunt political instrument. The fact that they lost the election might have something to do with this. Many people had a more thinking approach to it than the government expected and they were able to, for instance, hear the words from Ian Campbell, the federal minister for the environment, who said the Northern Territory could take that as an absolute, categorical assurance that there would not be a nuclear waste repository here in the Territory.
We know it was never a site, apart from the two selected, analysed and found to be wanting. We know the federal minister discounted it, yet it still ran as an issue. In fact, it ran as an issue on the TV as an ad long after it was refuted. It was a pretty sneaky campaign trick. It back-fired on you. If your logic held true, that if you voted for Dave Tollner you would get a nuclear waste repository, it is a fairly simple matter now of waiting and if such a repository does not occur, an apology is due because that is what people were told as they went to vote: ‘Don’t vote for this man or you will end up with a nuclear waste dump’.
I, too, have heard the story about Aboriginal people being told that it could well happen in their community. They are just dangerous, foolish lies that often occur during campaigns. For the Labor Party to have been so close to this campaign does not auger well for them. We expect something of its ilk to jump out at our Territory election, and I hope they use this as a salutary lesson to be aware of the intelligence of voters because they are not as stupid as many in the Labor Party tend to think they are.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I have listened with interest to this fairly prolonged debate. It would be very easy to pass the debate off as a picking over of what was said or thought in the federal election and to dismiss today’s bill as being one of no substance and, therefore, dismiss what it was intended to address.
There is a serious issue before us today, one that members generally need to think about seriously in respect of the various parts of the Northern Territory we represent. I do not think there is any doubt that if you went around and canvassed the opinions of NT people about the location of a nuclear waste dump, no matter where it was proposed in the Territory, there is ample evidence that there is strong resistance to the proposition.
We have heard some erudite contributions giving all sorts of reasons why we should look at this in the cold, hard light of day and maybe we should look at informed debate. The first people who have to be informed if there was to be any attempt to put a facility of this type in the Northern Territory are Territorians.
It is all very well to talk about extensive consultation that supposedly happened when the consultancy went through the Territory and other parts of Australia to evaluate potential sites for such a facility, but I can tell you absolutely that you can drive through all the communities along the Tanami Road, one of the proposed sites, and not one soul would be able to tell you of any consultation that they had. There is no knowledge of this out there.
When you look at the reaction of people in that area to the cyanide spill some year or two ago, people are still seeking closure on that. It was one of those things for which the follow-up was not adequate, and that has been admitted in reports, but what we are left with is a feeling of loss and betrayal out in the Tanami area.
These are the people who were being considered as neighbours to a facility harbouring nuclear waste. I do not believe in this House at this moment, with that kind of lack of consultation in the electorate, that we have any right to countenance a nuclear waste facility in the Territory.
Regardless of whatever assurances came out of the federal election in the heat of battle where, clearly, the conservative party needed to offer a rapid reassurance to the Northern Territory voting population that such a facility was not going to appear here after the election, things are said in elections. Some things are held to, some things are not. Our duty in this House, all 25 of us, is to make it absolutely clear at this point of time, with the current attitudes of the Northern Territory population, as to what Territorians think about such a proposal.
There are many ways we could do that, and this House, on many occasions, has sought to send a strong message to the Canberra parliament. I remember the Remonstrance with which Shane Stone trotted in; a highly theatrical document written in old Gothic English script, and we all said: ‘Yes, we are going to sign this’, because it basically said that if you want to do something in the Northern Territory, if you want to do something that impacts on the lives and the interests of Territorians, you had better come and talk to us about it and you had better start showing some respect for the interests of Territorians and to the primacy of the Territory as a part of Australia.
It is all very well to talk about us all being Australians and we all have to toe the line, as the member for Nelson seems to think, that we are not allowed to sing a semi-national anthem unless we give in to these types of national imperatives. It is all very well for some national initiatives to be aimed at this area of Australia, the Territory, but the key thing is if you are going to do that, if the Commonwealth government wants to look at the Territory for this, or any other initiative, they have to come and talk, with respect, to the Territory population and to its parliament.
That is the issue for us today, and if it had not been for the heat of a federal election, I daresay we would have had a fairly high level of consensus in this House about this particular action. This is an action of sending a message. We know that the bill before us can be overruled by the federal parliament. That is the whole basis of much of the statehood debate that we have had in the Territory over many years. We know that our laws can be overruled by Commonwealth laws. The Commonwealth parliament could very well pass legislation to establish a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, and we could not do anything about that. However, what that would embody would be a very powerful statement against the interests of this part of Australia, against the interests of Territorians, clearly running roughshod over what our parliament has said is the express wish of the Territory electorate.
If they want to get over that, we want to make it as hard as possible for them to do it, by decree, if you like. If they want to have a reasoned debate and come here and talk to Territorians, no matter where they are, about the possibility of hosting such a facility, if Territorians are persuaded by their arguments to offer that hosting arrangement, good luck to them. That is the democratic process and it is a process that has been applied with respect. Given the way this has transpired to date, I believe we are bound, as representatives of Territorians, to send this message to Canberra.
If you are going to have a bill going to Canberra, you want one that is as hard as possible to overturn. That is why we sought the advice of our Solicitor General, Tom Pauling QC, in the wording of the bill and the proposed amendment that was foreshadowed by the opposition. I will read the Solicitor General’s advice in full. It has been referred to in the debate. It is fairly apparent that some of the opposition members have not received a copy from the Leader of the Opposition, so let us put it on the public record. This is advice SGO/2004/625:
Commonwealth and Territory laws; and
to be inconsistency in some particular way perhaps, in respect of the
ANSTO waste.
This is the proposed amendment and the subclause referred to is:
That is basically stating the bleeding obvious, that the Commonwealth laws do override Territory laws to the degree that the two are inconsistent. The Solicitor General goes on to say:
All the Solicitor General is offering to us in this debate is that if we want to make it as hard as possible for the Commonwealth that we have to force them to introduce overriding legislation, then leaving the bill the way it was drafted is the best way to do it. Amending it to remove the reference to the Commonwealth legislation and potential inconsistency is simply making it easier for the Commonwealth to strike the entire bill out as being against the Constitution. It does make any sense to do that.
It really brings us back to a very simple proposition for members to consider today when then decide whether they want to support this bill: given what Territorians think about this issue right now, that there has not been a comprehensive attempt by the Commonwealth to change the public opinion or even to inform people of the aspects of this issue, do we want to send a simple and unqualified message to the Commonwealth government? That message is that Territorians do not agree with this proposal at this time. That is a pretty simple thing to ponder.
I challenge any member of this House to provide any evidence that the electorate they represent shows any support for this proposition. You can go on and on and trust the Commonwealth government; they gave all these assurances during the election. I do not think this is an invalid thing to be doing now. I do not believe that this debate has ceased nationally. It is very important to tell the Commonwealth that they have a lot of work to do if they want to progress a proposal of this type in the Northern Territory. That is what we need to do as part of our duty of representation to the Territorians who put us here.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Environment and Heritage): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I will wrap up what has been an interesting debate on this legislation.
This is very simple legislation, which seeks to prevent other people’s nuclear waste being transported and dumped in the Territory. I simply do not understand why the opposition cannot say: ‘We support it’. It is not about how we are managing. At Question Time, I said that last week we had quite a long debate on a motion moved by the member for Port Darwin. Much of the response to that motion went into how we, as a Territory, as a government, manage and look after our own waste.
This legislation is about not wanting to become a dumping ground for other people’s waste. Do I repeat it again so that people understand that this is about waste coming into the Northern Territory?
Western Australia and South Australia have passed very similar legislation. When the Commonwealth government was attempting to place such a facility in South Australia, the South Australian parliament passed very similar legislation, but their legislation had bipartisan support and it was a very powerful message to Canberra that the people of South Australia would not take it lying down. Already with our legislation, we have shown Canberra that we will not be a pushover, that the message is very clear. We, as a government, are not going to accept that the Northern Territory is going to be a dumping ground.
This bill is not passed yet, but we heard about its ramifications. A member of the opposition said before that it was introduced on urgency. That is not true. This legislation was introduced some time ago. They have had ample time and opportunity in which to look at this and to support it. We have asked them a couple of times to support it and they still do not want to support it.
Just by introducing this bill, we have demonstrated to the Territory that we are not going to lie down and accept that the Commonwealth or anyone else is going to use the Northern Territory as a dumping ground. We do not have the population and we do not have many federal seats in parliament, but we have made a statement that has been very clearly heard. I pick up on the opposition who said that the message was very clear during the election both in Darwin and Palmerston.
Let me tell you where this dump was going to be. Let us look outside of Darwin and Palmerston. Let us look at the electorate of Lingiari. Are they not Territorians out there? Do they not have a right to be consulted and talked to and told that if the Commonwealth is proposing this, there are places in Lingiari at which the Commonwealth could look? For members opposite to say that, in terms of Darwin and Palmerston, people categorically rejected any statement from the Commonwealth about a nuclear dump, they need to look beyond the Berrimah line. We have members from Central Australia who come in here and talk constantly about the Berrimah line and ask: what about us in Central Australia? Let us look beyond the Berrimah line. Who lives beyond the Berrimah line? We have many Aboriginal people in Aboriginal communities.
Islands were also mentioned. They were not ruled out, but were talked about. Then again, the islands are questionable, because we saw what happened when the Minasa Bone came in to Melville Island and the Commonwealth government, in a knee-jerk reaction to address the issue of refugees coming into this country excised the islands from the mainland of Australia.
It is important to understand that the position of the Commonwealth government does have to be carefully monitored. We are the first to admit that this bill has limitations. The Commonwealth government can completely overrule it should they wish. However, on this side, we have said that it is the most forceful statement this Assembly can make. This legislation makes it harder for the Commonwealth to put a dump here. Why would we make it easier for them? The opposition has tried to detract from our no nuclear dump position by scaremongering on waste. We heard more of that today in Question Time.
Last week, as I said in Question Time, there was a very detailed explanation of how we deal with radioactive waste. Let me state again, as I said to the member for Port Darwin, there are two sites in the Territory for which the Northern Territory government has jurisdiction where radioactive waste is stored. At the hospital, there are 2 m which are kept in a facility that, by the way, their own Senator, Senator Nigel Scullion, called ‘state-of-the-art’. Also, at Mt Todd, the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development owns 15 industrial gauges containing enclosed radioactive waste.
I said in Question Time, the member for Brennan in particular has been casting all sorts of theories on how hazardous waste is managed. It is funny, as I said in Question Time, how his position has changed now that he is in opposition. What has changed? With the support of the opposition, we are strengthening the Radiation Safety Control Act and updating it into the new Radiation Protection Act. What else has changed? Why is it suddenly something that was good when you were in government and now bad from opposition?
Let me come to the shipping containers in Kakadu. Kakadu, as we know, is managed by the Commonwealth and the tailings come from the Ranger uranium mine, which is supervised by the Commonwealth. Let us be clear: the member for Solomon was complaining about the actions of his own government.
The waste at Gunlom, which was an issue raised, is not the Territory’s responsibility. It is Commonwealth waste on Commonwealth land. If we look at Kakadu National Park and the Commonwealth Environment and Biodiversity Act, Ranger uranium mine is monitored under the Mining Management Act. Waste has gone out of that mine into a site at Gunlom. Monitoring this waste is the responsibility of the Office of the Supervising Scientist.
In the year 2000, agreement was reached to take the tailings away from Ranger and put them into these storage containers because there was a fear of having waste in the tailing dams during the Wet Season leading to leaching into rivers and creeks. That was in 2000. When the Commonwealth made this decision about this waste, the CLP in government either failed in their duty to come to an agreement with the Commonwealth to have this waste taken out of the Northern Territory or they agreed to it. They agreed to this in 2000.
Regarding the waste at Gunlom, I said that I am concerned and I will be raising it not just as the member for Arafura, but once federal Cabinet is sorted out and the environment minister named, I will be taking the issue up with your federal colleagues.
With respect to the yellowcake from Ranger, the Northern Territory government regulates such waste through WorkSafe and under the Radioactive Ores and Concentrates (Packing and Transport) Act and the product is tested for radiation levels and is known to be within allowable limits. Packaging and transport is in accordance with the Code of Practice for the Transport of Radioactive Substances. Members opposite are trying to create an issue when there isn’t one. We manage our own waste. We store it appropriately and transport it appropriately. Again, I re-affirm that we do not want to become a dumping ground for other people’s waste.
The member for Brennan concluded that because the Commonwealth is storing some tailings in a shipping container in its parks in Kakadu, the facility at the hospital must be dangerous. I refer him to Senator Nigel Scullion’s ‘state-of-the-art’ quote.
There would be nothing easier than for me, as Minister for the Environment and Heritage and the member for Arafura, to go into fits of outrage over the Commonwealth’s action. Unlike the CLP, I do not want to scaremonger and turn people away from Kakadu, but, yes, I give a commitment on record that I will take this issue up with the Commonwealth and we will deal with it, but I am not going to scaremonger.
We have heard the opposition try to suggest that decades ago, Bob Collins and Bob Hawke wanted a dump here. They have this bizarre logic that this means it is okay for the Commonwealth government to place it here. It does not. This legislation clearly says that we do not want anyone else’s nuclear waste, no matter who proposes it. This legislation makes that clear.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, from the day we announced that we were considering this legislation, the opposition has opposed it. Before they even saw the bill, the Leader of the Opposition called it a stunt. Since then, he has backed this up by calling it ‘Mickey Mouse’. The member for Brennan has been particularly opposed to it. He has called it a farce. The member for Brennan has also opposed this legislation because he claims a junior minister has carriage of it. What is his problem with the minister for environment, which I am, having carriage of legislation to protect our environment? We know that when you were in government, you treated the environment portfolio as a junior portfolio, as an annoyance that was in the way. We are protecting our environment seriously.
Last week, we saw the Leader of the Opposition flag that he wanted to strengthen the legislation. We were interested in what he had to say. If he had an idea on how to strengthen the legislation, then we were keen to hear it, although he had not sought a briefing. If he had an amendment that meant he would change his mind and support the legislation, we wanted to hear it. We need all members of this House to support this bill. However, it was not until late on Thursday that he tabled his proposed amendment to remove clause 5(1). Straight away, we knew that this amendment was likely to render the whole bill invalid. However, we sent it to the Solicitor General for his advice, and we now have that advice. Despite some of the voices over on the opposition bench saying that they did not see this advice, it was forwarded to the Leader of the Opposition.
I can advise that our legal advice, as the Attorney-General said before, is that the proposed amendment would completely sabotage the legislation. The advice that we have, as the Attorney-General said, is that the whole of the bill would be struck down. Either this sabotage was due to incompetence or was quite deliberate. Which one is it? The member for Brennan asked: ‘Why do you need this clause when it is not in other legislation?’ It is, and he knows that it is in other legislation. Yet he stood up here and said that this clause is not in other legislation.
Mr Burke interjecting.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: The same provision can be found in the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act. It can also be found in the Cobourg Peninsula Aboriginal Land, Sanctuary and Marine Park Act, and it can be found in the Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) National Park Act, and maybe there are others. The opposition knew this because they were the ones who introduced these acts when they were in government. So we see that what the previous government carried out as a matter of course is suddenly ‘a farce’ when this government does it.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it will not surprise you to hear that we will not accept the amendment. On the one hand, the opposition has feigned their support for our no nuclear waste position but, on the other, they seek amendments to our legislation that render it invalid. I wish I could say that this legislation will prevent a nuclear waste dump ever being located in the Territory. I cannot. We can be overruled. However, it is the strongest statement we can make, and that is why we have introduced it and why the opposition should support it.
Very early in the piece, as a number of members said, we were the ones who ran the campaign on this. They only have to look at the words that the member for Solomon first raised this when he said that we all have a responsibility as Territorians to the rest of Australia to store other people’s nuclear waste. This bill says we are not going to stand for other people’s waste being transported to or stored in the Northern Territory.
There are other comments I could address, but I will not. The member for Nelson’s comments are not worth a response because if I have ever heard a patronising message, standing on his pedestal and wagging the finger, and telling people what to do, that was it.
Motion agreed to; bill read a second time.
In committee:
Mr CHAIRMAN: The committee has before it the Nuclear Waste Transport, Storage and Disposal (Prohibition) Bill 2004 (Serial 243), together with Schedule of Amendment number 90 circulated by the member for Brennan, Mr Burke.
Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.
Clause 5:
Mr BURKE: Mr Chairman, I move amendment 90.
Members are aware that this amendment seeks to strike out clause 5(1), based on the opposition’s belief that the clause is unnecessary. It is clear that the government is not supporting the amendment.
I heard the comments from the Attorney-General about the Solicitor General’s advice. I was not aware of the Solicitor General’s advice prior to hearing the Attorney-General’s explanation. On hearing the Solicitor General’s advice, on the one hand, I accept the advice of a person of the status of the Solicitor General. However, given the fact that the government says that this bill is of such note and seriousness, I have never heard advice from the Solicitor General that is so brief.
I would have thought the Solicitor General would have given some case precedents as to where there is consistency or inconsistency with Commonwealth legislation, which was, as I understood it, his explanation that could render the whole bill invalid. I would have thought the Solicitor General would have been more definitive in giving examples of case precedents where that has occurred in the past.
However, the Solicitor General’s advice is sufficient for the government to object to the amendment. In the absence of any more explanation from the Solicitor General, I stand by the amendment.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Mr Chairman, in response to the member for Brennan, clause 5(1) recognises the unique constitutional position of the Northern Territory. Whilst the legislative powers of the Territory, under the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act are broad, we are subject to certain limitations. One such limitation is with respect to laws passed by the Territory’s Legislative Assembly that are inconsistent with the law of the Commonwealth.
While the Territory is not subject to section 109 of the Constitution, which deals with inconsistent state legislation, the High Court has determined that the Territory is subject to the same principles. However, in at least one High Court decision, this principle appears to have taken a step further, leaving some doubt whether the Territory Legislative Assembly has the power to pass inconsistent legislation.
For the benefit of members, I should point out the clause to which the opposition so objects is not new, and I said that when I was summing up.
In relation to the ACT, this issue was recognised and addressed in their self-government act. The Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act contains a provision almost identical to the one we are discussing here today.
The Northern Territory does not have this provision in its self-government act, as I assume you would know. When issues such as this arise, as you should also know it is necessary to insert a similar provision in Northern Territory legislation. When you said: ‘Point me to one act that has the same provision’, I did. The same provisions are found in the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act at section 71 and in legislation dealing with Nitmiluk and the Cobourg Marine Sanctuary.
Perhaps members opposite do not understand the law. I believe they do, and they know full well that removing this clause will stop our legislation from achieving its aim: preventing the Territory from becoming a national dumping ground for nuclear waste. As I said before, I only see their actions as a deliberate attempt to sabotage.
Mr BURKE: Apart from those accusatory comments, you can read well. I ask the question of the minister: you said when you quickly read that text that the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act is not subject to section 109 of the Constitution and the High Court has ruled on issues in the past. Do I gather from your comments that a challenge to our legislation by the Commonwealth would be subject to High Court action?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Mr Chairman, in response, yes, like any - hold on! It can be challenged, just like any other legislation introduced in this parliament.
Mr BURKE: Okay. So have we now reached the point that if my amendment was agreed to and the Commonwealth decided to act onerously and arbitrarily by establishing a disposal facility in the Northern Territory, and this legislation is intended to block Commonwealth action, are you telling me that the Commonwealth would have to go to the High Court in order to implement their aim?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: I will get some advice, but as far as I can see, no, but I will just get that checked. No. The member for Brennan surely will know that it is a fact of life in terms of the Northern Territory that the Commonwealth can override us at any time. We saw that, and you mentioned it in debate, with the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. The Commonwealth overrode that. So in answering your question, I said no. That is a fact of life; that is what we face here.
Mr BURKE: So what you are saying to me, therefore, is that for the Commonwealth to act against our legislation, they would have to do so by a new act of the federal parliament, similar to the way they acted against the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: What the Commonwealth did in the euthanasia case was amend the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act, and they did that to be able to override the Territory’s powers to make such laws.
It is entirely possible that the Commonwealth could legislate to override Territory law and that is a fact of life, as I have said, for Territorians and this parliament. Passing this legislation remains, as I have said previously, the strongest statement that we can make as Territorians - and if we are all united as Territorians and we keep standing in this parliament and saying we are here for the betterment of Territorians - that we do not want to become a dumping ground for national nuclear waste.
Mr BURKE: Minister, I am working from a very short statement from the Solicitor General that remains unclear to me, but are you saying to me that if this amendment were passed, this legislation would be invalid? Without any action by the Commonwealth whatsoever, it would be invalid legislation and, if so, why?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Answering your question, the Commonwealth has the powers to make laws in relation to the environment because it is a party to the International Convention on the Environment. It can then draw on its foreign affairs powers to make environmental legislation giving effect to these conventions. Where state legislation is consistent with legislation of the Commonwealth, this usually results in the offending provisions being struck down, and only where this is not possible will the offending legislation fail.
However, the Territory’s situation is different. Without the clause, the High Court has cast doubts on whether the Territory has the power to pass legislation at all in areas such as this where it is likely that the Commonwealth has legislated or may legislate for environmental protection. This clause protects the operation of the legislation. This clause is not needed in all Northern Territory legislation because the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act clearly sets out an area of Territory responsibility.
It is not unusual to put up a clause such as this in areas where legislative authority is shared with the Commonwealth.
Mr BURKE: I won’t pursue it. I will have to read the Hansard transcript and seek separate advice, but I won’t pursue any further.
Amendment negatived.
Bill agreed to.
Bill reported; report adopted.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Environment and Heritage): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a third time.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Madam Speaker, before we dispense with this legislation, based on debate that has occurred this afternoon, the government continued to make the assertion that the CLP supports some hypothetical situation that if the Commonwealth government wanted to put a radioactive waste facility in the Northern Territory, we will support it.
I would like to put it very clearly on the record that the CLP opposition would not support any action by the Commonwealth that could possibly occur in this regard. That is clear and unequivocal and has been in our situation right throughout. What we do not support is hypocrisy. Our arguments in this debate have been, and I do not wish to go over them again, that if the government wanted the debate approached seriously, they would have provided sufficient information for a serious debate to occur, and that information has not been forthcoming.
An example of the information the government should have provided is that included in all of the studies that have occurred, and I imagine this is just a small sample, since 1992 on an issue that has been raised since the late 1980s. I would have thought a government with any maturity and responsibility to inform Territorians would have included a background summary of what has happened on this issue over the years and led to the conclusion, logically, as to why the Northern Territory government opposes any suggestion in the future if it may arise as to why a nuclear facility should be located in the Northern Territory.
That information could have been provided. The arguments could have been made. The Territory public would have been informed and you would have reached the same result. Our argument is that this has been done in a farcical manner at the outset. The information provided to the opposition and the general public during this debate has amounted to nothing more than stickers in an election campaign. If anyone wants that to be taken seriously, they do not have the opposition’s support. That is what we have been objecting to.
I make the point that the minister took the opportunity to have a go at the member for Nelson’s contribution. It was the best contribution to this debate. He spoke in a mature fashion and raised issues of logic and substance that everyone should consider. I may not agree with the end result and the opposition may not agree with the end result, but at least he argued the far better case than the government.
What we have from the government has essentially been synthesised and summarised by the member for Millner: I am a Territorian, I was born in the Territory, I want to stay in the Territory and no one’s going to stick a dump in my Territory. Fine! That is his opinion, but that should not be the way this government presents legislation.
All the information is there. The sadness is that with all the resources available to government, this has taken me weeks to go to Commonwealth libraries, using the excellent support we receive from the Parliamentary Library Service, to get information. I can tell you I do not reckon one line in any of these books – books that have been out since 1992 and have had the carriage of ministers such as Simon Crean and our Ambassador for the Northern Territory, Bob Collins - that have proposed arguments where sites could or should be located. None of that information has been presented to this parliament by the government, yet you expect the opposition to take this debate seriously.
The member for Stuart said: ‘I have been up and down the Tanami and I can go to any community in the Tanami and I can tell you that none of them know anything about this issue’. Have you read the 1995 report, minister?
Dr Toyne: I asked them.
Mr BURKE: Well, I will tell you. The 1995 report …
Dr Toyne: I can tell you what they said to me because I asked them.
Mr BURKE: No. Well, the people may not have said this to you, but the 1995 …
A member interjecting.
Mr BURKE: I am talking about the responsibility of the government to present information responsibly and maturely for debate. In the 1995 report, which had …
Mr STIRLING: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The member for Brennan had an opportunity in the second reading to introduce this material. It is inappropriate in the third reading to be introducing material that was not covered in the second reading.
Mr BURKE: It was.
Madam SPEAKER: There is no point of order.
Mr BURKE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. This was all covered in the debate. If you had been in here or not asleep, you would have known, or at least been listening to the debate.
Dr BURNS: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The member for Brennan is reflecting on the presence or absence of a member in the Chamber.
Mr BURKE: I withdraw it. The issue is this: the Attorney-General, the senior law officer in the Northern Territory, rises to provide some substance and clout for this debate, and says that no-one in the Tanami knows anything about this. Bob Collins, the Ambassador for the Northern Territory who had carriage of this legislation and carriage of this report, makes comments about the Central Land Council’s position with regards to a site in the Tanami and a site at Bloods Range, and it is good reading because it says:
Words I am flat-out pronouncing:
It goes on for two pages. Then the CLC put in their submission on Bloods Range. The reality is that the sites that were identified in the Northern Territory, at the end of these studies, had very low priority from the Commonwealth. That is the point that the opposition has been trying to make in this debate. That is, when it comes to a government that suggests that we should approach this debate in a mature way, you have been absolutely derelict in your responsibility or duty to provide adequate information to the opposition or to Territorians about the history of this debate and about the very good reasons, apart from emotive reasons, why the Territory would not be a suitable site, based on the studies that have occurred, for any radioactive waste material at any time in the future.
It is all there, and I am quite confident that whether it is a Labor government or a Howard government, the first they would be going to is this sort of information and not the information that has been provided in this debate by the government.
It has been a disgrace. I reckon the member for Nelson has it right. We could have approached this debate in a mature way, but government played politics from the outset. It is still playing politics today, and the minister, quite frankly, has been a disgrace in the way she has carried it.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, I will add a few comments. The logic of leaving the section the member for Brennan tried to have excluded goes like this: I am going to let you punch me; that way, you cannot assault me. That really is the logic of that clause.
Now we have legislation that basically says the Commonwealth can do whatever it likes and, that way, they cannot roll our legislation over. So if we give the ground in the first instance, they cannot invade us. That is really the absurdity of this legislation. It is not worth the paper it is printed on.
The second thing is that the organ that this government has chosen to use to send a message, the minister’s own word, is the wrong organ. The law, and the member for Nelson had it right, has a function to maintain good order for the people of the Northern Territory. This bill undermines itself in clause 5(1).
If the parliament of the Northern Territory wanted to send a message to the Commonwealth government, the organ that they should have used and is available to this government is a motion. We have sent, as a parliament, motions to the Commonwealth government on numerous occasions. We have sent remonstrances, there are two on the Parliamentary Record, as well as motions even quite recently in relation to what the Commonwealth government has or not provided for roads funding. That is how you send a message.
It would have been a much more convincing message if the words of the motion could have been captured that were acceptable to both sides of this House and perhaps even to the member for Nelson, depending on the words of the words of the motion, by which the whole parliament could have sent a message to Canberra.
Of course, that is not the intention of this legislation. The intention was a political stunt. We now have a political stunt as a law of the Northern Territory. I am becoming concerned about this government’s pedestrian attitude towards things like legislation. The member for Nelson referred to it as being ‘sacred’. Perhaps I would not go so far as ‘sacred’, but it needs to maintain integrity to be taken seriously.
Legislation is relied upon by the courts and by people to stand as a beacon to provide direction for them in our community. If we start to temper or in any way water down the legitimacy and integrity of the legislation that we pass because of stunts that we are trying to pull, it will not be too long before we become a laughing stock. I urge members of the government to consider and reconsider that as a matter of priority because the integrity of legislation is all that stands between us and, basically, social oblivion. I urge the government to stop using legislation as a vehicle for political outcomes.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
Continued from 19 August 2004.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Speaker, there is a degree of media hype about this bill and, once again, it has been full of government spin. The Attorney-General said in the Northern Territory News on 16 August 2004, and I quote:
He then went on to talk about terrorist organisations. On ABC radio on 16 August 2004 …
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! This morning, the minister explained about his hearing difficulties. I have perfectly good hearing. I am having trouble with it. I have never heard her speak like this before and I wonder if it is a game.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Araluen, speak a little louder.
Ms CARNEY: I have a sore throat, Madam Speaker. Fat man!
Mr KIELY: Madam Speaker, how often do we have to put up with this trite, petulant person in this place?
Dr Burns: It is harassment.
Mr Kiely: It is harassment! In a workplace, I would have her. Madam Speaker, I ask for your protection against her petulance.
Dr Burns: And harassment.
Mr ELFERINK: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, would you just withdraw that. Withdraw it!
Ms Carney: I withdraw, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Stand up and withdraw it! Do it correctly!
Ms CARNEY: I withdraw it, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Now, continue your speech. Continue your speech in a big voice!
Ms CARNEY: On ABC radio on 16 August 2004, the Attorney-General referred to the laws introduced to confiscate proceeds and said:
The law he was referring to …
Dr TOYNE: Madam Speaker, I am sorry, I just cannot hear her.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, we cannot hear you. I am sorry, but you will have to speak louder than that.
Dr TOYNE: I am sorry. I am not trying to make things difficult.
Ms CARNEY: The law he was referring to was the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act introduced to parliament on 18 June 2002.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, cease for a moment. I am sorry. I cannot hear you. I do not think the member for Macdonnell can hear you. You are just really going to have to raise your voice.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, may I make a suggestion? It is not a breach of standing orders for a member to approach the dispatch box and if the member for Araluen has a sore throat …
Madam SPEAKER: Do you have a sore throat, member for Araluen?
Ms CARNEY: Yes, Madam Speaker.
Mr ELFERINK: If she has a sore throat, then perhaps the matter can be dealt with …
Madam SPEAKER: Do you have a sore throat? Is there any reason you cannot project your voice?
Ms CARNEY: You question as to whether I do have a sore throat, Madam Speaker? If I say I have a sore throat, I have a sore throat, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Sorry, I am having difficulty. What did she say? Does she have a sore throat? Okay. Would you like to come to the dispatch box, which is unusual, but at least it will give the minister a chance to hear what you are saying.
Dr TOYNE: Thanks very much for that.
Ms CARNEY: The law he was referring to was the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act that was introduced in parliament on 18 June 2002.
When the Attorney-General introduced that bill, he said that those laws would deter those who were thinking about criminal activity by reducing the possibility of gaining from that activity. He also said it would prevent crime. Clearly those measures have not worked insofar as crime still exists, even though the government says that it does not, and clearly it has not deterred those who are thinking about criminal activity.
The spin was that there were new powers being given to seize assets. The power is already there. So although there are some new aspects to the bill, the political packaging was a rehash of what was done nearly two years previous to that.
Under the act that was introduced two years earlier, there is also power to seize assets such as in section 10(2). The bill does actually contain some new powers and the Attorney-General outlined them in his second reading speech, which was quite different from the pre-publicity.
So now that we have dispensed with Labor hype, we can see exactly what the bill contains. The bill’s genesis is a national summit with Labor leaders where leaders wanted to deal with money laundering. A national response was desired and agreed to. A bill was drafted and, I gather, all Labor leaders consented to it. In many ways it is a straightforward bill, although there are some differences from the provisions that already exist in relation to seizing assets. Not wanting to upset his colleagues from interstate, Labor in the Territory has agreed to it and now produces it.
One question, however, is how significant is money laundering in the Northern Territory. When asked on ABC radio, the Attorney-General referred to the Hells Angels and other organisations and other groups. I ask: to which other groups does he refer? The Attorney-General, when asked who was going to be doing the investigating, said:
If the government is serious about this and thinks it is a problem, how has the problem been identified and what infrastructure and resources are going to be put in place to support and enforce the operation of the bill? Those questions have not been answered by this Attorney-General.
There was also a reference in the media to terrorist activities. People tell me all around the Territory that they are more worried by drunks on the streets than terrorists.
In conclusion, it appears that the bill is produced partly because it is important in other Labor states and the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Labor Party has to keep in sync. That is evidenced by general powers to seize assets including money already being in existence. No detail or anything resembling a commitment to putting infrastructure in place to actively support this bill or its objectives has been mentioned by anyone in government.
Finally, in light of the spin that preceded the introduction of the bill, it is clear that government has used this bill to tell people that it was coming up with new initiatives that would prevent crime. That is what they said when the bill was first introduced two years ago, the objectives of which were to prevent crime. Government has failed and has, once again, been dishonest with the electorate in the communication of the aims of this bill.
Madam Speaker, some would say there is a certain pointlessness about the bill. However, the CLP does not see the need to oppose it.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, that was difficult, I am afraid, and I am sorry to hear that the member has a sore throat at the same time as I have a hearing impairment, but I believe we managed to pick up the points that were being made.
First, I welcome the support of the opposition. This is filling a clear gap in our Criminal Code. We have receiving offences in the current code, but I was quite surprised to go through the code when we were developing this legislation and find that there were no money laundering offences in our Criminal Code in any form.
This bill inserts a new section 23 to Part VII and creates Division 3A which, for the first time in the Territory, deals with offences of laundering activities.
To pick up a couple of points that were made by the member for Araluen, the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act, section 6, Forfeiture Offence, will apply to resources that are identified as part of money laundering investigations. If a resource has been shown to be connected to either a crime or the planned commission of a crime, they will come under the provisions of the act and will be forfeited to the Crown.
In respect of resourcing implementation of these provisions, as we do with any legislation, if the police indicate that they need additional resources to apply these provisions and investigate crimes under them, we will have a look at it.
On the point about this being some sort of national Labor held agenda, we have already seen the Commonwealth, which is not Labor and, unfortunately, will remain that way, as well as Victoria and Western Australia enact similar money laundering provisions. Other jurisdictions are moving to do it, too. I clearly identified in the second reading speech that this is a national process. There is a joint working group that has developed model provisions that we have mirrored in this bill. The idea is obvious: many of these types of offences are national in scope and we want to have uniform legislation around the country to deal with them.
I can assure the member that there is nothing in this bill outside the national provisions that are being promoted through the national process. We hope that the effectiveness of the provisions will be enhanced by doing that so that we have common ground for the various police services around the country to act on this type of offending.
Madam Speaker, I have dealt with the points made by the member opposite and we should proceed on that basis.
Motion agreed to; bill read a second time.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a third time.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Speaker, I lay on the Table the Public Accounts Committee’s Annual Report, 2003-04.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Speaker, I move that the report be printed.
Motion agreed to.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the paper.
I am pleased to table this 18th Annual Report of the Public Accounts Committee. A focus of the committee this year has been the opportunity for members to concentrate on consolidating their knowledge of the ongoing implementation of full accrual based accounting within the public sector.
In addition, the committee sought to inform itself of the rationalisation of the government-announced procurement reforms.
Both of these areas have a major whole-of-government impact, and it was essential that committee members be provided with the opportunity to question the most senior public servants from within Treasury, the agency that has full responsibility for procedural changes. The Under Treasurer, Ms Jennifer Prince, and her executive officers provided the unfettered advice committee members sought. Mr Michael Martin, Deputy Secretary, Department of Corporate and Information Services, headed the witnesses who kept members informed on the implementation of accrual accounting.
Public Accounts Committee members again formed the core committee in the Estimates process. Public hearings were held from 8.30 am to 11.30 pm, Tuesday, 22 June through to Thursday, 24 June 2004. Committee members also formed the Government Owned Corporations Scrutiny Committee, with a public hearing on Friday, 24 June, at which senior representatives at the Power and Water Corporation were questioned.
The committee report, incorporating issues from both the Estimates Committee and the Government Owned Corporations Scrutiny Committee, along with all tabled papers and answers to questions taken on notice throughout the public hearings were tabled in the Assembly during the evening of Friday, 25 June 2004. Debate in this Assembly immediately following was an opportunity for all members to air their opinions on the process, and there is no need to revisit those issues at this time.
The committee is one of the sponsors of the Northern Territory Public Sector Annual Report Awards. An invitation to participate in the adjudication process is always provided to the committee, and the member for Millner stepped up to that role for the latest awards. From the strict view of the Public Accounts Committee, it is pleasing to note that this year, the adjudication panel was of the opinion that the reporting of governance and performance is on the improve.
While I am on my feet, it would be remiss of me if I were not to make special mention of the role the previous Auditor-General, Mr Mike Blake, played in providing briefings to the committee. The committee has been a key player in the interview process for the selection of an Auditor-General, and prior to his untimely resignation on 30 April 2004, members have received invaluable contributions from him by way of written and verbal briefings, even to the extent that when the committee sought a special one-off audit within the Office of Public Employment and the record-keeping processes surrounding the termination of CEOs and executive officer contracts, Mr Blake was able to accommodate the request into his already busy work schedule. His report into this matter permitted the committee to sign off on the very important report it tabled in the Assembly on 26 February 2004. Mr Blake was always prepared to place information before the committee, which he considered could provide members with a lead to areas they could give serious consideration for further investigations.
As Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I take this opportunity to thank Mr Blake for the professionalism with which he approached the working relationship between the Office of the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee. I also wish him well in his new role as Auditor-General in Tasmania, although with the commotion down there just recently over the resignation of the Governor, I imagine Mr Blake would be wondering if the career move was a wise decision.
As I mentioned briefly before, the Auditor-General has an important role to play in the committee reaching its final conclusions in its report on Termination Payments for Chief Executive Officer and Executive Officer Contracts. This report was of a particularly sensitive nature, and the committee took the decision to look at termination payments during the last 12 months of the previous CLP government as well as the first 12 months of the current Labor government. I will not go into any detail about the finer points of the inquiry because that was covered in depth during debate in this Assembly when the report was tabled on 26 February 2004. Suffice to say, this tabling saw what was the first truly bipartisan report lodged by this committee for quite some time, which is a long way removed from the constant tabling of dissenting reports that have accompanied nearly every committee report in the past.
Those are all the points I have to make in tabling this annual report. I have enjoyed the total bipartisan approach by committee members, and look forward to new challenges in the future. I also place on record the effective administrative support provided by Legislative Assembly staff who work within the Committee Secretariat.
Debate adjourned.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, I rise today to table a report entitled The Assessment of Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource and Management Systems within the DEET Central Australian Office.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, this report comes about as a result of representations made to me by individuals in Central Australia regarding matters of concern to them.
I have used the opportunity afforded by the Public Sector Employment and Management Act, section 18(3), to order this report. Under that section of the act, as minister responsible for public employment, I can receive a report into the organisational effectiveness of workplaces. Under section 18(4) of that act, I am required to table the outcomes of these reports for the parliament, and am doing so today within the time frame required.
The report pulls no punches. It gets to the heart of a number of serious concerns raised by individuals in Central Australia and deals with organisational shortfalls in the operations of the Central Australian DEET office and the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment. It does not make pretty reading. However, it does not just dwell on the past; it provides a way forward to better operations.
In December 2003, I asked for a report to be prepared into the DEET Central Australian Office and provided a deadline of March 2004. As people were leaving the Territory on annual Christmas leave, it was felt we needed someone on the ground quickly. Ms Marli Wallace of Bandt, Gatter and Associates was brought in to provide the assessment.
Initial work on the report was completed before the required March 2004 deadline. However, in affording natural justice to all involved, and in the interest of ensuring the report did not provide personal information outside of the necessary public reporting requirements, the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment sent a copy to DEET and sought views and input. As the report also mentioned their office, they, too, provided comment on its findings.
Following input from the agency and bearing in mind privacy and natural justice considerations, the material was re-presented to Ms Wallace for further examination and writing. That was the appropriate thing to do. I am prepared to accept criticism for the length of time the process took before I will compromise natural justice to employees. Since that time, final discussions have been held between OCPE and DEET and the report was presented to me last week.
The report does highlight issues of concern. It is not my intention to enunciate all of these today, as they are laid out in the report for members to read. However, I feel I should comment in a general sense on the outcomes presented. It is clear that the consultants believed that the organisational effectiveness of the Central Australian office of DEET has been compromised. The report refers to themes apparent during the review.
Summarising, these include a lack of leadership in the DEET Office in Central Australia; the lack of a culture of valuing and supporting staff; a lack of focus on service excellence, active communication and fair and consistent dealings; idiosyncratic approaches to policy and procedure as well as inconsistent and untimely human resource management practices; a lack of understanding of human resource management; a lack of consistency within DEET in bringing human resource management polices and procedures up to date with best practice; the lack of a team approach; the need for clarity of role definition and accountabilities across the whole organisation; the drifting of workers compensation and rehabilitation cases; and insufficient resources in the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment devoted to dealing with grievances.
The report details some of the poor outcomes that have occurred as a result of these identified themes. More importantly, it proposes a series of reforms that the author believes need to be undertaken to remedy the issues raised. Action is already under way to address the issues identified in this report. Leadership positions in the Central Australian office have now been clarified; the positions have been spilt and advertised. An ECO3 General Manager position, and an ECO2 General Manager, Schools position are now in place. The roles of each position are quite clear and laid out in the job description. It is expected that the leadership position of the General Manager will make the Central Australian office more focussed as a team and provide it with a greater level of decision-making power.
Reporting arrangements have changed. The General Manager will report directly to the Chief Executive and all positions in Central Australia will report to the General Manager. I am very pleased to say that the extremely efficient and capable Ms Rita Henry has won this position. The Central Australian office has a reconfigured layout and new work groupings.
A back-up position at AO8 level will be relocated to the Alice Springs office for a period of 12 months to assist the new General Manager in making organisational. In addition, a senior human resource position has been allocated to the Central Australian office. This position is one of four relatively new senior HR positions placed across the service as a whole to improve human resource management in DEET. The agency has also introduced across the whole of the system improved case management systems, procedures, practices and protocols.
The Office of the Public Employment Commissioner has also made changes to its operations. Early intervention in grievances and strategies to overcome bullying have become key factors in system-wide changes that should impact favourably on the situation in Central Australia. The Office of the Commissioner of Public Employment is also assisting in building human resource capacity across all agencies. Communications are being improved with information on grievance and appeal processes in particular being strengthened. In a situation peculiar to Central Australia, the Office of the Commissioner of Public Employment has also addressed a potential conflict of interest where an OCPE officer had the job of facilitating grievance cases as well as reviewing events and processes undertaken in those cases. The option of a separate officer undertaking the reviews into personnel cases will now be available at all times.
Madam Speaker, there are other issues to discuss in this report and I will take that opportunity at another time. Today, I wish to table the report for members to examine.
The Chief Executive of DEET is today in Alice Springs discussing the report with staff. The union was briefed yesterday afternoon. I say to the union that I doubt whether there has ever been a more comprehensive report or concerted level of action into a specific office. Unfortunately, we cannot change what has happened in the past, however we can learn from mistakes made and we can move forward to ensure that they do not happen in the future. This report gives us the way forward.
Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the report and I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later time.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): In relation to the motion by the minister to seek leave, Madam Speaker, the minister slipped over to this side of the House just before he spoke, and I misunderstood what he was going to do. I thought he was talking on the PAC report when he was speaking to me so I apologise for any confusion.
Obviously, we will take this report and have a look at it. I agree with the minister seeking leave to continue his remarks at a later date.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, my apologies. I thought the member for Macdonnell clearly understood why I went to see him about the possibility of the shadow being here because it was about DEET, but we understand.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): No sleight or anything, Madam Speaker. I was unaware that this was coming up. I had not received advice of this up until a moment ago. There is no problem with proceeding at a later date.
Leave granted.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, I rise today to provide the House with an update on the Northern Territory’s mining industry. In this statement, I will look into the status of various mining projects around the Territory by commodity and then I will talk about the exploration scene more generally since exploration licences in the Territory are granted to explore for all minerals, although most companies will, of course, have primary target commodities.
Mining is the most significant industry in the Territory, accounting for 21.9% of GSP in 2003, and averaging 21.3% per annum in the past five years. Although alumina production is classified as manufacturing, it is estimated to account for a further 2% of GSP.
Mining is a highly capital intensive activity with low employment relative to other industry sectors. Nationally, mining accounted for 5.2% of Gross Domestic Product but only 1% of employment in 2002-03. Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 data report resident Territory mining industry employment of 2400 in 2002-03, while the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development estimates employment of 4400; 3300 in mining and 1100 in oil and gas. The variation reflects differing methodologies and classification. For example, the treatment of employees undertaking construction and transport activities, but also suggests that a significant number of workers reside interstate, that is fly-in fly-out.
Let me now turn to mining projects by commodity. First, bauxite and alumina. The Gove Peninsula hosts the world-class Alcan bauxite and alumina mine. In July this year, the Northern Territory government approved Alcan’s Environmental Impact Statement, paving the way for a 90% increase in alumina production. On 9 September, 2004 Alcan Gove Pty Ltd formally announced that it will invest approximately an additional A$2bn to expand its alumina refinery. This expansion will increase the refinery’s alumina production capacity from two million tonnes per annum to 3.8m tonnes by 2007, with the potential for additional capacity in the future through continuous improvement. The expansion will occur within the existing special mining leases for the refinery and the associated bauxite mine. The investment will be in new technology and processing equipment to be installed on-site.
The premise for the expansion is the continued use of fuel oil, with the potential for conversion to natural gas if and when it becomes available. Conversion to gas would contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of alumina by approximately 24%.
Honourable members would be aware of the joint proposal by Alcan and Woodside to take gas from the Blacktip gas field in the Bonaparte Gulf to Gove via the trans-Territory pipeline. This proposal was recently outlined in detail in the House by the Chief Minister so I will not dwell on it again today.
The Territory can expect to benefit from both the construction and operational phases of the Alcan refinery expansion through, among other things: the creation of approximately 1500 to 1700 construction jobs during peak operations; additional gross state product to the Northern Territory economy of $90m per annum; and the potential for Territory businesses to secure significant construction and servicing contracts, with tenders to be awarded on a competitive basis.
The significant environmental benefits of the expansion include: improved resource use, 10% improvement in recovery of alumina from the ore; 25% reduction in residue generated per tonne of alumina produced through improved digestion technology; improved energy efficiency by 4% through additional stationary calciners; and a 25% reduction in caustic consumption and a 75% reduction in soluble caustic waste per tonne of alumina via a new liquor purification initiative.
My Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development is working closely with Alcan to update the company’s Gove Mining Management Plan to take into account the expansion proposals.
Turning to manganese, just as the Territory hosts a world-class bauxite mine, so, too, does it host the world’s largest manganese mine, the GEMCO mine on Groote Eylandt. The mine can produce in excess of 2.5 million tonnes annually, 15% of the world’s requirements, and has shipped over 50 million tonnes since 1966. The mine provides direct employment for 300 people and generates a further 150 Australian jobs. The mine’s yearly contribution to the Territory’s economy is very significant: over $30m in wages and on-costs; $38m in taxes, royalties and charges; $6m in capital improvements; and $30m in contracts.
Last year saw a record high production level at GEMCO of 2.5 million tonnes of manganese following several years of production between 1.4 and 1.9 million tonnes. This rise in production was largely attributed to significant increases in Chinese steel production. This increase is expected to continue in the near term, and will provide an opportunity for companies such as GEMCO to further increase manganese production, and we saw recent announcements regarding GEMCO’s intentions in that regard.
Also on the manganese scene, we see the fledgling, but nonetheless regionally important Bootu Creek manganese project operated by Bootu Creek Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary of OM Holdings Ltd, which is a major world player in the steel industry for which manganese is an essential ingredient. The proposal is to develop an open cut manganese mine approximately 110 km north of Tennant Creek and 10 km east of the Stuart Highway. A mineral lease over the deposit was given occupancy approval on 10 September 2004 following negotiations between Bootu and the Northern Land Council concerning Aboriginal land and native title compensation issues.
Bootu intends to mine the manganese and truck some 400 000 tonnes per annum of crushed manganese ore some 60 km west to the Alice Springs to Darwin railway line, before railing it to the port in Darwin for bulk shipping to export markets. Bootu is the first mining company to seek bulk mining product transport and shipping using the new railway and port infrastructure.
This is leading the development of capacity, which it is hoped will be the forerunner of further similar export proposals. The government is facilitating this project to ensure that the new mine can operate in a safe and environmentally efficient manner and that the infrastructure meets the project requirements.
Gold exploration and mining has been a mainstay for the mining industry in the Territory for many decades. Newmont’s operation in the Tanami region of the Northern Territory employs over 700 workers, 70% of whom live in the Northern Territory. Indigenous employees account for between 12% and 15% of the work force.
For a mine in such a remote area, some of its financials are impressive indeed. As at the end of 2003, $150m has been spent on capital investment, $200m on exploration and $62.8m on royalties. The company has had substantial success in increasing its resource base through an aggressive exploration program and is still spending in the order of $10m a year on exploration.
Honourable members will recall the recent passage of the Tanami Exploration Agreement Ratification Bill during the last sittings of the Assembly that will provide Newmont with a stable, long-term framework in which to conduct its exploration over the next 10 years.
At Tom’s Gully, Renison Consolidated Mines NL is aiming to establish an underground mining operation producing 400 000 ounces of gold per annum, with processing being done at the company’s refurbished Tom’s Gully CIL gold treatment plant. Subject to a final decision to mine and development funding, underground mine development and refurbishment of the CIL gold treatment plant is scheduled to commence in the fourth quarter of this year, with initial gold production expected in the first quarter of 2005. The company announced on 28 September that it had entered into a Heads of Agreement for the provision of underground mining contracting services, which is obviously a significant and welcome step forward for the project.
Northern Gold NL recently announced that the Burnside Joint Venture, 50% Northern Gold and 50% Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd, had acquired the Union Reef Gold Project from AngloGold Ashanti Australia Ltd. Anglo closed the mine last year following the exhaustion of available ore reserves. This $4m acquisition adds substantial value to the joint venture, and makes the Burnside Joint Venture the largest tenement and mining asset holder in the Pine Creek region. The Union Reef Gold Project is located approximately 50 km south of the Burnside Joint Venture’s Brocks Creek and Cosmo Deeps mining areas, and approximately 20 km north of the Burnside Joint Venture’s Pine Creek mining leases.
The Union Reef Gold Project contains a well-maintained 2.8 million tonnes per annum CIL gold plant and all related site infrastructure. They will now form the primary treatment facility for the Burnside Joint Venture’s extensive gold resources. These resources will undoubtedly be increased following the joint venture announcement on 27 September of excellent results from a recent drilling program at Cosmo Deeps, one of the joint venture’s portfolio prospects.
Concurrent with the acquisition, the Burnside Joint Venture has sold its one million tonne per annum Brocks Creek gold plant, on care and maintenance since 2000, to Tanami Gold NL for $850 000. Tanami Gold has itself had recent success in discovering gold at Coyote and Larranganni in the Tanami region.
Arafura Resources NL welcomed the announcement by the Burnside Joint Venture regarding its purchase of the Union Reef plant. The plant is located within easy trucking distance from Arafura’s planned gold mining operation at Mt Porter, and the nearby highly promising Frances Creek high grade gold vein system. Arafura believes, and I certainly endorse the view, that it is excellent news that the Union Reef Mill will stay in place, and that the project has been purchased by a dedicated gold mining group with long term plans for the Pine Creek gold field.
Burnside is aware of Arafura’s activities in the region, and I understand there have been preliminary discussions about toll treatment opportunities. Arafura has lodged a Notice of Intent to commence mining at the Mt Porter ore body, and is awaiting the necessary approvals.
Drilling has also commenced at the Golden Honcho section of Arafura’s Frances Creek gold project, where the company has recently announced an encouraging result.
At Mt Todd, Pegasus Gold Australia Pty Ltd, as mortgagor, entered into possession of the mine and sought to sell the mine as a going concern to recoup unpaid monies. When this attempted sale was unsuccessful, Pegasus sold the assets piecemeal by auction in 2001. The government is managing the environmental situation on-site by accessing the remaining security bond funds and utilising equipment on-site that was purchased during the sale of assets by Pegasus.
DBIRD is currently in year three of a five year water management program on-site, and has successfully limited discharge from the mine site to periods of high water flow in local creeks and rivers, and has successfully reduced the current standing water in all ponds to safe levels. Pegasus, in attempting to sell the remaining Mt Todd assets, is negotiating an agreement for the sale of the mineral leases and some nearby exploration licences. The government will seek detailed plans for future management of the Mt Todd mine site before agreeing to the transfer of the leases to any future owner.
The resurgence of mining at Tennant Creek, largely at the hands of Giants Reef Mining Ltd, has provided a significant boost not only to the town’s economy, but its overall wellbeing. Giants Reef has a long-standing commitment to the town of Tennant Creek. The company’s operations are benefiting the town in many ways, including employing local residents with suitable skills, utilising the service of local businesses with suitable capabilities, and assisting organisations and businesses to build capacity in the region
In addition, Giants Reef regularly sponsors various community organisations around Tennant Creek. The company’s future planning involves the support of a regular passenger transport air service to Tennant Creek, rather than exclusive charter for Giants Reef personnel. Giants Reef is also actively engaging indigenous contractors to undertake future planned works within the organisation.
Also in Tennant Creek, we have the Peko Rehabilitation Project, which is essentially a tailings re-treatment project, whose target commodities are gold, copper, cobalt and magnetite. This project was recently given approval to move from being a pilot project into full-scale operation. The magnetite plant is due for commissioning about now, with additional plants for the extraction of the gold, copper and cobalt due to be installed during 2005. Employment during full production will be around 30 jobs.
Giants Reef and the Peko Rehabilitation Project have been, as I said, a much needed and significant shot in the arm for the Tennant Creek community. It would be remiss of me if I did not, at this point, acknowledge the supporting efforts of the member for Barkly in getting those projects off the ground. In the case of Giants Reef, where the government provided a development assistance grant, the member for Barkly has worked tirelessly in support of the project, and I congratulate him.
I turn now to base metals. Since its development in 1993, the McArthur River Mine has progressively introduced numerous improvements that have resulted in cost savings, increased production and improved zinc recovery. Since commencement of concentrate production in May 1995, McArthur River Mine has produced 2 618 574 tonnes of concentrate for export to the end of December 2003. For the financial year 2002-03, the value of the concentrate was around $A150m. Over the past year, world demand for zinc has increased, zinc commodity prices have increased, and world stockpiles have decreased. For many zinc producers, this is good news. However, due to the particular composition of its concentrate, McArthur River is having difficulty selling all its product. There are now only seven smelters remaining in the world that are able to process its concentrate.
Mine owner, Xstrata, proposes a change from underground mining to an open cut operation. Under the proposal, an almost threefold increase in the production rate will reduce unit operating costs, and provide access to a much larger resource which would increase the likely mine life. Xstrata is currently undertaking an internal review of a number of aspects of the expansion proposal, after which time, probably by the end of this year, the draft EIS is expected to be submitted to government.
At Ranger uranium mine, total sales to date have exceeded A$4bn. Ranger supplies around 8% of the western world’s uranium demand. Ranger’s product is sent to countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, all of which have bilateral safeguard agreements with Australia. All uranium oxide from Ranger is used to fuel nuclear power plants for generating electricity.
Energy Resources Australia employs around 200 permanent employees, with approximately 20% of the Ranger work force represented by Aboriginal people, of whom 44% are from the local region. Mining is the single largest employer in the area, accounting for 37% of the employed labour force. To the end of December 2002, ERA paid a total of A$189.2m in royalties. Total capital cost of construction of the mine amounted to approximately $388m, including the expenditure on the town of Jabiru.
Honourable members would be aware of recent water management problems at the Ranger mine. On 30 August 2004, the federal Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, outlined a process of auditing ERA’s compliance with the recommendation of two reports by the Commonwealth Supervising Scientist relating to the Ranger mine and processing plant. The auditing process requires ERA to meet certain conditions by 10 September, 31 October and 31 December 2004.
The first audit was conducted on 13 September, and the auditor subsequently advised ERA and the federal minister that they were satisfied that the conditions required by the Commonwealth to be met by 10 September had been fulfilled.
Honourable members would also be aware that complaints had been lodged by the Territory for breaches of Northern Territory legislation. However, since those matters are before the court, I do not propose to go into any details here today.
An exciting new and regionally significant venture in the Northern Territory is Olympia Resources’ Harts Range Garnet Sand Project. This project is, to me, made more exciting by the fact that it involves the production of a new commodity in the Territory, garnet sand and a garnet hornblende product which has excellent qualities for abrasive blasting.
This Central Australian deposit is one of the world’s largest known and highest quality deposits of this material. Olympia has been provided with the guidelines for a Public Environmental Report, which is expected to be lodged before the end of the year. The company is proposing to commence production during the second quarter of 2005.
Initially, the project will involve the production of 200 000 tonnes of garnet or garnet blend for export to Singapore with other regional markets likely to follow. The company is in discussions regarding the use of rail transport to Darwin to allow shipping from the East Arm Port. The project is anticipated to involve about 30 mining, processing and transportation jobs and Olympia has shown a strong commitment to indigenous employment, sourcing workers from local communities.
Beyond the glitter of gold, the dazzle of diamonds and, dare I say it, the allure of alumina, there are the ‘essential extractives’, the very building blocks of our society. Whilst time prevents a detailed look into the extractive industry here today, I acknowledge the industry’s important contribution to the community.
By necessity, this industry must source its material in close proximity to its markets, which often brings it into conflict with urban sprawl. This government has endorsed the Territory Extractive Industry Policy, which provides the framework in which the industry operates and will work with the industry to ensure its sustainability into the future.
Neither does time permit my detailing the current status of other potential projects and proposals such as Brown’s Polymetallic, Batchelor magnesite, Merlin diamonds or Nolan’s Bore rare earth.
I do, however, Madam Speaker, want to take a few minutes to talk about exploration. Exploration is the foundation for future mining activity, and is essential if the industry is to continue to develop and generate employment and revenue opportunities. Globally, there is intense competition to attract exploration expenditure. Exploration is an essential early phase in the economic development of mineral and petroleum resources for the benefit of Territorians. Private businesses and governments undertake complementary exploration roles.
The Northern Territory’s share of Australian mineral exploration expenditure has varied over the years between 6.1% and 10.1%. The level of overall mineral exploration in the Northern Territory follows a similar pattern to the rest of Australia. Exploration activity increased rapidly for gold in 1987-88, base metals in 1989-90 and diamonds in 1996-97. Exploration declined steadily after 1995-96 before stabilising after 1999-2000.
The Northern Territory has large prospective and explorable areas distributed across eight mineral provinces collectively covering about half of the Territory. The remaining half has various potential for petroleum and non-metallic mineral commodities such as diamonds.
Improving the Northern Territory’s competitiveness for mineral exploration and processing requires a combination of responses to exploration supply and demand challenges. Measures by the government sector to improve exploration competitiveness relate to knowledge of mineral prospectivity, land access and property rights in the Northern Territory, and corporate efforts nationally on key exploration inputs such as training, research, technology, data, taxation and legislation.
Through the Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources, the Northern Territory is contributing to the National Mineral Exploration Action Agenda. Through this government’s Building the Territory’s Resource Base package, we are providing industry with pre-competitive geoscientific data on which to base investment decisions and working at improving access to land.
These measures are necessary but, by themselves, not sufficient to ensure the expansion of exploration activity in the Northern Territory. A clear demonstration of that fact can be found in the latest ABS report on Mineral and Petroleum Exploration Expenditure. The report shows that despite the increased number of granted exploration licences in the Northern Territory and the excellent work being done under Building the Territory’s Resource Base, the Territory sustained a 13% fall in the level of 2003-04 exploration expenditure over the previous year’s figure.
Madam Speaker, NT exploration expenditure suffered a consistent and steady decline from $93.8m in 1995-96 to $47.6m in 2000-01. We then saw an arrest to this decline and a slight upturn over the next two years, with expenditure at $48.5m and $49.0m for 2001-02 and 2002-03 respectively.
These latest figures obviously represent a setback, which we will examine closely in partnership with the industry through our regular joint meetings with the Minerals Council Executive. However, the commercial commitment by private explorers is and will remain largely driven by company financial decision-making processes as well as global economic conditions and the associated demand for minerals.
These dynamics are beyond the influence of the Northern Territory government. However, the Northern Territory can constructively inform itself of relevant economic and mineral outlooks so that government and industry can jointly position themselves to exploit evolving opportunities.
In the same way, we need to keep our legislation under review to ensure that it remains contemporary and appropriate. In that regard, a formal review of the Mining Act has commenced and a comprehensive discussion paper will shortly be released to guide wide-ranging stakeholder consultations. The review will look at the types of titles issued, recent land tenure developments, and the interaction of the act with other Territory legislation. As I said, the discussion paper will be released shortly and I encourage all interested parties to contribute to the review.
I want to make it abundantly clear to honourable members that our efforts to provide a competitive environment for the exploration and mining industries in the Northern Territory will not be at the expense of our regulatory responsibilities as is evidenced by the action I referred to earlier against the operators of the Ranger mine.
The outlook for mineral exploration is cautiously positive. The global economy and mineral commodity demand are strengthening. Title applications are flowing through the native title processes. Title holders are reporting increased expenditure on Aboriginal freehold land. Pre-competitive geoscience data is flowing through to explorers and progress continues in the improvement of community relationships and titles administration processes. However, clearly, considerable potential for exploration expansion remains.
As I said earlier, time constraints prevent me from including in this statement every single development currently taking place in the exploration and mining industries. Rather, I have sought to provide members with a general overview and update on our most important industry, an industry that continues to underpin the government’s priorities of regional development and jobs growth.
Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the statement.
Mrs MILLER (Katherine): Madam Speaker, this is my first day as shadow Minister for Mines and Energy and, whilst I have not had the opportunity to obtain a briefing, I am very happy to be able to respond to the statement.
Mining is, without a doubt, a most significant industry to the Territory and has contributed to the development and sustainability of rural towns such as Tennant Creek, Jabiru, the McArthur River region and, until approximately six years ago, Katherine with Mt Todd. Mining has had a large financial impact on all of these regions.
The economic contribution to the Northern Territory has been from two areas: minerals or hard rock mining; and oil and gas exploration. Mines in the Northern Territory that have major mine status are GEMCO, Alcan Gove, Ranger, McArthur River, Groote Eylandt, and the Granites in the Tanami. In addition, we have one mine of smaller status: Giants Reef near Tennant Creek, which employs approximately 80 people. The size of the major mines, their scope of work and size of their work forces are such that three of these mines substantially contributed to our economy.
The smaller projects are important, too, such as Tennant Creek with the mining of gold and copper. The potential for the future is recognised with signed agreements with the Central Land Council for further exploration work.
A concern for the future is that in 10 years time, the Territory could be down three major products in GEMCO, Alcan and The Granites. It is on public record that Ranger’s ore body will be depleted around 2009. It is a complicated project to get up, but assuming that Ranger Jabiluka does not go underground, that mine may well come to an end.
The Greens candidate, Ilana Eldridge, who stood in last weekend’s federal election, wanted Ranger to close after the election if she had any say. Thank goodness she does not. I wonder how the 340 workers at Ranger would have felt about being put on the dole.
McArthur River Mine presently has big expansion plans, and they employ 350 people who live exclusively in the Northern Territory. McArthur could be another mine closed in 10 years, but I hope not.
Where will the industry be in 10 years time? From the time that the exploration licence is given until the decision is made to mine, there is an eight to 15 year time frame. Explorer’s licences are issued for six years, with two by two year extensions.
At present, there are four exciting projects on the go: Bootu Creek north of Tennant Creek, which mines manganese; Garnet Sands project at Harts Range, producing garnet sand and garnet hornblende; Frances Creek near Pine Creek, producing gold; and Territory Iron Project, also near Pine Creek. If all of these projects get up, it will be great. Two of these products are industrial minerals, the Bootu manganese and Garnet Sands projects, which means that these minerals do not command the higher prices, but that, nevertheless, does not diminish their importance to the Northern Territory.
We in the CLP recognise that there are issues that need to be addressed in the mining industry in the near future. Export levels have dropped off 39% in the last five years as we only have five major mines. Money being spent on the ground is diminished, and there are land issues to do with Aboriginal land rights that are impeding future exploration and mining. Rio Tinto has either farmed out tenements or ceased exploration. De Beers have all but left the Northern Territory, AngloGold have ceased exploration and production has finished, and BHP is doing but a smidgin of exploration.
It is not only the senior explorers who are having success in geological finds. Yes, there are junior explorers in the Northern Territory who often have the most exciting and interesting finds. I will use the example of someone who those in this House would know, and that is Mark Creasey. Mark’s work is testament to the substantial fortune to the mining industry, and he is well known for his geological finds and for his humbleness.
In the area of environmental polices, I know that the mining industry does not support an EPA. The industry has submissions before the committee at present. The Coastal Marine Strategy has come to a standstill since November last year when there was a change of Labor ministry positions. This is bogging down industry and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. I am advised that the industry would welcome being engaged and involved in discussions to further the Coastal Marine Strategy to its conclusion and its implementation.
I am also aware that the industry is concerned, but quite positive, about an Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan, but this is, again, another issue with which the Northern Territory government needs to deal.
Additional challenges that the mining industry face include a shortage of mining engineers. There are not many people coming into mining engineering these days, and that presents a challenge to mining in the future. It is also difficult to recruit and retain workers to remote locations in the Northern Territory, and we need mining engineers, tradespeople and human resource personnel, among others, to work in these locations to ensure their success.
I understand from industry that there is currently a review of the Mines Division’s Minerals and Energy Group. My understanding is that the consultancy engaged did not go through the tender process, which seems to be a regular practice by this government. I believe that this consultancy is between $50 000 and $80 000. I am at a loss to understand why the minister has sanctioned this consultancy when the whole process was previously carried out by respected consulting engineer, David Lee. This current review is destabilising to the department and makes it difficult for the bureaucrats who are doing a great job.
On a positive note, I compliment the government on the continuation of the geoscience program. The government has a role and responsibility in collecting geoscientific data, for example mapping and aerial surveys to determine where mineral deposits are. The Northern Territory Geological Survey Division has an excellent record. The first round of funding for five years of $16m was under the previous CLP government. We saw the benefits of geoscientific data to encourage competitive exploration. This current round of funding only came about after extensive lobbying.
Executives of a mining company personally spoke to the Chief Minister and the previous Minister for Mines and Energy to express their support for the continuation of funding. I also understand that the government role in providing geoscientific data is pivotal to enticing major mining companies to the Northern Territory for exploration. Another positive outcome for mining is the potential to use the railway to transport freight from their site to Darwin for export, which enhances the viability of the rail.
Now to an area that is close to my electorate: Mt Todd. Mt Todd has had an interesting life, to say the least. It is always difficult for governments to give the go ahead for mining production, and decisions need to be made that will benefit the community. I acknowledge that industry and government have to work together to achieve the best outcomes for the majority. Mt Todd, through partnership with the traditional owners, the Jawoyn, and local industries, did wonders for the economy in Katherine. Employment for locals, including training for unskilled workers, created a buoyancy in Katherine throughout the life of the mine.
I can assure you that there were no happy faces when it closed. The demise of Mt Todd came about because of a drop in gold price. The yield was less than one gram per tonne, and the rock was exceptionally hard, which was extremely tough and unkind on equipment and led to high overheads.
Mt Todd No 2 had its downfalls through corporate manoeuvring. We all hope we have learnt a lot through environmental protection and management. Mt Todd is still a known resource, and we know that there is gold there. We have to find a way through sound environmental practice to, maybe one day, have Mt Todd No 3 and have Katherine humming again with benefits flowing from mining activity.
In conclusion, I acknowledge the flow-on benefits of the mining industry in the Northern Territory. While employment is low in relation to other industries, infrastructure and capital investment is enormous. The flow-on effect in taxes, rents and royalties cannot be underestimated.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I look forward to briefings with the minister’s department during the next few weeks, and expanding my knowledge in my new shadow ministry of Mines and Energy further.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of my colleague’s statement on the mining industry in the Territory, because he is a tremendously enthusiastic supporter of mines and the mining industry in general, and it certainly shows in everything he says and does.
I welcome the comments, in a positive light, by the new shadow spokesperson for mining, the member for Katherine. I wish her well in her new responsibilities because it is an important industry to us all.
We all agree that the outlook for mineral exploration is cautiously positive, with global economy and mineral commodity demand strengthening. That is good news for us all. However, critical to developing these opportunities is the need for a ready and skilled work force, and industry and business ready to provide services and goods for large projects across the Territory.
Under the Jobs Plan, this government has in place a sound strategic framework for employment and training, training initiatives for skills development for workers, and employer incentives to assist companies to build on their work force. We are working with industry and with business to skill our young people and to upskill our work force in areas that support the mining industry in the traditional trades and the support industries of hospitality, administration and business.
Much of this planning is strategic, but much of the work is also operational. The Employment and Training Division of DEET is working across a wide spectrum of projects to ensure the maximum number of Territorians will benefit from both the construction and operational phase of projects such as the Alcan refinery expansion. I am pleased to bring the House up to date with a few examples of the activities that we are undertaking to support employment in the mining industry.
In relation to Alcan, DEET has developed a labour market supply and demand analysis for construction of the Alcan refinery camp expansion and day-to-day operation of the construction camp in Nhulunbuy. This analysis indicates 380 jobs able to be filled by local Territory labour, 490 jobs could be filled by Territorians with some upskilling and short-course training, and 110 jobs are considered to be in deficit that could not be trained for in time and will require skilled migration into the Territory. They are not bad numbers, Madam Speaker: 380 up-front; 490 with short course training; and just 110 in deficit. For a project of that magnitude, they are terrific figures. That sort of planning for jobs for major projects has never been done before in the Northern Territory to that level of detail.
The GEMCO mine on Groote Eylandt provides direct employment for 300 people. I am pleased to advise that Employment and Training is to conduct a Futures Expo on Groote Eylandt, the first ever expo for Groote. It will provide the three communities with an insight into what jobs are available and what training opportunities exist to win those jobs. The initiative is strongly supported by GEMCO, which is an active participant in the expo.
The regionally important Bootu Creek Manganese Project operated by Bootu Creek Resources will develop an open cut manganese mine approximately 110 km north of Tennant Creek. A Darwin-based consultant has been engaged to facilitate their employment needs. DEET has offered to assist with identification of opportunities for traineeships and appropriate training programs, including prevocational courses and with funding for training as and when required.
Newmont’s operation in the Tanami region of the Northern Territory employs over 700 workers, 70% of whom live in the Northern Territory. Indigenous employees account for between 12% and 15% of the work force. Newmont is currently running a pre-employment program for local indigenous people. DEET has had several meetings with Lester Davis, the Manager of Learning and Development, and Victor Rigney, Indigenous Employment Advisor from Newmont Australia to identify appropriate training programs. DEET is currently working with Newmont to register their program on the National Training Register. Newmont is funding the initial program, with DEET offering financial support should there be a transition to traineeships and apprenticeships.
Giants Reef has a long standing commitment to the town of Tennant Creek, employing local skilled residents, utilising the services of local businesses, and assisting organisations and businesses to build capacity in the region. Officers from the Employment and Training Division of DEET have met with representatives from Giants Reef to discuss training and employment opportunities for local Territorians. Giants Reef Mining Ltd is funding the training at this time, but if further funding is required, it is available from DEET for apprenticeships and traineeships to enhance the capacity of local people to take up those jobs.
The Peko Rehabilitation Project in Tennant Creek is a project recently given approval to move from being a pilot project to full scale operation. Employment during full production will be around 30 jobs. DEET has had several meetings with Chris Savage and Howard Blizzard from the Peko Rehab Project. They have been provided with information on funding and training programs that they can access as the project moves into operation.
The Olympia Resources Harts Range Garnet Sand project has been provided with the guidelines for its public environment report which is expected to be lodged before the end of the year. The company is proposing to commence production during the second quarter of 2005. The project is anticipated to involve about 30 mining, processing and transportation jobs. Olympia has shown a strong commitment to indigenous employment, sourcing workers from local communities. I also advise that Olympia is negotiating with the Central Land Council and the local community in regard to employment needs. DEET field staff are in contact with the community and the Central Land Council and will assist with funding for training as the needs are identified.
At a recent mining meeting that included representatives from Giants Reef, Peko Rehabilitation Project, Central Desert Enterprises, ExacMin, the Central Land Council and the Northern Land Council, Territory Construction Association and the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development, DEET advised of funding available and training packages that may be most suitable to develop training programs tailored to meet the needs of the individual organisation.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, we are having success in building our work force in the mining industry. We will continue to work with industry and business to see where we need to build and what we need to do to train for skills for the future to make sure this most strategic industry for the Northern Territory has a continuing supply of skilled employees.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to address one facet of the minister’s statement, and that is the extractive industry because it is predominant in my part of the world. It is one area that does not receive enough attention.
There is another industry in conjunction with the extractive industry, and that is quarrying. It was not mentioned in the statement. It is one very important facet of mining that needs to be looked at. If you are looking for an example, you just have to look at the triple road trains that are coming from Mt Bundy every day to the wharf. They are bringing granite boulders from Mt Bundy to the wharf to cover the pipeline. That is mining; it is quarrying and it is an important part of our industry. I am not sure that the minister mentioned it, but it is a fact of life that we are increasing that type of activity in the rural area of Darwin. It is a major part of development for the Territory.
In fact, I went to a Palmerston Regional Business Association meeting where there was some discussion on the gas field at Sunrise. When I asked ConocoPhillips if the existing pipeline would be sufficient to take gas into Darwin, Blair Murphy, the manager, said: ‘No, there would have to be another pipeline’. If there is going to be another pipeline, a lot of rocks will have to be dug out of Mt Bundy. It is a big industry, all right, and it is worth a lot of money to the Territory.
Mr Vatskalis: Yes, and jobs.
Mr WOOD: Yes, jobs. I am not in any way denigrating that fact, minister. I wondered whether it is something that slipped passed the people who put this statement together and I thought I would mention it.
The extractive industry goes hand-in-hand with quarrying. I should also mention that quarrying is a very important industry from the perspective of the road building sector. Sealed roads rely on good surfaces and much of the rock for roads is crushed in areas around Robertson Barracks. I think Pioneer still has a crushing plant there, although maybe the minister could update us on the lifespan of that quarry considering that the Army is going to use it as a training area. I know they have a lease over some of the area. I would be interested to know from the minister how long rock can be extracted and crushed in that area. I hope they can continue to operate from there for a long time because the more we have to travel away from the main centres to mine materials, the more costly it is to deliver them.
In relation to extractive industries, that is gravel and sand, I have said before in this House that they are an extremely important part of the development of the Northern Territory. No road or house in Darwin or Palmerston could be built without them. It has been said before that 32 tonnes of sand are needed to build an average-sized house in Darwin. That is a lot of sand. With the growth of houses in Palmerston, you can see that there is a large industry to supply the building industry of the Territory.
The process for developing our extractive mineral areas should be far more open. I realise that there are advertisements in the paper, but with the ongoing development of subdivisions, both urban and rural, and the effect of extractive industries in those areas, the process of how future extractive areas will affect the environment, road infrastructure and where people live requires examination. It is high time that the future growth of this industry is opened up to more public scrutiny.
I know the minister mentioned the Territory extractive industry policy, but I have not seen the policy and I imagine it is for the industry. It is time that we had an overall look at what effect the extractive industry has on the Darwin rural area because it is from there that most of this material comes. You have heard before that I am not particularly rapt in the concept of scraping the guts out of Darwin Harbour to supply gravel for various projects around Darwin. I believe there is plenty of other land on which that could have occurred. Be that as it may, it has occurred.
That raises the issue of rehabilitation. Whether it is in the centre of the harbour or in the rural area per se, we have a history of poor rehabilitation of many extractive mining sites. I wonder whether it is also time to discuss whether there should be some small royalty paid for every cubic metre of gravel or sand that is extracted. After all, most miners do not pay a large amount of money for their lease. Of course, they have to pay a large amount of money for a truck, and they have to pay fuel and wages, but if the material that they gain has no value to it, is that a realistic approach to the development of an industry that does leave us with various issues like rehabilitation and repairs and maintenances on road infrastructure? Should we really be looking at putting a value on the gravel and sand that is removed from these areas?
You certainly would not want a charge that would mean that there would be a high cost increase in the price of housing, but then if we are not charging for that material, are we basically having an artificial price on housing and other infrastructure? I believe we need to look at some way of repairing some of the land that has been damaged in the past, where very little control was placed on what happened after the miner left. I believe that some sort of charge would be well worth putting in a trust account and spending it money on rehabilitation.
The other issue in relation to rehabilitation is whether we can use the land for other purposes. Much of the sand that is extracted in the rural area of Darwin is usually in wet areas, and I see no reason why those wet areas could not be developed into lagoons. Some of them are done by accident, but there should be a lot more thought go into whether we could, instead of having a patch of sand being developed here and a patch of sand mined here and a patch of sand mined there, whether the whole area should be mined and then basically re-shaped into a wetland. I know some of the sand mines that were developed years ago have done exactly that, where paperbarks have come in and taken over, where some of the trees were left so that there was a seed base. There are opportunities for that to occur.
In the case of gravel, which usually leaves a fairly barren piece of land after it has been scraped, even though there have been many attempts to try and rehabilitate gravel scrapes, and usually what you get is grass rather than trees, whether some of that land would be better cleared and used for fruit trees like mangoes. I know there are lots of mangoes around at the moment, and perhaps we should not be increasing the oversupply of them, but we know mangoes will just about grow on any soil surface. Perhaps there is an opportunity for land that has been scraped, instead of being left there in a basically unproductive state to be used for things like mangoes. Perhaps the land could be sold at a reasonable price to encourage people to use land that would otherwise be of very little value.
I thought I would say a few things on the extractive industry. I know you have two paragraphs on it. It would be interesting to see the value of extractive mining in the Northern Territory. I do not think I have ever seen any figures in relation to that, yet is such an important part of our development. It would be useful to see what it is worth.
On to other issues, I noticed there is going to be some work at looking at hot rocks in the Northern Territory. You sent me a letter recently saying that the government is going to look at whether we have suitable granite in the Territory where there may be the possibility of looking at geothermal technology. I have mentioned this a number of times before, and if people have ever been looking at this issue, they might know that in Innamincka, a company called Geodynamics, which is a private company, with some help from the Commonwealth, is drilling holes down three or four kilometres into hot rocks in the Innamincka area. They have successfully now drilled two very deep bores and it is hoped that they will be able to do a trial run on seeing whether they will be able to produce steam or heat which will drive electric turbines.
The last thing, minister, which is an aside, is that you spoke about manganese from the Bootu mine coming to Darwin on the rail. I am interested to know what environmental precautions will be taken when the manganese reaches the port. I gather the manganese is going to be dumped some kilometres back from the port proper. It is a very dusty material. Will there be any environmental controls over loading and unloading of that material so it does not have a detrimental effect on the surrounding environment or, on a very windy day, it does not drift further than that towards the city of Darwin? That is one of the issues with manganese: there can be environmental issues when it is in a fairly dusty and dry state. I thought I would raise that issue, minister, and see if you have any comment.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, we all know that the mining industry is an extremely important industry for the Northern Territory. We know that there have been some new mines opened in Tennant Creek, and now Bootu north of Tennant Creek, which is great. Mining, as long as it is done environmentally sensitively, will continue to be a major earner for the Northern Territory. Hopefully, it will also help employment, especially for Aboriginal communities, if it is done properly. I know the minister will say that a record number of exploration licences have been issued in the last few years. What we need to see now is whether those exploration licences are going to turn into mines. That is the key to whether we have turned the mining industry around.
Mr HENDERSON (Business and Industry): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I, too, commend my colleague on his statement this evening.
I am passionate about the mining industry in the Northern Territory, and was very proud to be mining minister early on in this term of government. It is an industry in which I have worked. As a fitter by trade, I worked for 10 months in my early 20s at EZ Mines at Rosebery in Tasmania. When I came to the Territory in 1982 or 1983, I spent some months working at the then Nabalco plant at Gove.
Having worked in the industry and had an opportunity to be minister for the industry, I am passionate about it. We are heading for exciting times in the Northern Territory. Global growth in demand, particularly out of China where there is insatiable demand for resources, is certainly going to create opportunities in the Northern Territory. At the end of the day, it is the markets and the value of those resources in the marketplace that will ultimately drive investment. We can see, through the grant of the 700-odd exploration licences in the Northern Territory, that investment is slowly starting to return.
On the back of the demand growth out of China, and a fairly strong global economy, we can see major projects in the Northern Territory. We have had the Alcan announcement of the massive expansion in Gove a few weeks ago. GEMCO on Groote Eylandt has increased output significantly, predominantly as demand grows out of China. In respect of McArthur River Mine’s new owners, Xstrata, we are waiting on a decision to be made there, but, again, given prices and demand out of China, one would have to be hopeful. There is huge investment elsewhere in the resources sector with the Darwin LNG plant under construction. There will, hopefully, be a decision on Sunrise at the end of the year which will see further huge investment in the Northern Territory, down to the smaller projects such as Giants Reef, Bootu Creek, Olympia Resources and a number of others.
I am pretty excited about the future of the mining industry in the Northern Territory. As a government, we will continue to work with the Territory and, very importantly, Aboriginal people who have title to 50% of the land so that we can be an attractive place for investment. Ultimately, those exploration licences will deliver mines if there are resources to be found. However, that is no guarantee in this industry.
The industry employs some 3500 people directly in the Northern Territory, and operational expenditure in the Territory totals over $400m annually. Our service and supply sector stands ready to meet the challenges ahead in support of exploration activities and mining developments throughout the Northern Territory.
Many opportunities, as I said, are emerging for Territory business to participate in the major mining developments that are occurring throughout the Territory. We have, as a government, a range of measures including the use of industry participation plans and support for the Northern Territory Industry Capability Network in seeking to access those opportunities and foster growth, capacity and capability of Territory business that support both exploration and mining development.
My colleague talked about the importance of exploration. We know that the sort of lead times we are looking to between getting on the ground in the first phase of exploration, hopefully discovering a deposit and then investment and lead time to development and operation of a mine of any substantial nature is up to 10 years, so it is important that people get out on the ground today.
One of the highlights of this term of government is the grant of over 700 exploration licences because without those people on the ground exploring, we are not going to have mines in the future. It is important to develop partnerships with government, industry and the owners of the land. Through those partnerships will come trust and, hopefully, through trust will be working arrangements, working agreements and confidence to invest.
One thing that is guaranteed to be a detriment to investment in the Northern Territory is a climate of distrust and antagonism towards traditional people and their title over land. Nothing is more certain to get lawyers involved and to lock people out of land than to have that 50% of the land and the people who own that land not trusting of process or industry in respect of rights to explore and discover resources and deposits that will be developed to the benefit of everyone in the Northern Territory, and certainly for the companies and their shareholders.
A couple of years ago I was talking to the new Australian CEO of Newmont, one of the biggest operators in the Northern Territory. He spoke at length about the company philosophy, for which he is responsible, of embracing people’s rights - not only indigenous rights, but the rights of communities around any proposed mines, the conservation values, and that as an industry, the industry needed a community licence to operate and to expand. Unless people’s rights were at the heart of any corporate entity, then their future investment and return on investment and growth and earnings for their shareholders was at risk. It was great to talk to the CEO. I cannot think of his name this evening, but to have that philosophy at the corporate heart bodes well for that company and for the Northern Territory.
Exploration’s value to the economy in the Northern Territory is approximately $50m annually and slowly rising after a decline over the last few years. Much of this expenditure occurs in the regional centres of Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, and the service and supply industries are developed in those areas. Examples of companies directly benefiting from the support required by field exploration teams undertaking seismic studies, drilling or bulk sampling include BHP Billiton-backed Mithril Resources Limited, which is exploring for nickel in the Barrow Creek area; Merlin, Towana and Elkedra, exploring for diamonds; and Tanami Gold’s exploration program including Coyote and Kookaburra deposits in the Tanami desert - Tanami holds exploration permits totalling approximately 72 000 km2, making them the biggest permit holders in the Northern Territory. All of those companies out there are exploring; they are all spending money in our local economies and regional centres.
Another great forum every year to bring service and supply industry together with the mining industry is in Alice Springs with the annual Mining and Petroleum Supply Seminar. This seminar, which was recently held in Alice Springs, showcased the strength of the Alice Springs and Tennant Creek mining region. Presentations were made by existing operating mines and new developments, including Tanami Gold, Giants Reef, Newmont, Mithral Resources, Arafura Resources, Olympia Resources, along with the following supply companies: FreightLink, IM Training, G&S Transport, and DBIRD’s Indigenous Business and Industry Services unit.
Over 80 people attended the seminar and the feedback from attendees indicated that the standard of presentations and information they contained was well received. Overall, it is a fantastic event that is becoming a fixture on the annual calendar of events in Alice Springs. That is really where government can add considerable value; by bringing the exploration and mining companies together with potential service and supply companies and provide a forum for people to talk about their needs and capabilities. Partnerships will ultimately develop, and that is what has happened in Alice Springs.
Newmont’s Tanami operations produced 629 000 ounces of gold in 2003-04 and currently produces 430 000 ounces of gold annually. As the Territory’s biggest gold producer, it contributes significantly to the Territory’s economy. Newmont spends over $145m annually in the Territory from its Tanami operational budget. Importantly, $100m of this is spent in the Alice Springs supply and service sector. That is of huge importance to the Alice Springs economy.
Work over a number of years by my Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development, the mining sector and the local people in Alice Springs has resulted in that figure being minimal supply out of Alice Springs to over $100m. Just two years ago, the figure was $80m, so there has been a further $20m per annum is spent in Alice Springs over the last couple of years.
Alice Springs has established itself as the hub for Newmont’s Tanami operations. The balance of the Northern Territory spend, about $45m, is spent in the Darwin region. Seventy per cent of Newmont’s 700 employees involved in Tanami operations reside in the Territory, about half living in Darwin and half in Alice Springs. I would like to give Newmont a big rap; they are a great corporate entity in the Northern Territory with a real commitment to the community in which they operate. That investment and commitment to the Territory is paying dividends to the company, which is doing a fantastic job.
Moving from one end of the gold mining sector to the other, Giants Reef is another outstanding company. My colleague spoke about our government’s support for Giants Reef and getting them up and running in Tennant Creek. They are one for the battlers; a small mining group that has low recovery costs and strong local participation. About 50 employees are based in Tennant Creek. That is 70% of total employment at the mine.
Being a small company, local supply and service support is important and this means that Giants Reef spends almost $1m in Tennant Creek, $1.4m in Alice Springs and over $2m in Darwin. Again, this is a big boost to Tennant Creek and its economy. I was pleased to officially open the Giants Reef Mine last year. I, too, pay tribute to my colleague, the member for Barkly, who has been a huge supporter of the mining industry in his electorate. He is absolutely passionate not only about Giants Reef, but Bootu Creek, the Peko Rehabilitation Project and other exploration activities in the electorate. With a local member like my colleague backing the mining industry in the Barkly region, they can only forge further ahead.
Again, it is great to see that Giants Reef is the only listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange with its corporate head office in Tennant Creek. That is not only a wonderful thing, but a great Trivial Pursuit question.
The Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development’s Indigenous Business and Industry Services Unit has had a major impact on the level of indigenous employment in the mining industry. Since 1997, it has aided in the growth of indigenous participation from 3% to a level of around 15% to 20% indigenous employment in the Northern Territory’s mines. We still have a way to go, but that figure is very encouraging.
An undervalued benefit of local indigenous employment is that it can reduce the dependence on fly-in-fly-out operations and reduce staff turnover and, obviously, costs to companies. An example is ERA, which until recently had a 40% turnover, which has been improved with greater levels of indigenous employment. That is a challenge for our education and training industry in the Northern Territory, and the mining industry, to see more indigenous people employed in our mines that are in the remote parts of the Territory. It is a work force that has the capability of meeting the needs of the industry, and we all have to work together to build skills so people are job ready or at least training ready to take advantage of the jobs that are opening up across the Northern Territory.
The government’s Building NT Industry Participation Policy Framework also provides for industry participation plans together with our funding for the Industry Capability Network. These two policy areas are improving awareness of the capability and capacity of the Territory’s supply and service sectors, thus creating opportunities for Territory business to participate in major projects. Industry participation plans have been submitted or are in preparation for the following major projects: ConocoPhillips’ Darwin LNG Plant and Bayu-Undan Pipeline; the Vopak Darwin Fuel Terminal; Blacktip gas field development; Alcan Gove expansion, and the trans-Territory pipeline.
A number of other proponents of proposed projects have also been briefed, and they are encouraged to prepare industry participation plans. The industry participation plans commit project proponents and prime contractors to engage with the Northern Territory government and the Northern Territory Industry Capability Network to develop strategies to inform Territory business of upcoming opportunities.
Supply and service opportunities will be further enhanced, particularly in the regional centres of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, by two projects likely to proceed in the near future. We have heard about the Bootu Creek manganese project, a very exciting project, which is 120 km north of Tennant Creek, which will produce 500 000 tonnes of manganese ore per annum. To help facilitate the export of this ore, government has committed to provide bulk loading facilities at East Arm Port. A key benefit of the project is the increased employment it will create in the Tennant Creek area.
My colleague spoke about Olympia Resources. We are hoping for an announcement soon about development of the garnet sand deposit held by Olympia Resources. Arafura Resources’ Nolan’s Bore Rare Earth and Phosphate project also provides future growth opportunities. Time does not allow detailed discussion of these projects, but the opportunities for Territory supply will be significant.
The mining industry has long been a dominant part of the Territory’s economy, and the overall value of the industry to the wellbeing of the economy is huge.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I commend my colleague for the statement today. I place on the record my personal thanks and acknowledgement of the work of many of our public servants in the Department of Business and Industry and Resource Development, the old Mines and Energy Department, who for many years have worked to benefit investment in the mining industry in the Northern Territory. They are a great bunch of people who are held in high regard in the industry. I commend the statement to the House.
Mr BALDWIN (Daly): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I, too, commend the minister for this statement. Like the minister for business, I congratulate and commend the hard work of the Mines and Energy public servants and all those involved in the mining industry, some of whom I know very well and are very close to me.
I will raise one issue with the minister for mines. I am sure he is aware of it, bit I wish to put it on the public record. He has mentioned the Pine Creek gold assets. I hope he is fully aware of what is going on in Pine Creek in respect of the old Chinatown area. The minister is nodding his head, so I suspect he is fully aware. I raise the issue because I want to ask the minister for mines, along with the Minister for the Environment and Heritage to go post haste to Pine Creek and have a look at what government is doing in relation to the potential for stopping a very valuable mining industry that could and should take place in that area.
I am not going to mention names. There were names in the minister’s statement. However, the fact is that in the old Chinatown area of Pine Creek, an area once populated by Chinese miners, there are a few objects of heritage value left. It was once a substantial little town that apparently had roadways and temples and so forth. It is definitely a place of heritage significance to the Northern Territory. However, since those days, it has been both mined for the last 100 years and had major encampments there during World War II by Defence personnel.
The Minister for the Environment and Heritage recently placed an Interim Conservation Order over about 30 hectares, mainly over the old Chinatown area, which has caused a lot of nervous concern to the people of Pine Creek. Anyone who knows the mining industry knows that since the closure recently by AngloGold of their operations in Pine Creek, the town’s economy has taken a substantial downturn and the population is falling. Mining is their game, apart from strategies for tourism. Mining is their core staple, and they are pretty concerned that this Interim Conservation Order will stop the possibility of the new joint venture proceeding with an important component of their projected development, which could mean a substantial loss of perhaps 100 jobs and a fairly big revenue turnover for that town’s businesses picking up all the associated attributes that go with mining in respect of economic and social development.
One could say that it is the right thing to do, to impose an Interim Conservation Order over what could be a significant heritage site. I thought perhaps that was the case until I had a good look at the area. I was fortunate to be in Pine Creek very soon after it was declared by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. There is definitely at least one object worth preserving and that is the stone oven built by the Chinese quite some time ago. There is a place where a Chinese temple once stood and, if you did not know what you were looking for, you would never find it. The remnants of what was there are in a very poor state. In fact, there is a bit of concrete on the ground that could be for anything. There are some grave sites that have supposedly been exhumed, and that requires further investigation. However, the point is it is like a moonscape. There is nothing that depicts what was once there in a substantial way.
Irrespective of what assessment the Minister for the Environment and Heritage has been given about the heritage value of that place, she needs to personally, along with the mines minister, look at this on the ground. I am sure the mining company involved has been in contact with the environment minister and, I hope, the mines minister. I do not care what sort of briefs you get in your ministerials about this area; you really need to have a look on the ground. I am sure the mining personnel, the good people you have in your department, could take you there and show you, along with the conservation and heritage people.
Minister, you need to advocate on behalf of the mining industry. It is a great dynamic when you have a mines minister and an environment minister sitting in the same Cabinet room talking about an issue like the one before you. You need to strongly advocate for the mining industry. She will advocate on conservation and heritage, but please do not do it until you have a look on-site at what is going on, and what it is that may be saved.
I know the company has offered to relocate the stone oven, which is a real issue in itself, because when you talk about heritage objects, the heritage people like those things to stay in their natural place. In this case, please weigh up the economic values against those heritage values. Save what you can and do not put the economic and social benefits of what has been proposed behind those of being able to save the heritage.
It was interesting, minister, just for your information, that I was at the polling booth all day on Saturday at Pine Creek; they have a static booth there. From eight until six, I sat there alongside one of the local townsfolk who had a big display board and a petition. He had ‘Vote 1 for Mining’ on his display board. As I was canvassing every constituent, he was also canvassing them to sign his petition. So you and the government will be receiving a petition, I am sure, in the not too distant future.
As part of the minister’s October Business Month, there is a dinner in Pine Creek tomorrow, the guest speaker at which is a senior officer of the Office of the Environment and Heritage. The minister should not leave him unprotected tomorrow night. I know this fellow. He is a great guy and he will stand up for the job he does, and so he should. However, he is going to walk into a situation where he will not have direction from his minister, except that the minister has ordered this Interim Conservation Order. It would be a great thing if the minister could give him some lead as to what he should be telling the town folk, many of whom will be at the October Business Month dinner. They want to have their say about local business in Pine Creek.
Minister, you need to grab your environment minister and jump in the car. It is less than a couple of hours if you like the open speed limits on our highways. You should go there and check this out because it is very important, and it is important to do it quickly. You talked about the two million tonne capacity of the plant they have down there and all of that, which could be in jeopardy if something is not done about the Interim Conservation Order.
Whilst talking about Pine Creek, it is great to see the local assay company doing very well. It has been based in Pine Creek for a long time, has employed many people over the years, has had its ups and downs and waned in and out, but is picking up much local business including down to Tennant Creek and opening a new operation there to service many of the companies mentioned in your report. I congratulate him for providing that service. He has quick turnarounds, quicker than just about any other assay company in Australia, and that is a great thing in the Northern Territory. It is wonderful to offer mining companies quick turnaround on their assays so that they can punch that information into their formula for where they operate next and how they carry out their mining operation. It is good to see that company doing well. I am sure the minister for business, who knows this person well from past interludes with him, would also congratulate him for his business.
Minister, I leave that concern with you. It is a concern affecting everyone who lives in Pine Creek, and could affect a very large joint venture project.
Dr TOYNE (Central Australia): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I support the minister’s statement on the status of the Northern Territory’s mining industry.
As a member of this government and Minister for Central Australia, I am well aware of the economic importance and benefits that the mining industry brings to the Territory and to Central Australia.
It must be acknowledged that the mining industry is a leader in increasing employment and training opportunities for indigenous Territorians living in remote areas. I commend organisations such as the Indigenous Mining Enterprise Task Force and its members on the fantastic job they do in encouraging these opportunities for indigenous people and communities.
I enjoy it every time I meet the young blokes who went through my school in Yuendumu and hear stories that they bring back from occupying some of these mining jobs. The say how well they are treated, not just with respect, but the skill development and support is terrific.
Of all the mining projects around the Territory mentioned by the minister in his statement, I am most aware of the gold provinces in the Tanami Desert region, which is in my electorate of Stuart. I have previously spoken in the Assembly about the contribution of Newmont in the Territory’s desert region, and I reinforce the important contribution of mining to that region.
Over the past 20 years, about $200m has been spent on exploration in the region by North Flinders, Normandy NFM and now Newmont. Newmont has already made capital investment of over $150m in Tanami operations, with processing and mill facilities at both The Granites and Tanami mines. It employs over 700 people, many of whom are based in the Northern Territory. Since commencing operations, the mines have had dealings with in excess of 600 Territory businesses.
Together with another 64 people employed in oil and gas projects in Central Australia, this is a total of 26% of the Northern Territory’s minerals industry work force located in Central Australia. Mining makes a significant contribution to the economy of the Territory through direct expenditure as well as wages. In 2003, Newmont reported they had spent approximately $265m doing business with companies in Alice Springs, and a further $117m in Darwin.
It is also pleasing to hear from the minister the ongoing developments of the Tennant Creek region, namely through Giants Reef Mining Limited, Peko Rehabilitation Project and Bootu Creek manganese project. I commend the Giants Reef Mining Company for their strong commitment to Tennant Creek and the region. It is through this long term commitment that local people and businesses can survive and grow with the flow-on benefits from the mine. It is certainly great news for our economy.
To assist with developing the economic opportunities that flow from mining, the Martin Labor government recognises the need to improve remote road networks. We have already committed to a $5m upgrade of the Tanami Highway. We will continue to fight hard for the Territory to get more infrastructure dollars out of the Commonwealth government.
As we all know, the future of the mining industry lies with exploration. As the minister mentioned, there are a number of measures needed to keep mining explorers in the Territory. The need for strong agreements such as the Tanami Exploration Agreement is essential in giving developers some certainty. The Tanami Exploration Agreement also demonstrates the need for establishing good, long-term relationships with indigenous people and their representative bodies such as the land councils.
Our Building the Territory’s Resource Base package will assist the mining industry further. These are the types of policy measures and relationships on which this government is proud to work with industry because, by working together, we can keep the mining industry in the Territory strong and advancing.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I strongly support the statement.
Mr McADAM (Barkly): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I support the Minister for Mines and Energy’s status report on the Northern Territory’s mining industry.
Let me commence by saying that the minister has proven to be a very energetic and innovative minister in respect of the mining industry throughout the Northern Territory, and I thank him for his responses. He is always available to talk about issues that relate to the mining industry, particularly in my electorate in Tennant Creek. I would also like to wish the newly-appointed shadow minister for Mines and Energy, the member for Katherine, all the very best. It is a very challenging area and it is something to which she can look forward. We look forward to a very cooperative working relationship in the interests of growing the industry right throughout the Northern Territory.
We have heard the minister and the previous Minister for Mines and Energy speak in respect of some of the projects in and around Tennant Creek. I would also like to speak briefly about them. I refer, of course, to the Bootu Creek Manganese Project, Giants Reef and the Peko Rehabilitation Project and some of other potential mines. They are very exciting. It is expected that the Bootu Creek manganese project will export anything between 500 000 to 600 000 tonnes of manganese product through the port of Darwin for a period of approximately 10 years, but recent developments in that area indicate perhaps there is capacity to extend the exporting of manganese from the region to a period probably up to 25 years, and I will refer to that a little later.
Members will be aware that the major proponents of the project are Bootu Creek Resources, which owns 75% of the Bootu Creek Mine, and Groote Eylandt Mining, otherwise known as GEMCO, have a 25% interest. Bootu Creek Resources is a wholly-owned subsidiary of OM Holdings Limited. It is a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. They trade in manganese and other mineral products, and they operate a ferro alloy plant in China which will purchase 25% of the Bootu Creek product. Existing customers in South-East Asia will take the balance of that production from Bootu Resources.
I will outline some points in respect of the project construction, which will commence shortly. Of course, it is always subject to agreements being in place and essential support infrastructure being available. The joint venture needs to complete main project features before April 2005, but I have been advised that something in excess of $30m will be spent on infrastructure works at the mine at Bootu. There will be railway loading facilities developed and built on the site, which is on the Mackaty Aboriginal Land Trust. There will be a 60 metre haul road from the mine site to the railway, which will pass below the Stuart Highway just north of Banka Banka, so that will also need to be constructed, as will the processing treatment plant at the mine site.
It is envisaged that there will be an 82-bed accommodation village on the mine lease. Already, I am aware that some of the contracts have been let in respect of this project. I know that the catering team is presently located at Banka Banka Station awaiting the construction of the village area. They will, of course, locate to that site at a date to be advised.
Members will be aware that the product, manganese ore, will be carried by rail with FreightLink. We heard from the minister earlier about development of bulk handling facilities at the Port of Darwin and that will add value not only to that project, but there will be immense future opportunities for that facility and the port. My understanding is that the facilities at the port will have the capacity to handle up to 2000 million tonnes per annum without any further capital outlay other than what has been committed by government. Of course, this will be made available to other users for up to 300 days per year. They are dollars well invested in capital infrastructure at the Port of Darwin, and it will provide real opportunities for other mining companies that will be looking to export product through the port.
The life of the mine has been mooted at 10 years, but, as I said, the mine has the capacity to extend out to a 25-year period. In the first 10 years, there will be an average of approximately $3m per year paid to the Northern Territory government. There will be at least 75 jobs, many of which will be, hopefully, filled by local people from Tennant Creek and the region. People like Duncan Beggs, John Brodziak, Trevor Tennant and a few others are working very closely with Julalikari Council and the Northern Land Council in Tennant Creek about utilising local people where possible.
I take this opportunity to thank Peter Davenport, who works for the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development in Tennant Creek. He has played a vital role in facilitating introductions between local companies and Bootu Creek people. There is some real potential here. Duncan Beggs, the Project Consultant with Bootu, came to Tennant Creek a few months ago. Something in excess of 60-odd businesses rolled up to hear what the opportunities might be. So to Peter Davenport, thank you very much. He continues to work hard in trying to deliver as many benefits locally in respect of both businesses and jobs.
There will be other spin-offs: appreciable royalties and rentals will be paid to the traditional owners. In almost all circumstances, these dollars are expended locally, so they are going to be spent in places like Tennant Creek, Elliott and other parts of the Northern Territory. That is an added bonus for local businesses.
I mentioned the meeting in Tennant Creek a few months ago. Already, there have been some spin-offs. I have been advised that plumbers and electricians have been to Bootu Creek getting involved in some of the work that is required, and that other smaller companies have been able to secure contracts of late.
I take this opportunity to speak about a gentleman by the name of Neil Scriven. Neil is a geologist who has been around the Northern Territory for a long time. I understand he first came to Tennant Creek in 1973, and has a long involvement in the mining industry, and gold mining. Neil is a visionary. He is a wonderful character, too. He is the person who basically has brought this mine to fruition by working hard on not only the exploration, but talking to people around the world to get it up.
Most people may not know, but the original Mackaty Manganese Mine was first discovered in 1940 and was mined through the 1950s and 1960s when the product was sent to Rum Jungle to oxidise uranium ore. At that time, the manganese mine at Mackaty existed in black cliffs of up to eight metres high. When the mine was exhausted, they were unable to locate any further manganese of ore grade in the immediate vicinity. In 1996, 15 km from the original Mackaty site, BHP was exploring for base metals, mainly copper, lead and zinc. They intersected some good grades of manganese at depth and considered the area to have potential. However, as we know, in 1998 there was a corporate restructure at BHP and they relinquished their interests in the area.
The Department of Mines and Energy was always aware of the potential of this mine and promoted it right around the world. It was in June 1999 that Neil Scriven acquired the exploration licences. He tells me that, mainly because he was tired of the gold industry, he saw a real opportunity and a future in expanding his vision. He acquired the exploration licence and, as it has been described to me, he trawled the world looking for a joint venture partner.
In September 2000, another local geologist, Geoff Eupene, was able to contact Trevor Tennant from OMH who indicated to Neil that he would be prepared to look at it. That gave rise to Bootu Creek as we know it today. Neil was proud to be involved in one of the first native title agreements with the Northern Land Council. He began drilling in October of 2001 and discovered good shallow manganese mineralisation.
Many people ask where the name ‘Bootu’ came from. It was named by Neil Scriven, and I do not know the precise meaning of the word, but it is a name associated with some of the tribes in Tanzania with whom Neil worked in the 1990s. Some of those tribes, as described to me, were the Chugga, the Shekuma and the A Go Go. He named it ‘Bootu’ because of the kindness shown by the people in Tanzania. Maybe that says something about the man as well.
Neil has applied what he learnt at Bootu Creek, the Mackaty area, to an area 30 km north of the existing mine at Bootu. They have done some drilling and intersected potentially some ore-grade manganese. They are still waiting for assays, but the intersection could be significant. Perhaps it will be the beginning of a manganese province in the region, and I refer to the area from Banka Banka and Alice Springs to around the Renner Springs area.
Neil tells me that the traditional and widespread use of manganese is in steel and, when added to iron ore, the manganese hardens the steel and the oxygen removes impurities such as sulphur. He described it as ‘nature’s bleach’. Scientists throughout the world in the last five years have been working on a laboratory-proven theory that molecules of manganese are the reason photosynthesis occurs at atmospheric temperatures and pressures, and the water produced has been tweaked to produce hydrogen. With the advent of hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels, the use of manganese might become more significant.
I wanted to share that with the House because it is a good story, and it shows the faith of people like Neil Scriven who obviously saw an opportunity, which is now coming to fruition.
Very quickly, I want to mention Giants Reef Mining in Tennant Creek. Most people will be aware that Chariot has been operational for in excess of 12 months now, and they have increased production of operations around Tennant Creek from 60 000 ounces per year to an estimated 100 000 ounces per year. Their quarterly production has gone from something like 11 000 ounces to something like 17 000 ounces. That is because of the Malbec Mine, which is the open cut, and some of their other mines.
I want to provide details of the impact Giants Reef has had on the local community at Tennant Creek. As the member for Wanguri said, theirs is the only head office registered on the Australian Stock Exchange. They employ 55 people in the office in Tennant Creek, based in town, and 20 people are employed in administrative and exploration jobs. Barmenco, to whom Chariot Mine is outsourced, employs around 40 workers. Some of those people fly in and out, but of those 40, 13 are local. Already we have something like 33 jobs in the two areas. CDE and ExacMin, which have the contract to dig the pit at Malbec, which is only 900 metres west of Chariot, have 17 workers and three trainees. I know that Giants Reef have spoken to them about providing more equipment for potential work. Certainly, they are encouraging CDE, which is indigenous, to set up in Tennant Creek.
There are six drilling rigs in Tennant Creek, which is unprecedented. They are drilling as required by Giants Reef, but Bootu Resources is also using them, as is a company called Meteoric Resources, which is drilling 3.5 km north-east of Warrego. That is another little company that has just come into town. They see some potential.
Craig Mining is a company mining some of the smaller deposit like Cat’s Whiskers and EdnaBeryl. They are yielding gold, which is a separate operation, but they are mining it as well. There are at least five local people working for Craig Mining.
There is other good news, too, and it shows the impact, Giants Reef let a contract of approximately $1.8m over ...
Mr HENDERSON: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move an extension of time to allow my colleague to conclude his remarks.
Motion agreed to.
Mr McADAM: I will be as quick as I can, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. A catering contract has been let to the Tennant Creek Hotel. It is about $1.8m over three years, and that employs five people. That is more wonderful news. $30 000 a year is spent by Giants Reef on uniforms and other apparel, and that has gone to a local company, Tennant Creek Emporium. Jim Phillips Earthmoving has done many tailings dams for Giants Reef. It is conservatively estimated that there have been eight to 10 jobs in that area.
We heard the member for Daly talk about Ray Wooldridge and Northern Assayers. It is true. My understanding is that they are moving to Tennant Creek very soon. That means the assay tests, which I do not know too much about, can be done on-site. At the moment, Giants Reef sends samples to Pine Creek. It takes three to four days. They will be relocating some of their staff into Tennant. There will be approximately five jobs in that area. Giants Reef is giving some of the laboratory equipment from Warrego, and I think they are providing some capital dollars.
The Barkly Bus and Truck Company takes ore out to Warrego from Chariot. They employ three to five people. Most people will be aware that they have outsourced some work on the potential for copper in Tennant Creek. It is very much early days, but copper is something that will occur sometime in the future.
In respect to sponsorship locally, Giants Reef supplies $30 000 a year to the Barkly Australian Football League, $60 000 over two years, and that is something from which both the BAFL and Giants Reef are receiving immense mileage. The sponsorship has enabled BAFL to employ a Development Officer working with young kids. It is based around self-esteem, pride and self-respect. That is something that is much appreciated. Giants Reef sponsor a whole lot of other organisations in Tennant Creek, like the Show Society. They provide $11 000 per year to the Warrego School, which is a joint venture with government, the government tipping in the other $11 000. All in all, they have done well and they deserve every success over the last year or so.
The last one I want to mention is the Peko Rehabilitation Project. I spoke to people in Tennant Creek today. They have been assembling a magnetic separating circuit unit in Perth, and that is being trucked up to Tennant Creek either by truck or rail. The pad was built at Warrego. People arrived from Perth today to start putting the processing unit together. They expect to be producing magnetite in the next two to three months, and that will potentially provide another six jobs.
Whilst I am on that point, I want to raise the issue of power generation in Tennant Creek. Higher oil prices are placing extra pressure on the capacity of the mining companies, and not only mining companies, but other small indigenous communities and pastoral properties around the place with the price of diesel. Power and Water are looking favourably at reviewing the provision of power generation into Tennant Creek and particularly in relation to the mines, so that is appreciated.
We have heard the minister talk very briefly about the Nolan Bore project, very much in its early stages. That is a rare earth phosphate project out of Alice Springs. Again, that has potential to grow the local communities of Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, the rail and, of course, the port.
The other project of significance is Mithril Resources, which has intersected copper and nickel just north of Barrow Creek. They are subject to further assays, but that has some real potential. There is a host of other companies. Red Metal Resources are looking at Tennant Creek. They have acquired 2440 km2 around Tennant Creek. They are also looking for copper and gold-style deposits, and access negotiations are in process with all the different parties.
I have mentioned Meteoric Resources, but there is a whole lot host of others such as Tennant Creek Gold. The future looks good for Tennant Creek. It really just took one little gold mining company – 10 or 12, however many years it was - to find something. They have provided the confidence and the impetus to all these other exploration mining companies moving into the area.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is true that what has happened around the world has affected mining operation and exploration in the Territory. It is true that we have seen a downturn in mining exploration, not only in the Territory, but also in Australia, most notably in areas where mining and exploration mining was significant, like Western Australia. In Western Australia, we have seen a downturn of mining exploration from about $0.5bn a year down to $380m a year. The same thing has happened in the Territory.
Another thing we have observed in the Territory is the departure of big mining companies from the Territory and the arrival of these medium- to small-sized exploration and mining companies. Giants Reef, as the member for Barkly said, is a typical example of these companies. Giants Reef, which has acquired tenements from big companies that previously explored for and mined gold in Tennant Creek, is doing very well striking deposits of about 53 grams of gold per tonne of ore. A few days ago, the General Manager of Giants Reef, Mr Joe Ariti, told me that at the new Malbec and Cat Whiskers mines, they found oxidised ore that produced 1000 grams of gold per tonne of ore, significantly more than Mt Todd, which produced one to two grams of gold per tonne of ore and the super pit in Kalgoorlie that produced between two to five grams of gold per tonne of ore.
At the same time, we have seen some of the companies coming to the Territory and processing or treating tailings. For example, we have the Peko Rehabilitation Project sitting on four million tonnes of magnetite, which commands a good price because it is used for washing coal. I am also aware that outside Warrego, there are about 12 million tonnes of magnetite owned by a well-known mines person in the area. There is strong demand for good quality magnetite. We have seen now a revival of mining in the Territory that takes place in small- to medium-sized companies rather than giant companies, the multinationals. They have moved away from Australia because the current mining climate is very competitive. Also, with commodities commanding a very high price around the world, these people are trying to maximise their profits.
We have to encourage mining exploration and operations in the Territory. Currently, we have about seven big operational mines, and we do not want to see a reduction in the number of mines. Instead, we want to see an increase. This can only be achieved if we encourage exploration in the Northern Territory.
My department is encouraging exploration by implementing a number of measures and processes, by providing geoscientific data and surveys free of charge to companies that want to invest in exploration in the Territory. We also produce software that can be copied or downloaded from the Internet or can be used on the Internet like the STRIKE software so that prospective explorers can find information about any portion of land in the Territory. They can find titles, who owns it, whether it has been mined or explored; and who is the present owner. It gives them all the information they need before they even put their foot in the Territory.
We have to do more. We need people who have studied geology in the Territory so that they will stay in the Territory. Currently, we have geologists from other states in Australia, from Victoria and New South Wales, who come to the Territory because of its prospectivity. My dream is to see some home-grown geologists. We are having some discussions with the Charles Darwin University for at least an introductory course in cooperation with any other university like the Kalgoorlie School of Mines or the University of New South Wales for the first year of geology with the department providing some scholarships for prospective geologists. We are trying everything to attract people, doing everything to keep people involved in the mining industry here, and we will certainly do everything possible to attract explorers in the Territory.
We are looking at our legislation and how we can improve it; how we can change our legislation with the changing times to address some of the issues and problems that we face; and how to make it competitive with legislation in other jurisdictions like Canada, for example.
We are reviewing the Mines Act. A discussion paper will be circulated soon. A copy of the discussion paper will be on the web and is going to be provided to most of the mining industries in the Territory and local mining industries that have some relations with the Territory. The department also looks at different ways of inviting and attracting people to the Territory. Some of them need a direct approach and direct contact with executives in mining companies that make the decisions or the business cases for exploring in the Territory.
There is a whole gamut of measures that we put in place to improve exploration in the Territory. After all, in 2003-04 the mining industry survey conducted by Canada’s respected Fraser Institute in Vancouver, rated the Northern Territory eighth overall for its investment attractiveness out of 53 global jurisdictions.
In the past, people have expressed concern about exploration and one of the problems has been land access. We believe now that the land access issue is over-rated. We have successful negotiations with the land councils in the Territory, with examples like the Sweet Pea Corporation exploring for oil north of Elliott. Exploration like this takes place after successful negotiations through the right to negotiation process with the relevant land council. Giants Reef is a typical example of negotiating successfully with the Central Land Council. The Central and Northern Land Councils realise that mining can only bring monetary benefits to them because it provides unique employment opportunities for Aboriginal people in the Territory.
We are conducting a review of the Mines and Petroleum Division in my department; that follows the ERA incident. There were perceptions in certain sections of the community that the division was a captive of the industry. We also realised that there would have to be some better ways of interacting with other sections of the department. This review was done by a reviewer who is a panel contractor and this panel contract has been advertised and tendered by the Department of the Chief Minister as part of Risk Management Services, so this was not awarded without a tender process. It was awarded through a tender process to panel contractors under the Department of the Chief Minister. The review will be completed soon and that will follow the review done of the Titles Division. The review of the Titles Division has shown us some places where we can improve efficiencies, service delivery, and cooperation within different sections of the department.
We have problems. We have seven main operating mines and quite a few hundred legacy mines, mines that were once operated and have been abandoned and, because of lack of appropriate legislation at the time, some of them pose problems with rehabilitation. Some of these can be seen to be creating problems for the environment, however, the department is actively addressing these issues. The department has an active program of auditing existing mines, operating mines and legacy mines, and works with the mining industry to address some of these issues.
On the issue raised by the member for Daly, old Chinatown, yes, I am aware that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage has put in place an Interim Conservation Order because action of the mining industry has disturbed old Chinatown and has caused some disturbance on-site. The ICO area includes the Yet Lung Chan Battery site, the intact Chinese oven, the foundation of the Chinese temple, the few remains of the former Chinatown on-site, and the remnants of the Eleanor Mine site shaft and associated features. The Department of Environment and Heritage is working very closely with the mining industry to address some of the issues and to rectify the situation.
The minister, my colleague, the member for Arafura, has given a commitment that she will travel to Pine Creek to see the area and the problems, and consult further with the mining company and the people in Pine Creek in order to resolve this issue successfully.
As I said before, I am very enthusiastic about mines, which provide a significant portion of income for the Territory, about 22% or 23% of gross state product. The sector employs a significant number of people, 2000 to 3000, most of whom are from the Territory. We expect more opportunity for employment with the expansion of Alcan, the opening of Bootu Creek and the expansion of GEMCO at Groote Eylandt.
Regarding the manganese which will be railed to Darwin, the government is considering loading options and the effects of manganese on the environment; possible contamination of the environment will be taken into account when a final decision is made.
In respect of extractive industry, we understand the problems associated with that, and we understand the demands on the industry by the building sector in the Territory. We know that some extractive industries are located not in the most appropriate places, but at the time they were established, that was the only place they could be located.
Currently, we have proposals for mining sand within the harbour area, which is something that will have to be very carefully assessed. Some of it is sand that is replenished by currents and placed in the wrong position. It usually has to be excavated to be removed, but if we can use that renewable resource because the currents will continue to bring sand to this area because of the nature of the harbour, while we want to protect our physical environment in areas like Mt Bundy that are probably not the most appropriate. When these extractive mines have finished operating, they have to be rehabilitated to appropriate standards.
I am committed to mining. I believe it can be done with minimum or no harm to the environment. I have stated clearly and publicly that I support mines, but I am not going to tolerate any breach of the legislation. Our legislation is not prescriptive; the Mining Management Act provides the opportunity for mining companies to provide their own Mine Management Plans to us. These are the plans they have put in place and agree to comply with, and I will not tolerate any company putting a mine in place and not complying with their own plan.
As you are aware, there are currently a number of investigations into mining accidents that have happened recently. My department is investigating without fear or favour because I will not tolerate either contamination of the environment or injuries or deaths in mining places, especially if they are preventable.
I strongly support the mining industry for the employment opportunities and the income generated for the Territory. I will work with the industry to provide information that can be utilised to increase the exploration opportunities in the Territory and to develop and facilitate communication with Aboriginal people, the land councils, and to develop employment opportunities for all Territorians.
I commend the mining industry for their decision to invest in the Territory. We have seen that mining companies not only explore the Territory or open a mine, but continue to invest in the Territory, invest in the community and Giants Reef is a typical example. I pass on my appreciation to them.
As I said before, the mining industry is vital for the Territory. I am looking forward to increasing the number of mines in the Territory and I will be very happy if a new mine in the Territory, Bootu Creek, opens up under my stewardship and that of the Department of Mines and Energy.
Motion agreed to; statement noted.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the Assembly do now adjourn.
I would like to comment on some events and organisations in my electorate; first, the Nakara Soccer Club. Last week, I was very happy to present Mr George Lambrinidis of the Nakara Soccer Club a Community Benefit Fund cheque for $2000 to assist the club. In the past, George and his friends re-formed the Nakara Soccer Club, not only because they want to have a few times of kicking a ball around, but also to attract the young people, especially young children, away from television screens and computer games and bring these children back to our neighbourhood parks, like the good old times when we were growing up.
We talk a lot about antisocial behaviour, about crime, and young people doing the wrong thing. The reality is unless we actually give an alternative to these young people, to get these young people away from the bad influence of their friends and take these young people out in our parks, which have been abandoned over the past few years for various reasons, and bring these parks to life, we are not going to seriously address the issue of safety. George Lambrinidis and his friends, with the Nakara Soccer Club, have managed to get these young people together.
They have organised a club, they train at the Nakara School oval. They now have a women’s team and they compete regularly in TASLE. I am supportive of their request. I have spoken to George who asked me if I could write to the Council to seek an upgrade of the Nakara School oval. I have written to the council asking for improvement in the watering patterns of the oval, and whether they can level the oval and lay some new, good quality grass.
It would be ideal if we could find some surplus street lights to install at the oval so they can train at night not only because it is cooler, but because then it will take away that oval from itinerants or people who tend to hang around and spend their evenings drinking. It is a very good initiative. It is an excellent club, and I hope we will see more of these initiatives in our suburbs. As I said, it is a unique opportunity to get the young people away from television and computer games, give them a life and also the parks back to life.
I would also like to comment on the Casuarina Child Care Centre, which I believe is one of the most multicultural centres in Darwin. I visited there the other day and was very impressed because I walked in and there they were: mainstream Anglo-Saxon children, Chinese background children, Aboriginal children, children from African backgrounds, some refugees, and Indonesian. It was a microcosm of Darwin, and these kids will grow up together and this has resulted in our harmonious lifestyle in Darwin.
A few months ago, I was talking to an old Darwinite about how good we are in Darwin, we do not have any divisions, any problems with racism, and he said: ‘How can I be racist towards, let us say, an Aboriginal or Chinese person because I went to school with that person? I spent six years in the same class. I do not see colour, I do not see a background. I see a friend and, irrespective of colour and origin, I cannot make myself be racial with them. I cannot be racist towards them’, and that is exactly true. I am very proud of the Casuarina Child Care Centre and I was very proud to present them with a Community Benefit Fund cheque for $4400 to assist them to meet their needs.
I also congratulate our talented young sport stars from Casuarina, the NT Under-15 Girls Hockey Team, which has just returned from competing at the national Under-15 hockey tournament in Brisbane. The NT North Under-14 girls basketball team has just returned from Canberra. I heard that they all played extremely well and they were excellent ambassadors for the Territory. My colleagues, Paul Henderson, Len Kiely, Delia Lawrie, and I were very proud to have been able to provide a small contribution towards their trip, and we wish them all well in their sporting future.
The Tang Soo Tao team competed in the first Australia-wide Tang Soo Tao tournament in Melbourne on 12 September 2004. Seven black belts and a few coloured belts competed. The team was very successful with all but one team member winning places. Congratulations to Peter Mather of Nakara for coming third in the sparring, and Thomas Winter of Tiwi for gaining a second place.
Finally, I would like to wish one of my favourite senior citizens, Mrs Mary Greenwood of Nakara, a happy 72nd birthday. I hope she had a wonderful surprise party at the electorate office. My Electorate Officer, Debbie, gave me all the news on the party. It was organised by Tang Anola, Mary’s friend. I am sorry I missed it because I was away on a business trip. I know Mary had some difficult times recently with the loss of her husband. However, I was very pleased to see her the other day at the Moon Festival here at Parliament House. Mary is of Chinese background. I was very pleased to see her here enjoying herself and smiling again. Happy birthday, Mary, and I promise not to miss your next birthday.
Mr AH KIT (Arnhem): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to speak tonight in honour of one of the Territory’s longest-serving public servants who will finish in my department in the next month or two. I speak of Ray Hempel, for whom I had the pleasure of attending a farewell function a couple of weeks ago.
I first ran into Ray some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s when I was in Katherine working for the Department of Social Security and then the Kalano Association, and later still in the 1980s, when I was with the Northern Land Council. I was a new boy on the block and Ray was already something of an old hand. I do not believe for a second that either of us thought back then we would be working together some years later in the same department, with me as his minister. I daresay there are a few other older hands who would disagree with me.
This came to mind at the last Ministerial Council on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs meeting in Sydney in June this year. Ray spent 17 years on the standing committee that provides support to the Ministerial Council on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. Many of the ministers who have sat around that table over the years will not have appreciated that in the motions and papers they have debated there have often been a few words that sow a seed or give sustenance to an idea that the quite unassuming bloke at the back has spent considerable hours in debate and manipulation, getting that agenda item on to the table.
This was recognised by the current chair of that ministerial group, New South Wales’ Dr Andrew Refshauge, who paid tribute to Ray on that day. One of the major contributions he made over that time was the motion of bilateral agreements, something that has really come into its own in the post-ATSIC era. I, on the other hand, always like to think Ray had a bit of a smile on his face when he witnessed me as the first Aboriginal minister from the Northern Territory, let alone the other states, being represented on MCATSIA. We have been on the opposite sides of a few arguments over the years. Both of us have cursed each other from time to time, but both of us have a Territory perspective that has often been at odds with Canberra and the states.
Ray started out in the Aboriginal affairs business, like a lot of young officers, with a grounding at ASOPA, the Australian School of Pacific Administration. The training and education that he received there set the scene for the rest of his working life. ASOPA taught its students how to work effectively in cross-cultural community development efforts. In gave them skills that have delivered the goods for the Northern Territory, with its graduates working across the many organisations involved with Aboriginal people: the land councils, ATSIC, local councils, non-government organisations, as well as the Northern Territory government.
It has given us a strange and wonderful collection of people, such as Kirk Whelan, now at Katherine West Health Board; Paul Josif and Gavin O’Brien at the Northern Land Council; Neville Jones working in DIPE and formerly with Community Development; Neil Westbury in the Office of Indigenous Policy and Bill Ivory, whom I understand is currently doing a PhD. I have heard stories of some of their reunions, especially a legendary one at the Low Level in Katherine back in about 1982, an event that I understand would involve unparliamentary language were I to discuss it here this evening.
When Ray started work on communities, such training was an essential ingredient for any young officer. Ray spent time at places such as Lajamanu, Milikapiti, Groote Eylandt, Borroloola and Barunga or Bamyili as it was then known. Indeed, Ray was the last Superintendent at Bamyili, something about which Robert Lee can tell a few stories. In fact, Ray and I have something in common: we share a great admiration for a former leader, Ray Fordimile; a great leader, visionary and a person who always planned and managed the future direction of the Jawoyn people. Ray Fordimile, sadly, is no longer with us, but I know he left a mark on Ray Hempel.
In each place he worked, Ray Hempel took the time to learn about the place and its people. In this way, he gathered an encyclopaedic knowledge about the way these places were established, the people who lived in them, the issues that confronted them then and, in many cases, still do. A large part of Ray’s stock of stories and anecdotes was developed during his days on remote communities. His capacity to relate to the issues that affect a person’s daily existence in a remote community to national policy, to analyse the issues, develop conclusions and propose solutions is something that has set him apart from many of his contemporaries over time.
Ray was gradually sucked out of the remote communities area into management, first field services and then later into the policy area. Ray has worked in the departments of Community Development, Chief Minister, the Office of Aboriginal Development and he is ending his time back in the Department of Community Development. It is in the policy area that he has made his major contribution. Most who have worked in the Aboriginal affairs area would know immediately that it is a hard place for a public servant to survive. Many become cynical. Faced with an almost overwhelming task, some develop the conclusion that they are the only ones who have the answer and that if only everyone listened to them, everything would be okay. Others simply give up and just go through the motions.
Ray quotes George Bernard Shaw who said:
Ray’s accurate observation might occasionally have sounded like cynicism but, at its core, there has always been a passion for ideas that might get a better result than the ones we have now. After a working life in the business, he is still able to launch into argument about what should be done, and to hold forth at length on the changes that should be made now.
The Northern Territory government has not always been a place where there has been a queue of people wanting to work in the Aboriginal affairs business. A public servant in the business has needed to appreciate that many a time, painstaking work of many months, building relationships or developing policies can be blown sky high by an injudicious comment by someone who is ignorant of the agenda or the context. This is a business where it is hard to build but simple to destroy. It has taken a special resilience not just to stay in the game, but to maintain optimism that there is a win possible. Ray has demonstrated that resilience in spades.
Ray left Melbourne to get away from the weather and the mind-numbing boredom of the city, but he never gave away the Bulldogs. Finally, the Western Bulldogs are coming to Ray with home games now being played in the Territory and with the Bulldogs making the Territory something of a second home, and hopefully playing next year, wearing colours incorporating a Territory playing strip. Of course, there will be a special challenge for Ray next year with the Bulldogs playing the Aboriginal All Stars on 5 February. Who will he be barracking for when he has lived and worked with the parents and grandparents of so many Territory boys who will be playing for the All Stars? Ray, we will be watching you closely on that night!
As is clear from his record, Ray has a number of key traits that have sustained him through his career. He is dedicated to the cause, he maintains a preparedness to change and take on new ideas. Most of all, though, he is a bloke who just does not give up: he is persistent, a bit of a Bulldog himself, really.
Ray Hempel’s last day of official service will be 10 December 2004. He joined the then Northern Territory Administration on 10 February 1964. This makes him one of the longest serving public servants of the Northern Territory and he has the record as the longest serving Northern Territory-recruited executive level officer.
In these days when we are told that the average person starting out will have four or five long-term careers or jobs, it may sound strange that a person would or could last for over 40 years working for the same employer. To add icing to the cake, Ray has worked for almost the whole time in the one area of government.
Now, just as for years he has battled to try to get better policy settings in Aboriginal affairs in the Territory and across the nation, he is turning his attention to wood. If he brings the same attention and persistence to wood, it will be a worry for any tree in the general district, particularly one that might have an interesting grain pattern.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak about a group of people I have known for some time, many of whom I have been associated with through Dragon Boat racing. Today, I visited representatives of the Dragon Boat Association who are preparing to leave the Territory in a couple of days’ time for Shanghai where they will compete in the World Dragon Boat Paddling Championships.
Dragon Boats started in the Northern Territory some six years ago in 1998 when the then Chief Minister, after returning from Sabah, announced that he was sending a Dragon Boat team from the NT to the Sabah International Dragon Boat Races in June of that year. I was then Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Minister, and he asked me to try to ensure that a team could be formed to get there.
I had recently joined the Dragon Boat Association at that time and, through a very hurried process, we organised ourselves by advertisements in papers, calling for interested people to join the team. I recall the first day we met at the Surf Life Saving Club at Casuarina Beach. We were a motley crew of about 20 or 25 people, all very keen to paddle, with only one or two who had any experience. We lined up plastic chairs on the lawns of the club and, with makeshift kayak paddles, practiced some Dragon Boat paddling strokes. That is how Dragon Boat Northern Territory began its activities in Darwin. For about a year before that, we were talking constantly about forming an association. We had a visit from the Chairman of the Dragon Boat Association in Penang, Malaysia, who encouraged us to form an association. After some 12 months, with the efforts of people like Austin Chin and several others, we got a team going about March 1998.
In the second week of training, the same group gathered at the club, took the plastic chairs into the water and proceeded to dip the kayak paddles into the ocean as though we were paddling a Dragon Boat. I was able to make contact with the Dragon Boat Association of South Australia after the second week of training. I spoke to the people in South Australia who, fortunately, were coming to the end of their paddling season as winter was coming around. We were able to borrow one of their boats, being their off season, and had that carted from Adelaide to Darwin by road transport. When it arrived, the whole mob of us turned out at Cullen Bay, all rejoicing that at long last we had a dragon boat that we could use in Darwin, and we manually loaded it off the truck into Cullen Bay. Since then, the sport has not looked back.
We kept the boat - it was a pink wooden dragon boat from Adelaide - for three months and we trained almost every day in order to get ourselves prepared for the Sabah International Dragon Boat races. With the support of the then government and then Chief Minister, Shane Stone, we made it to Sabah. We had lots of support from corporate bodies in Darwin as well, and with the combined funding and political well wishes, we got to Sabah and took part in the international races.
We won our division and came home with a gold medal. It is interesting: we wanted to challenge other paddlers as well and we thought that paddling only one race in one division was not enough for the effort that we made to go across so far to paddle in the races. So we challenged the winners of the Sabah National Titles, and then offered them prize money from Daryl Manzie, who was there with me, for the competition. We raced the Sabah national team. We were pipped by a very narrow nose, I would say, in the 500 metre race and we acquitted ourselves very well for a mob that had started training only three months previously. We came back with our heads high and were very pleased with our efforts.
Since that time, DBNT has fund-raised through donations and corporate sponsorships in Darwin, and today they own a fleet of some 12 dragon boats, all aluminium. They are based variously in Cullen Bay, Bayview, at Gove and in Kununurra. At those four locations, there are dragon boats and people paddle them regularly and have a competition amongst themselves in the Top End. I know that they also travel down to Katherine to paddle during the Flying Fox Festival and at other times.
Anyway, at Cullen Bay at 5.30 this afternoon, a group of people gathered to be blessed by the Buddhist monk, a ritual that takes place every time one of our dragon boat teams leaves the Territory to paddle in national or international championships. The group that will be going representing Australia, and they are representing Australia, wearing green and gold, includes 16 from the Territory. They will be joined by a few others from South Australia to be the Australian representative team for the Masters age group. They are captained by Ken Dwyer, Gai Whitehouse, Phil Reader, Lyndall Reader, Jeoff Cooper, Moira Stronach, Neville Shields, Trish Heames, Daryl Manzie, Julie Griffin, Ron Remfrey, David Powell, Steve Boakes, Nick Hedstrom, Willi Rothlisberger and Gregg Eiffler. These are the ones who will be wearing the green and gold on behalf of the Territory as the Australian team to paddle in the Masters races at Shanghai. I believe the race will take place on 24 October 2004 and, if the Minister for Asian Relations and Trade is going there, which I believe he is, I hope he gets there in time to see the races and conveys the greetings of Territorians to them, and gives them good blessings to make sure that they paddle well.
The Northern Territory team will be joined in Shanghai by the Pink Ladies from the Dragons Abreast Dragon Boat Club. I know that the member for Port Darwin is their Patron. There are about eight or 10 of the Pink Ladies who will be going across as well, and will be led by Michelle Hanton, whom we heard last week won the Telstra Business Woman of the Year Award, and an officer from the Legislative Assembly, Pat Hancock, will be going. The Pink Ladies were especially invited to Shanghai by the Chairman of the Shanghai International Dragon Boat Festival. I was told that Michelle Hanton and some of her crew were in Rome to attend the international championships and performed so well and created such publicity that they were specifically invited by the Chairman of the Shanghai Dragon Boat Festival to be their special guests in Shanghai. That is a great honour for the Pink Ladies to be able to demonstrate to the world their efforts, and the value of what they can contribute to women who have had breast cancer and surgery.
This afternoon at Cullen Bay, the Buddhist monk was there to bless the boat and all 20 of the paddlers who were in the boat. Some of you who might have watched the ABC news tonight would have seen them as a news item. I wish the whole team the best of Australian luck. I hope they do well over there. They deserve every chance to win. They have been training remarkably hard over the last many months to achieve this target. I was speaking to Daryl Manzie this afternoon. As you all know, Daryl Manzie is a former member of parliament, the former member for Sanderson. He looks so tremendously fit for a nearly 60 year old; it is scary. However, their training regime is intense. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the afternoons, they paddle for about an hour-and-a-half at Cullen Bay. On Sunday mornings, they paddle as well. If the weather is good, they will paddle in the ocean, or they train inside the lock at Cullen Bay. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 am, the whole team goes to the police gym and they train with weights. Then, on Saturday afternoon, they do the same thing. They train seven days a week: paddle four days and work out at the gym three days.
When you look at the crews of men and women, they are well built, have well-defined muscles, are very fit and have huge tolerance and ability in paddling. Their style has changed, too. Watching them paddle, I remember when we first started, it was just the traditional paddling stroke, which is flexing forwards and pulling backwards with your back. Now, they do a twisting stroke, which is a lot smoother and prevents the boat from bouncing up and down in the water, thus not dissipating the propulsion energy of the stroke.
As I said, I wish the team well. I hope they come back with their heads high, winning some medals while they are in Shanghai. The trip to Shanghai will be a great experience. I was in Shanghai only about three years ago. The city is a mix of old colonial European influence and old Chinese influence, plus the modern development of China in this bustling metropolis that is now Shanghai.
I am sure they will be paddling in the river - I cannot remember the name of the esplanade there now, but it will be tremendous with hundreds of thousands of people turning up to watch the races. That is what it is like in China when you have international races. Just about everyone turns up to watch the races, and with a city of 20 million people, you can expect hundreds of thousands of people to be spectators. They are flying with Royal Brunei Airlines, and I believe that Penni Tastula has assisted in some way with Royal Brunei Airlines to get them to Shanghai. They will stay there for the next 10 days or so while they are training and getting acclimatised to the weather, as well as using the boats from Shanghai.
We paddle with aluminium boats in Darwin, which are about one-fifth of the weight of the wooden boats that are used in Shanghai. Imagine a wooden boat in the water, being paddled through the day, and as the day progresses the timber gets wetter and wetter and the boat starts to get heavier and heavier, making it more difficult. Let us hope that at the final race, we do not have one team coming out with a dry boat and the rest paddling wet boats, which will give the paddlers of the dry boat great advantage over the others, and that would be a bit unfair. However, knowing these men and women from Darwin, I am sure they will do well. I wish them the best of luck on 24 October.
Dr TOYNE (Stuart): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to acknowledge the service of Chief Prison Officer Peter Truman and Prison Officer First Class Alan Wilkes.
Chief Prison Officer Truman has enjoyed a career with Northern Territory Correctional Services lasting almost 30 years. He commenced employment with Correctional Services on 15 October 1973, working at the Fannie Bay Gaol. Shortly after his commencement, he was based at the Gunn Point Prison Farm. On his return to Fannie Bay Gaol, he was appointed Acting Senior Prison Officer in 1974. At the time that Cyclone Tracy wreaked such devastation on Darwin, Peter Truman was seconded from the prison to assist in the clean up operation. From 1986 to 1994, Peter Truman held the position of Chief Training Officer. His influence on the development of prison officers and other staff within the training unit during this time was significant. The unit was soon recognised as a leading training organisation within Australia, and Peter took the opportunity to further his own qualifications and, in 1992, graduated with a Bachelor of Teaching.
A further highlight in Peter’s career was his assignment to Canberra to train federal police in defensive tactics. In 1997, Peter was appointed coordinator of Operation Shine, a program which we know today as Community Support Program. The Community Support Program provides over 38 000 hours of work each year to non-profit organisations and the elderly and disabled. Community Work Programs remove graffiti, undertake environmental clean-ups, building improvements and regeneration of native bush land. Through his involvement with the CSP, Peter assisted with the clean up of the Katherine area following the floods in 1998. His enthusiasm has been paramount in the work done by CSP and what they achieve. His diverse community contacts and networking skills have resulted in prisoner teams being widely sought after by large numbers of organisations.
During his time with the Northern Territory Correctional Services, Peter Truman received the National Medal and the Clasp to the National Medal. Peter’s knowledge, skills and experience will be missed by many within the service.
Alan Wilkes retired from Northern Territory Correctional Services after completing almost 26 years of dedicated service, which began in November 1978. Prior to commencing as a Prison Officer at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre, Mr Wilkes served with the Australian regular Army. While employed with NTCS, Alan continued to serve with the Australian Army Reserve until April 1991.
Throughout his career in the Army and with Correctional Services, Alan received a number of awards for service including the National Medal and the Clasp to the National Medal, the Australian Active Service Medal with Clasps Malaya and Vietnam, the General Service Medal with Clasp Borneo, and the Vietnam Medal among others. His colleagues speak of his professionalism, dedication, wisdom and skill, all of which will be sorely missed by the service.
On behalf of the Northern Territory government, I commend these men on their dedication, and wish them both all the best in their retirement.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to report on the study tour I undertook last month to Holland, London, Kent and Edinburgh. I will table a copy of my report at the end of my 15 minutes. I am certain I will run out of time, but I will endeavour to get through most of it.
In Holland, I met with Ministry of Justice officials in The Hague as well as a victim support organisation in Noordijk. I was interested in a range of initiatives undertaken by the Dutch, however, unfortunately, the scheduled meetings ran over time and we did not manage to cover all of the areas that we intended. Nevertheless, a great deal of information was obtained.
In relation to domestic violence, I was advised that domestic violence is the most extensive forms of violence in the Netherlands, and there is a thorough understanding of the effects on children. The Dutch estimate that 40% of children who witness domestic violence are at risk of becoming perpetrators or victims. In many respects, this type of research and these sorts of figures are not new, but I am not aware of current research or programs in the Territory for or about children.
There should be a long-range study commenced to assess the risk children who witness domestic violence will face as adults. A Northern Territory study is likely to produce similar results to the Dutch, however a study should be commenced, together with identifying detailed strategies to help break the cycle of domestic violence in families as well as programs that are tailored to assist those children who are damaged as a result of the violence they see.
In 2000-01, the Dutch government subsidised defence training for primary school students of a certain age, and it is estimated that nearly 10 000 children have participated in this training, which, in the words of the Dutch, the students ‘learn to increase physical and mental defences against extreme behaviour and abuse of power’. Given the magnitude of domestic violence in the Northern Territory, there is a strong argument in favour of implementing similar training programs for primary school aged children. Dutch research indicates that only 6% of victims report domestic violence, so there is an acknowledgement that more work needs to be done.
The situation in Holland is similar to that in the Territory and, indeed, Australia where generally, state and territory governments are at the forefront of trying to reduce domestic violence. One initiative is the implementation of a scheme that was tried successfully in Austria and Germany whereby perpetrators of sexual violence are evicted from the household after charges are laid. It was difficult to obtain precise information about these initiatives at a time when the Dutch advised that more work needed to be undertaken. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that a detailed proposal will be put before the Australian equivalent of the Dutch Cabinet in the next few months.
Twelve European countries provide for a court order that evicts a perpetrator from the home where violence occurs. Presently in Holland, local mayors have the ability to remove offenders from a home for a period of between 10 days and four weeks, and there does not need to be an assault or conviction. This is based on the likelihood of a violent incident recurring. One difficulty, however, is that mayors seems reluctant to make the relevant orders for a variety of reasons. Police have the power to take perpetrators into custody for six days, which I understand does require a charge to be made, however the general rule is that perpetrators are removed for about three days, sometimes less.
There is a concern that the period of detention or removal is not sufficient and consequently not enough time is available to plan a victim’s safety by making other arrangements for alternative housing or other assistance. Some aspects of the advice in these areas were unclear because of language difficulties, nevertheless what is clear is that the Dutch are determined to leave no stone unturned in their resolve to deal with perpetrators of domestic violence.
In Austria, police are able to order eviction of a perpetrator where there exists sufficient grounds of a likelihood of harm to one of the residents of the house in which the perpetrator lives, and no consent is required on the part of a potential victim. This usually occurs when the police are called to attend the home. They have a discretion to order the eviction, but a report is made outlining the basis of concerns for safety, which is sent to the Australian equivalent of welfare agencies, which, in turn, contacts the victim.
Police have the responsibility to check on the house to ensure that the perpetrator has complied with the order. It sounds unusual in Australia for the police to issue such an order, but it is known as ‘police law’ in Austria, which is separate from judicial law.
Periods of removal or eviction vary, but underlying the scheme is a belief that the victims need to be protected and must have sufficient time in order to consider options. A victim may elect to move from the home, and I gather that in such circumstances, the perpetrator can return. The Dutch are attracted to this scheme because the results indicate that it has been effective and provides women and children security and allows for fast intervention, thereby reducing violence.
In the Territory, victims of violence may apply for a restraining order, but there is no provision for the police to evict the perpetrator from the home other than the ability to hold a perpetrator in custody for four hours under the Domestic Violence Act. A bold initiative such as evicting a perpetrator for a significantly longer period and enabling the police to do so without a court order may have application in the Territory’s remote communities. The mechanics of producing a scheme such as the one I have outlined would be difficult. However, decision-makers should at least try to rise to the challenge.
I learnt about what is called the JOS project, which commenced in 2000 to assist victims of sexual violence. Victims could enlist a specialist lawyer within 10 days after making a report of violence, although some victims elected to retain a lawyer until after the conclusion of the prosecution, few did, as they sought and obtained advice in the earlier period and that was generally sufficient. The initial meeting with the lawyer was provided free of charge. The results showed that the early meeting with the lawyer gave the victim both general and tailor-made advice about a range of matters including the trial process as well as compensation that may be available. Underlying the service was a belief that victims of sexual assaults require specialised advice at an early stage. There was also a belief that the rights of victims needed to be respected and this was best done by the provision of early advice.
The meeting with the lawyer proved very successful for victims and the results of the project have been positive. Victims are provided with detailed advice about legal proceedings against the accused, and they are given a realistic overview of the difficulties of succeeding in sexual assault cases by lawyers experienced in that field. Often, victims report an assault, and sometimes six, 12 or 18 months go by before they become involved in the proceeding. As a result of delays, many victims are shocked to hear that they are required to give evidence or that the case against the accused is not a strong one, or that the prosecution is considering dropping the case. Some victims do not know at an early stage that they will be required to give evidence, or do not know that services are available to assist them.
The Dutch experience is that victims value the service greatly and were grateful to receive valuable information. Results also showed that victims felt more a part of the prosecution process. Figures show that most victims availed themselves of this service. Victims of sexual assault in the Northern Territory may benefit from trialling a scheme similar to the JOS project.
Members will know that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has a witness assistance service, but that does not become involved until the prosecution commences. It is the case that Legal Aid provides a free service for many, including victims of crime, but there is no specialist service in existence. Certainly, some victims receive the benefit of general assistance from police and others in the health sector, but there is no specific service in place similar to the one used by the Dutch.
Given that the conviction rates for sexual assault cases are notoriously low, there is merit in investigating the viability of such a scheme in the Northern Territory. The fact that victims were advised of compensation available to them is also of interest. There is a compensation scheme in existence in the Territory, which, despite the fact that Labor has done its best to abolish it, the reality is that many victims are not told of their right to compensation until they are advised by court staff or the DPP. In many instances, the victim is faced with time restraints with respect to making an application, or is out of time and must make, through a lawyer, in essence, an interlocutory application seeking an order to apply for compensation, notwithstanding that the limitation period has lapsed.
On balance and having regard to the Dutch experience, there is merit in pursuing the provision of free legal advice for victims of sexual violence within, say, one month of the crime being committed. It will assist victims and will certainly assist them to prepare themselves for what is required when the prosecution case gets to court. They can also be assisted with compensation and other broad as well specialised advice.
Unfortunately, the JOS project was trialled in only two parts of Holland. Although results were positive and a recommendation by those involved that it should be extended throughout Holland, funding restrictions mean that it will not be. In addition, there has been a recent change of direction and the Minister for Justice has decided to transfer JOS to bureaux or ‘victim information desks’ that exist in the main court houses in Holland. The fact is that the JOS project showed that further assistance was required for victims and they utilised the service and found that it was valuable.
Another innovation being implemented by the Dutch is the establishment of victim information desks at court houses. These could be described as a one-stop shop for victims of crime who, naturally enough, attend a court when a prosecution is under way. Of course, we have the Witness Assistance Service at the ODPP and some court houses, although not all in the Territory, have pamphlets available for those seeking help. It may be worth conducting a trial of a victim information desk at Darwin or Alice Springs Court House to see what the response is. It would need to be staffed, and oral and written information could be provided to victims. Furthermore, appropriate referrals could be made to the Witness Assistance Service, lawyers, counsellors and so on. It is important to ensure that victims of crime, any crime, know what services exist for them, and a desk specifically designed for them in court houses is likely to be of general assistance.
An interesting aspect of the Dutch legal system is that involving compensation for victims of crime. It is a fairly complicated system involving compensation made in criminal and civil jurisdictions. However, lessons can be learnt that may benefit Territorians. Under the present compensation scheme, there exists the ability for government to recover compensation paid to a victim from an offender. This recovery from the offender has tended not to provide anything in the way of reimbursement to the Territory for monies paid out. There are many reasons for that, but one is that most crime is committed by Aboriginal people, many of whom receive Social Security benefits. Recovery of any debt from an impecunious person is almost impossible, and that partly explains why recovery of compensation from offenders has traditionally been difficult.
In the words of one Ministry of Justice representative with whom I met:
Compensation payments are made by the state and it pays the shortfall of any amount an offender is not able to pay after three years. The state insists upon the offenders paying all or some of the amount of compensation, regardless of his or her financial position. Compensation for violent crime is paid for generally by the state, but other compensation is paid directly by the offender regardless of his or her financial position.
In Holland, there is an insistence on recovery, either in part or in total, from offenders, regardless of their financial position. It sounds tough and it is, but the Dutch strongly believe the offender should face up to what they have done or the damage they have caused. While this includes going to gaol, it also includes paying compensation even though they may receive nothing more than Social Security-type benefits. If there is an impecunious offender, an amount is paid, but only for three years. The Dutch believe that they have the balance right: the offender is penalised even though he has little money, then he meets, in financial terms, his responsibilities for committing a crime that caused another person harm and, after three years, he is released from further payments.
This has application in the Northern Territory in my view. Given who it is in the Northern Territory who commit crime, many of whom are impecunious and, importantly, are repeat offenders, there is, therefore, a strong case that they should be made to pay something should compensation be made to the person they have harmed. The word ‘responsibility’ was used frequently by Dutch officials when they spoke about the need to recover compensation from offenders, whatever their financial situation.
If violent offenders were made to pay for compensation that is actually paid for by law-abiding citizens through government, then those offenders may think twice about continuing to commit crime. An increasingly common view of Territory gaols is that those in them are relatively unfazed by being in custody and, for many, it has become a way of life, regularly going to gaol and, in some instances, actually asking the court to send them there. Insisting that even impecunious offenders pay may result in some of them thinking twice about offending before they do it again.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I am running out of time. I am up to page seven of my 14-page report. I am yet to deal with what I learnt in London, Edinburgh and Scotland. I thank members of the Legislative Assembly for assisting me in this trip; it was valuable. I am not sure how many members on the other side of the House will read this report, but I know my colleagues will. I also propose to send it to relevant stakeholders. Indeed, later this week, I am addressing a domestic violence service about the lessons I learnt. I thank those involved and I commend the statement which, after correcting various typographical errors, I will table, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: I make the observation, member for Araluen, that 15 minutes non-stop indicates that your voice has got better.
Ms CARNEY: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, no doubt, had you been listening closely, you would have observed that I am not in good shape.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time is up, member for Araluen.
Ms Carney: Do not comment from the Chair ...
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time is up, member for Araluen.
Ms Carney: If you sit in the Chair, you do the right thing, sport!
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, I remind you that you are talking to the Chair, and I will direct you.
Ms Carney: I am, and you are the Chair.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will direct the member, if she is not careful, to withdraw. Have some respect for the Chair, member for Araluen …
Ms Carney: You have some respect for your position.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: You are on a warning, member for Araluen.
Mr HENDERSON (Wanguri): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to talk this evening about a school in my electorate that turned 21 years of age on Friday, 17 September 2004, Leanyer Primary School. What a great series of events Henry Gray and the team of the school put on to celebrate 21 years of excellence in primary education in Leanyer.
Twenty-one years earlier, the school was officially opened by the then Northern Territory Chief Minister, Paul Everingham. Twenty-one years, hundreds of families, thousands of children and many teachers later it has reached maturity.
Throughout the day the many, many visitors were entertained by performances on stage, in the staff room and then the new Gather ‘n Goss garden amphitheatre. Gather ‘n Goss, a dream long held by art teacher Mrs Margaret Ferguson and shared by Leanyer Student Council and Art Club, became a reality. An area of flat half-dead grass behind a retaining wall had been transformed to become the school’s Gather ‘n Goss Garden. Gather ‘n Goss, a name suggested by past student Danielle Spittle was officially opened by Mr Alex Ford. Mr Ford, a past student and now a parent at Leanyer school, constructed the garden’s roofed stage. He was supported by Mr Serge Rizotti, Mr Geoff Harvey and Mr Ross Williams. Ms Tracey Parker and Mr Maurie Lenoir from the Northern Territory Hockey Association donated and laid Astroturf for student seating in front of the stage. I donated a bird bath to complement the garden, already alive with wildlife, a real nature’s own retreat.
Hundreds of volunteer hours and thousands of dollars raised from ice cup sales and the Student Council contribution have made the dream of a quiet, serene garden a beautiful reality. It really is a fantastic sanctuary in the heart of the school. A big congratulations to everybody who had a part in putting together what is going to be a great long term assets to Leanyer Primary.
Throughout the morning, entertainment and celebrations were offered in three venues around the school. Included were a guitar ensemble, talented pianists, and the Leanyer School Choir. Dancing groups performed on stage and a Korean karate demonstration was presented.
At a special midday assembly led by Sean Kennedy and Olivia McClelland, Student Council President and Vice-President, the whole school celebrated. The traditional ‘Happy Birthday’ was sung with Kyra Mulvena leading the school’s Beat choir and the whole school in heartfelt rendition. I spoke to the assembly gathering, declared it to be a school that had attained its maturity and again thanked all of the past teachers and members of school councils over many years who have put so much work in making Leanyer Primary School the great school that it is today, which has such a great reputation in the northern suburbs of Darwin.
After lunch the Leawanala band, students drawn from Leanyer, Wanguri and Alawa schools conducted by Ms Ilona Retallick from the Northern Territory Music School, entertained a large and appreciative audience. The day was one of celebration and showcasing student talents to our many attending parents and invited guests.
Celebrations continued on Saturday, 18 September with a bush dance on the school’s soon to be roofed basketball court. The dance attracted several hundred people. All classes from Transition to Year 7 demonstrated dancing skills, partnering each other and their parents. A great festive night was highlighted when His Honour the Administrator, Mr Ted Egan and Ms Nerys Evans led the gathering in singing ‘Happy Birthday’.
His Honour then sang a folk song with the band that night and the hundreds present joined in with the chorus line. It was great to see Ted and Nerys at Leanyer School and it goes to show what a fantastic Administrator Ted Egan is. He is well loved and respected wherever he goes and it was great to have him at Leanyer to join in the 21st anniversary celebrations.
The following Monday, children were happy to offer feedback about things that appealed during the anniversary celebrations. Everyone had a great time. The following is a sample of what students appreciated. I quote, ‘We got to eat cakes and do lots of fun things’, Joseph Baronio, 6. ‘We blew up and tied balloons’, Rachel Williamson, 6. ‘I like blowing out birthday cake candles’, Jenny Hi, 5. ‘The bush dance’, Themelina Roditis, 5. ‘Making the clown face for our decorations’, Chase Ferguson, aged 5. ‘The performances were terrific’, Jessica Thornton, aged 12. ‘The cake’, Tom Maloney, 11. ‘Cutting our 21st birthday cake at the assembly’, Megan Phelps, 11. ‘All the classes getting up and performing during the day’, Tim Carlon, 12; and ‘the excitement of the various classes trying to outdo each other in classroom decorations’, Jake Newman, aged 13.
Looking to the school’s future, students offered the following comments: ‘We need to always be litter conscious’, Dylan Goodman, aged 8; ‘We need to place rubbish in bins, not into holes or trees’, Emily Ella-Tjung, 8; ‘We need to make sure there is no bullying’, Brodie Green, 9; ‘I would like to keep Gather ‘n Goss open all recess and lunchtimes’, Amy Perry, 8; ‘We need more assistance to help teachers’, Thean Hong Leng, 9; ‘We need to continue upgrading classroom furniture’, Sonia Viikyl, 10; ‘We need more shade development’, Christina Pachos, 10; and ‘I would like more play ground equipment’, Peter Roditis, 9.
Reading those testaments and statements from the children at Leanyer, the whole culture of the school involves the children wherever possible in the running of the school and taking responsibility for the school and its environment. The children having their say is taken seriously by the Student Representative Council, the teachers and Henry Gray, the Principal.
The milestone has passed; the school moves on. Happy 21st birthday to Leanyer Primary School. Congratulations to Principal, Henry Gray, and his staff and students for hosting such a wonderful celebration.
I am proud to be the local member for Wanguri, with Leanyer the primary school in its heart. The government delivered on our election commitment for a significant upgrade to the school earlier last year. We provided $60 000 and it is good to know the shade structure will go up later this year.
Motion agreed to; the Assembly adjourned.
RESPONSE TO PETITION
The CLERK: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 100A, I inform honourable members that a response to petition No 64 has been received and circulated to honourable members. The text of the response will be included in the Parliamentary Record.
Petition No 64
Water Front Project/Goyder’s Camp
Date Petition presented: 18 August 2004
Presented by: Mr Wood
Referred to: Chief Minister
Date response due: 1 December 2004
Date response received: 8 October 2004
Date response presented: 12 October 2004
Response:
The preferred developer for the Darwin City Water Front Project was publicly announced on Friday,
17 September 2004. The master plan prepared by the preferred developer clearly provides for not only
the conservation and interpretation of the heritage of the old wharf area of Darwin generally but,
specifically, for the conservation and the interpretation of the site of Goyder’s Camp.
The master plan establishes an open space precinct in the area of Goyder’s Camp and flags the
necessity for the interpretation (telling the story) and the potential for a major piece of public art
to commemorate the first permanent non-Aboriginal settlement in the Northern Territory.
The Minister for Environment and Heritage approved an environmental assessment report and
recommendations for the Darwin City Water front development on the 30 August 2004. Three of the
recommendations of the report deal specifically with matters associated with the preservation and
interpretation of the history and heritage of the area, allowing for retention of visual amenity,
including Goyder’s Camp. Recommendations 5, 6 and 7 are repeated below in full:
Recommendation 5:
The proponent is to ensure that the Master Plan incorporates the preservation of view lines:
(a) from the escarpment; and
(b) from and to existing heritage places on the escarpment, including Government House.
The proponent shall consult with the Office of Environment and Heritage with respect to the preservation
of the visual amenity of heritage sites adjacent to the Darwin City Water Front.
Recommendation 6:
The site of Goyder’s Camp will be retained as an open space feature that retains a ‘sense of space’
and provides public recognition of the importance of the site and the events associated with it.
Recommendation 7:
The master plan will demonstrate how interpretation of the range of historical themes relevant to the
Darwin City Water Front will be incorporated into the redevelopment. These themes include:
the natural history of the area;
Aboriginal occupation before European arrival;
discovery and first settlement by Europeans;
contact between Europeans and Aboriginal people;
maritime history including wrecks;
the coming of the Overland Telegraph line;
the Chinese in Darwin;
the gold rush era;
the coming of the railway;
Darwin as a strategic outpost – oil storage, World War II, the 1942 bombing;
harbour defence and the boom net;
aviation history (the flying boats);
Cyclone Tracy; and
industrial use of the site, including the power station and the iron ore wharf.
- The Heritage Advisory Council initiated an assessment of Goyder’s Camp in April 2004 and will provide
advice to the Minister for Environment and Heritage consistent with the terms of the Heritage Conservation
Act in due course.
The government proposes to establish a facility that is of fundamental benefit to the people of the Northern
Territory and recognises that this cannot be achieved without due consideration and, indeed, celebration
of the heritage of the Territory, and the important parts of the site itself.
Further elaboration of the detail of the master plan, and the treatment of Goyder’s Camp will be announced
in the near future and will be followed by a period of public exhibition and consultation.
OPPOSITION OFFICE HOLDERS
Mr MILLS (Opposition Leader)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I inform the House of changes to the Shadow Ministry. The member for Blain, Leader of the Opposition, will have responsibility for Territory Development; Tourism; AustralAsia Railway; Indigenous Affairs; Arts and Museums; Young Territorians and Senior Territorians.
Dr Richard Lim, member for Greatorex, Deputy Opposition Leader, has responsibility for Treasury; Employment, Education and Training; Racing, Gaming and Licensing, and Central Australia.
Denis Burke, member for Brennan, has responsibility for Business, Industry and Resource Development; Corporate and Information Services; Communications; Asian Relations and Trade; Police, Fire and Emergency Services, and Defence Support.
Jodeen Carney, member for Araluen, has responsibility for Attorney-General and Justice, and Health.
Johan Elferink, member for Macdonnell is Opposition Whip, with responsibility for Community Development; Housing; Local Government; Sport and Recreation, and Regional Development.
Sue Carter, member for Port Darwin, has responsibility for Family and Community Services; Environment and Heritage, and Women’s Policy.
Stephen Dunham, member for Drysdale, has responsibility for Transport and Infrastructure; Lands and Planning; Parks and Wildlife, and Essential Services.
Fay Miller, member for Katherine, has responsibility for Ethnic Affairs; Mines and Energy, and Primary Industry and Fisheries.
PERSONAL EXPLANATION
Member for Stuart
Member for Stuart
Dr TOYNE (Stuart)(by leave): Madam Speaker, during debate last week, I found myself having to ask for members on the other side to repeat their questions and statements. The acoustics in this Chamber are not good on any day, however, I ask for the forbearance of members of the Assembly, during this sittings in particular, as I have recently been diagnosed as having some hearing loss accompanied by tinnitus. Tinnitus is a condition which masks hearing and, in my case, it is rather like having a tree full of cicadas inside your head. I expect to receive some assistance for this condition when I see an audiologist soon after these sittings. Until then, I seek the forbearance of members in this regard.
Madam SPEAKER: I remind members, for the sake of Hansard, not to bang on your desk or crunch up paper. If you listen to the broadcast in any of your offices, you will understand that all ambient noise goes through the sound system. It would be appreciated if you would make as little extra noise as possible.
MINISTERIAL REPORTS
Darwin City Water Front Project
Darwin City Water Front Project
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Madam Speaker, I was pleased to announce on 17 September, last month, my government’s decision to award preferred consortium status to the Darwin Cove Consortium for the Darwin City Water Front project. It is a major project by any measure. When the government announced it was taking the project to the marketplace in September last year, the value of the development was estimated at $600m. The latest estimate from the Darwin Cove Consortium values the development at $1bn.
I would like to talk about the Darwin Cove Consortium and who are the partners in it. It is led by ABN AMRO, and its major partners are Sitzler Brothers, Barclay Mowlem, Henry Walker Eltin and Toga Pty Ltd. Honourable members will recognise a substantial local presence within this group.
The operator of the convention centre is Ogden, one of the most experienced operators in Australia and the region. Architects Hassell and TVS, Crawford are joined by local architectural firm MKEA. Other key advisors with local offices include Connell Wagner/Mott MacDonald, Rider Hunt and KPMG.
Furthermore, local industry participation will be an important focus of the negotiations leading up to financial close with contractual obligations based on the preferred consortium’s bid to be incorporated into the project documentation.
I am confident that there will be significant further opportunities for local contractors and consultants, not just those already associated with the consortium, to participate in the project as development proceeds into the major stage II precinct work centred, as it will be, on the great bulk of residential development. Of course, local employment will be an important priority in this regard.
Whilst it is pleasing for me to make this report today, it is important for the Assembly to note the current status of the project. At the risk of stating the obvious, the preferred consortium has been named. The detailed negotiations phase must be concluded before the successful consortium is known. The master plan itself is yet to be finalised, with both public consultation processes as well as statutory processes; the latter also incorporating periods of public comment, yet to be concluded. I am encouraged by the positive response to the master plan from the community to date.
Community engagement has involved extensive consultations with the Darwin City Council, industry and union representatives, the Planning Action Network, the National Trust, the Larrakia Nation, and a number of other community representative groups and leaders. The government has also been consulting for more than a year now with the Department of Defence regarding the project. It acknowledges the importance of Defence in its capacity in the defending of the North as well as its local economic role. The needs of Defence can be accommodated with the overall development and we are very confident of that.
Our target for financial close with the preferred consortium is in the first half of 2005. Stage I, worth around $250m, will begin soon after that financial close and will include the Darwin Convention and Exhibition Centre; a controlled body of water within Kitchener Bay; a serviced apartment hotel; Stage I residential and associated retail services; significant swimming opportunities including a wave pool; and a cultural centre, promenade walks and car parking.
Stage I is expected to be completed by 2007 with the convention centre programmed for opening in the first half of 2007, and the balance of this stage progressively completed by the end of that year, making for a self-contained and operational sub-precinct in itself. The balance of the development, being predominantly residential, is expected to be developed sequentially from 2008 through until 2015 subject to market conditions.
As I have previously stated, detailed negotiations remain before a contract can be awarded and construction commenced. As part of this process, the Multiplex consortium and the Wharf Link consortium are in reserve. I expect to make a full statement to the Assembly on the outcome of the negotiations once concluded.
Having said that, the government has sign-off on the process to date from both its probity auditors, being the Darwin-based Merritt Partners and the Sydney-based Deloitte, as well as from its legal advisors, Mallisons Stevens Jacques, who also provide a probity advice.
Madam Speaker, this is one more example of success achieved by the hard work of government. When we came to power three years ago our economy was struggling. We had the difficult task of rectifying government’s financial position while working hard with the private sectors to turn around the economy overall.
Mr Elferink: Rubbish!
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell.
Ms MARTIN: I am pleased to say that we have achieved this dual task, an achievement acknowledged by independent commentators of the standing of Access Economics. It is particularly pleasing for me to see our key resources sectors of the economy now flourishing as well as being able to note the rebound in such economic sectors as the residential property in retail markets. Despite the comments of the opposition, I look forward to making further reports to the Assembly on the project.
Mr MILLS (Opposition Leader): Madam Speaker, well may the Chief Minister say all these great achievements under the reign of a Martin Labor government when in fact we have had two years of zero economic growth and probably the most significant achievement that burns in the minds of Territorians is swimming pool fencing legislation. They have not forgotten.
However, moving to the report, Chief Minister, it is welcome and acknowledged, particularly for the effect that this will have on the number of contractors and Territory workers who will be able to find meaningful employment in this project. That is what it is about: actively engaging Territorians.
In order for the opposition to participate fully in this debate, it is only right that we have an opportunity for a full briefing. I acknowledge that we have had a briefing from your department, however I ask, in the spirit of full cooperation from the opposition, for the opportunity to have a briefing with the preferred consortium so that we can have active debate and participate fully in this great project, so I ask for your approval for a briefing with the preferred developers.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, I welcome the Chief Minister’s report on the water front. I support the water front development, which will be a great boost to employment and industry in the Northern Territory. However, I am disappointed that somewhere along the line, the public could not be involved in at least being allowed to give an opinion on the three architectural designs for the water front.
One billion dollars is a huge amount of money to spend on our land and the least we could have done is allow people to at least comment on the other designs. That is part of being open and transparent. That is part of involving people in it. I admit that government, in the end, has to make the final decision, but it would have been much better if people knew what was being proposed for the water front. After all, it is our water front.
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Madam Speaker, I thank the members for their comments. I appreciate that the Opposition Leader had a briefing, which we offered very quickly. What the Opposition Leader received at that briefing was full account of where we are at this stage.
It is disappointing that the Opposition Leader does not understand that this is a very complex process and we have a consortium, the Darwin Cove Consortium, that is at preferred developer status. When the office is opened in the mall, which will display the design and offer the chance of talking to those involved, I hope the Opposition Leader will be interested enough to visit and to ask those questions.
There is a lot of detailed work to go on between now and financial close. We are very confident of going to financial close, but there is a lot of detail to go on. It is simply not appropriate that I get involved or you get involved. I have a lot of trust in the expert group doing that, and we will report fully when it all happens.
Training and Apprenticeships – Department of Health and Community Services
Dr TOYNE (Health): Madam Speaker, better education and training for all Territorians is a key commitment of this government.
As part of this government’s Jobs Plan announced by my colleague, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training last year, we are lifting the training effort to create 7000 new apprentices and trainees over the next three years.
As Minister for Health, I am pleased to outline the way in which my department is progressing this commitment. The Department of Health and Community Services has exceeded this year’s target of 18 apprentices by an additional four. Of these 22 apprentices, 16 are Aboriginal. This has enabled the department to implement a diverse range of apprenticeships in areas such as patient care, food services, including the use of bush tucker, Aboriginal liaison officers, ward clerks, ground maintenance and business administration.
This is the first time apprentices are being trained in the roles other than business administration. For 2005, we have set a target of 23 apprentices and already, 19 nominations have been received. The department has also increased its cadet intake from 10 to 11 for 2004 under the National Indigenous Cadetship Program. Two of these cadets are from remote areas of the Northern Territory. Three cadets will graduate this year in the areas of Bachelor of Psychological Science, Bachelor of Indigenous Studies (Aboriginal Health) and Bachelor of Nursing Pre-registration.
In addition, this year will see the department’s first Aboriginal Behavioural Science graduate and Aboriginal Studies graduate. Nominations for 2005 have been completed, resulting in five nominations in the areas of health promotion, social sciences policy, women’s health, oral health and information management.
The Assembly should also note that Trish Jones, a senior Aboriginal officer, is being sponsored by the Office of Aboriginal Health, Family and Social Policy to complete an Executive Development Program. Trish will travel to Dili, East Timor for the next EDP module. The module will be conducted under the auspices of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Charles Darwin University and the Universidade Nacional Timor Leste. Dili was chosen as the location for the next EDP module because it provides an opportunity to proactively engage with East Timor and examine practical ways the Northern Territory can assist their public sector.
On completion of the program in February 2005, Trish will be the first Aboriginal officer to have completed this program at the newly-accredited Masters level, a first for the Department of Health and Community Services, and a first for the NTPS.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Speaker, I am delighted to rise in my very recent appointment as shadow Minister for Health. I have been shadow minister formally for only a few hours, Madam Speaker, but I have been able to survey the state of the Territory health system, and the performance of this minister over his less than 12 months in his position.
I wish the apprenticeship idea the very best, however, this minister needs more than just apprentices. In fact, an advertisement in this morning’s Centralian Advocate says: ‘Wanted: 10 new doctors’. There is a chronic shortage of nurses in the Northern Territory, and the way this minister has handled that and other crises in health is to his eternal shame.
The government closed the Darwin Health Centre in the city centre about 12 months ago. For many months, it has continued to pay $2000 a day for a specialist anaesthetist to fly from Brisbane in Alice Springs. There are bed shortages in Darwin and Alice Springs. Government said three years ago that there would be no bed shortages under Labor. Doctors are working 100 hours a week, and sometimes 72 hours straight. Labor promised 75 new nursing positions prior to the last election and, only months ago, commenced a recruitment and retention drive.
The bed shortage at RDH is critical. One morning, there were 27 patients waiting on trolleys under the stewardship of this minister. Shortages of beds will continue unless government provides additional funding.
In May, the government provided $2m for the Alice Springs Hospital for 12 months. There are 20 junior doctors in Alice Springs. There should be 27. This minister has attacked the AMA for asking for an inquiry to be held in relation to the doctor shortage at Alice Springs Hospital. This is the government that closed the Palmerston 24-hour medical service early on. There are still staff shortages at the Palmerston Health Clinic.
The list goes on, and I will run out of time, Madam Speaker. I look forward to this shadow portfolio, and I look forward to seeing which portfolio this minister handles the worst of all, whether it is Justice or Health; I suspect he handles both of them very badly indeed.
Dr TOYNE (Health): Madam Speaker, I can say I can look forward to as ill-informed critique of what we are doing in Health as we have had in the agency of Justice from the member opposite.
I will say one thing about her: if she wants to make assertions about this portfolio or any other, she had better get her facts right because she has form for not only misinforming this House, but also …
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker! He cannot allege that my colleague has misinformed this House other than by way of substantive motion, and I suggest he withdraw.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, you know that. Withdraw.
Dr TOYNE: Madam Speaker, I withdraw that. However, I look forward to exposing some of the false claims that she is in the habit of making in this House.
Ms Carney: And I look forward to showing you as the slippery grot you are!
Dr TOYNE: I also look forward to examining her …
Mrs AAGAARD: A point of order, Madam Speaker!
Dr TOYNE: … of insulting our public servants with the things she says in here.
Mrs AAGAARD: The comments of the member for Araluen just made towards the Attorney-General are completely unparliamentary and I ask that she withdraw.
Mr Dunham: What were they?
Mrs AAGAARD: I am sorry; I am not willing to repeat the comments.
Madam SPEAKER: I am sorry. I did not hear.
Members interjecting.
State of the Regions Territory 2004 Conference
Mr AH KIT (Community Development): Madam Speaker, the inaugural State of the Regions Territory 2004 Conference was recently convened in Alice Springs on 3 and 4 September. As I believe you would agree, Madam Speaker, the Alice was an entirely appropriate venue for such an important meeting as it is the Territory’s largest region.
A commitment was given in the Building Stronger Regions, Stronger Futures strategy that a State of the Regions Conference would be held every second year. As the first of these conferences, it was decided the most sensible primary objective should be to allow for discussion, feedback and recommendations on the scope of evaluation and indicators needed to measure regional development progress.
Some of this material was pretty heavy going for some of the delegates, but it was seen to be very important that there be discussion of the way that we will measure our progress in this area in the future. Outcomes from the workshops that discussed, particularly, evaluation strategies, will provide the basis of the first State of the Regions report to be tabled in the Legislative Assembly.
The conference was attended by 168 people from five regional development boards, local government councils, Territory government agencies, Commonwealth government agencies, and non-government organisations. Participants were supportive of conference themes and demonstrated a willingness to work with government; first, in firming relationships between boards and the wider community and, second, in establishing dialogue around what regional indicators are needed to measure progress within their respective regions.
Keynote speakers’ topics covered five main areas: the role of regional development boards within the Northern Territory’s development agenda; reports from each of the regional development boards outlining their activities to date; discussions of the ways in which it is possible to link regional development practices and community development practices; discussions of key issues and opportunities in realising regional development outcomes; and discussion on how regional development might be measured and evaluated.
To be honest, I had initial concerns that some of the boards felt they were just window dressing and they were not established to achieve progressive outcomes and change. From what I witnessed, it became evident that the boards, as their members rose to give their presentations and as they listened to other boards’ ideas and views, felt they were genuinely part of a Territory-wide movement for regional development. There was a real sense of optimism.
The Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs designed this conference directly from the Building Stronger Regions strategy. Strategies need to provide analysis of the progress being made against the stated outcomes in a transparent, accountable manner. A report of the conference will be tabled in the Assembly in due course. This will provide us with recommendations from that first conference and clear indications to us all on ways in which we may be able to move the Territory ahead through regional development.
The first conference was necessarily a trial. There has been some very useful feedback from conference delegates about the way they would like to see future conferences run. One possibility now being considered is that each regional development board be given the responsibility in turn to organise the conference in its particular region, something of which I am supportive.
Madam Speaker, I thank the 50-odd Territorians who are serving on regional development boards. I think I speak for members on both sides of the Assembly in commending their work to date.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, I am nothing shy of astonished at this report from the minister. He has reported on boards that have met and discussed how they are going to measure their outputs in to the future.
This idea of regional development boards, which is a very good one, has left me a bit surprised in that the best that the minister has been able to offer this House is not a single outcome. The only thing he has told this Chamber in five minutes that the regional development boards have achieved is that they have met and had a conference and discussed how they will measure the outcomes. Not one outcome has been described by the minister. He has described the meeting and what the meeting has done, but he has not told me about one single project that has been achieved. He has not told this House about one brick or one piece of mortar that has been laid.
This minister has said: ‘I have the structures in place and we are all ready to go’, and what they have achieved at the last meeting was that they decided on ways that they are going to measure the things that they are going to achieve in the future.
Sadly, this minister, since coming to government has been trying to build artifices around himself rather than make real change. He has tried, and we all saw the cover of the Australian newspaper, to describe an environment in which he was going to be the saviour of all these welfare issues in remote communities. I see no change.
This minister has run dead and part of the problem is that the vehicle he is trying to use is not effective. You cannot use local government to make these sorts of changes. The minister has committed himself to making vast social change without having a vehicle to do it and, effectively, what he is trying to do is tow a road train with a Hyundai. People in local government on the ground are starting to rail against the pressure the minister is applying.
Mr AH KIT (Community Development): Madam Speaker, I thought the shadow minister, the member for Macdonnell, started off in fine form, and I was about to welcome his support.
Then he took the other 90 seconds to torpedo what is being developed by this government. He has a short memory and that is pretty selective, no doubt, in that we inherited the situation out in the regions. It was terrible. We are doing something about it. We are doing something positive. Before the regional development boards were established, we had regional economic development committees that were toothless tigers. They had no support. There was dysfunction out there. There still is dysfunction out there. You have a lot to answer for. We are going to move forward by working with these regional development boards in a positive way to seek the outcomes that we are all looking for to progress the Territory.
Cross-Cultural Awareness Training Sessions
Mr VATSKALIS (Ethnic Affairs): Madam Speaker, since 1987, the Office of Ethnic Affairs has been providing free-of-charge sessions on cross-cultural awareness in response to requests from government and non-government agencies.
In general, the cross-cultural awareness sessions aim to improve outcomes for both agencies and clients, with particular emphasis on public contact staff in order to develop their understanding of cultural diversity in the Northern Territory and how this diversity impacts on service delivery and access.
2004-05 marks the 18th year the Office of Ethnic Affairs has provided cross-cultural awareness sessions and in that time it has delivered over 400 such sessions to more than 8000 participants. So far this financial year, nine sessions have been delivered for 176 participants, while in 2003-04, 35 sessions were delivered to 797 participants.
Training modules are tailored to agency requirements and the length of sessions varies according to the audience and agency requirements. For example, the shortest session is a 30 minute presentation as part of the Northern Territory government Service-Wide Induction Program, whilst the longest training takes place over two full days provided under the title Making Justice Culturally Sensitive and forms part of national competency based training for all new police recruits in the Northern Territory. So far this year, training has been provided to two squads of recruits consisting of 54 potential new police officers.
Examples of topics covered in cross-cultural awareness training have included the following: the population composition of the Northern Territory and its migrant refugee components; why people migrate to Australia; the settlement adjustment process; refugee settlement; general and specific cultural behaviours; cross-cultural communication; bridging cultural barriers; overseas qualifications; racism; migrant and refugee health issues; and working with children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.
This list of topics is not exhaustive. Training topics are developed and moulded to fit with the issues of importance and relevance to a particular agency. In preparing and conducting cross-cultural awareness sessions, the Office of Ethic Affairs collaborates with individual migrants and refugees, ethnic community groups, interpreters and translators, and relevant service providers. This is done in order to present a variety of perspectives and hold balanced discussions. The sessions, which are delivered using both theoretical and experiential methods, enable service providers to develop and implement strategies for effective interaction and communication.
During the training sessions, there are opportunities for empowering service providers to be at ease when dealing with people from other cultures. The sessions also assist service providers in appropriately communicating with clients who have difficulty in communicating in English or are deaf.
The Office of Ethnic Affairs works in conjunction with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service and the Commonwealth Translating and Interpreting Service to deliver Working with Interpreters training sessions, which provide practical, hands-on experience in engaging and working with on-site and telephone interpreters. For training participants who have never worked with interpreters before, and who often struggle with their non-English speaking clients, such sessions have proved to be extremely useful. Instead of relying on family members, friends and other relatives, these sessions reinforce the message that professional interpreter services are available and should be utilised by service providers, particularly Northern Territory government agencies.
I encourage government and non-government agencies to consult with the Office of Ethnic Affairs for any cross-cultural awareness or communication training that may be required for their staff. I also publicly giver credit to the Office of Ethnic Affairs for its ongoing commitment to provide and, where possible, improve the delivery of cross-cultural training across the Territory. It is part of our commitment to valuing diversity, ensuring fair access, encouraging participation and fostering mutual respect, an important part of our unique Territory lifestyle.
Mrs MILLER (Katherine): Madam Speaker, I thank the minister for his report. As he is aware, this morning is the first morning I have risen to speak in reply to a report. I am looking forward to this portfolio. I am well aware there are over 100 ethnic groups in the Northern Territory and, of course, we have to work in harmony in our community.
Cross-cultural induction is very important across all areas, especially in nursing and teaching where we need a greater understanding of each other’s cultures, and we must be very aware of the indigenous culture induction. I look forward to having many briefings in the next few days and discussing issues with the minister.
Mr VATSKALIS (Ethnic Affairs): Madam Speaker, I welcome the member to this exciting portfolio. The multicultural diversity of the Northern Territory is a very important portfolio. Cross-cultural awareness workshops are very important and, from my previous life, I recall one case where I was presenting cross-cultural awareness workshops as a member of the Health department.
I could see that many nurses especially had great difficulty dealing with aged migrant people because they could not understand the cultural sensitivities, how a male nurse could not attend a female patient or the opposite. Another thing I would like to point out is the difficulty some migrant people have with trusting police in the Northern Territory and Australia; bearing in mind that quite a few of them came from countries where police were used as an instrument of oppression. It takes a while to realise that our police operate within a constitutional framework and the police here are trusted, are friendly and are here to help and serve, rather than serve the government to oppress people.
This is very important and I am very pleased that my Office of Ethnic Affairs offers these workshops. I encourage any member here to have a briefing, and certainly the member for Katherine in her new shadow portfolio. I would be very happy to provide any briefing she requests.
Reports noted pursuant to Sessional Order.
SUSPENSION OF STANDING ORDERS
Reference to Standing Orders Committee
Reference to Standing Orders Committee
Mr HENDERSON (Leader of Government Business)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that so much of standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving a motion referring a matter to the Standing Orders Committee.
Motion agreed to.
MOTION
Reference – Standing Orders Committee
Reference – Standing Orders Committee
Mr HENDERSON (Leader of Government Business): Madam Speaker, I move that this Assembly, noting that -
- (1) During the debate in the Legislative Assembly on the Evidence Reform (Children and Sexual Offences) Bill on
7 October 2004, the member for Araluen made a series of assertions regarding the professional capacity of
Northern Territory public servants who prepared the bill for debate in the Legislative Assembly;
(2) On 8 October 2004, the public servants from the Department of Justice who prepared the instructions and the
Parliamentary Counsel who drafted the legislation took the extraordinary and unprecedented action of writing
to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and the Leader of Government Business raising concerns with what
was, in their words, and I quote: ‘a direct attack on the professional legal expertise of departmental officers’.
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker! One would assume that a matter like this that is being referred to Standing Orders Committee would be circulated to members. I am totally unaware of this letter. I am totally unaware of this motion, and one would think that it would be circulated.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, the letter will be circulated.
Madam SPEAKER: It is being circulated now.
Mr HENDERSON: Thank you, Madam Speaker.
- (3) The public servants note that those officers have no ability to respond or to seek redress for such an attack
on their professional competence under parliamentary privilege and must suffer having their reputations
impugned on the public record,
refers the following matters to the Standing Orders Committee, which will meet today, 12 October 2004, for
inquiry and report:
(a) whether the Assembly’s Standing Orders need to be strengthened to provide persons other
than members of the Assembly with a mechanism to respond to allegations that they believe
unfairly impugn their reputations; and
using parliamentary privilege to advance such assertions; and
Madam SPEAKER: Leader of Government Business, before you go on, I believe the letter needs to be circulated.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, I table the letter concerned.
Madam SPEAKER: Would the attendants circulate the letter, please?
Mr HENDERSON: This is unprecedented, Madam Speaker. It is a very serious issue that I bring before the House today. I have certainly sought advice not only from officers of the Legislative Assembly, but back through the Parliamentary Record since the time of self-government, and I am confident in saying this is the first time that senior officers in our public service have written to the parliament complaining about the way debate ensued on particular legislation, and the offence that senior public servants have taken to their professional capability and capacity to do their work in terms of serving the people of the Northern Territory.
It was an issue which I raised at the time during the second and third reading debates. It was an extraordinary four-hour tirade of abuse during debate on an issue that should have had the full support of the 25 members in this House. I will read this letter into the Parliamentary Record. It is addressed to me as the Chairman of the Standing Orders Committee:
Dear Mr Henderson,
- We wish to raise with you a matter of concern arising from the debate on the Evidence Reform (Children
and Sexual Offences) Bill (Serial 240) on 7 October 2004.
During that debate the member for Araluen made repeated remarks on the text of the bill and the process for
the development of the bill which were directed at the professional expertise and competence of both the
Policy Officer responsible for the development of the bill and the Parliamentary Drafter and the Policy
Division of the Department of Justice and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel generally.
These comments ranged from matters of an indirect nature such as describing the bill or clauses of it as
‘a mess’, a ‘dog’s breakfast’, ‘absurd’, ‘stuffed up’ and ‘bad legislation’ and ‘not properly thought through’
to comments that were more personal to departmental officers. In particular she asked ‘why the Attorney-General
cannot employ people with the relevant practical experience, either in the law or in the area of policy’, ‘whether
independent counsel had considered [s21D] and … the bill generally … or did the Attorney-General simply rely
upon policy officers at the Department of Justice’ and ‘that it is drafted in such a dreadful manner, based on,
presumably, not very good instructions’.
- Whilst rigorous scrutiny of the detail of a bill is obviously …
Members interjecting.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, this is very serious. I ask members opposite to hear this correspondence in silence because it has been raised in an extraordinary way. I quote again:
- Whilst rigorous scrutiny of the detail of a bill is obviously an important and appropriate aspect of parliamentary
scrutiny, we believe that the terms of the member for Araluen’s comments go beyond such scrutiny and constitute
a direct attack on the professional legal expertise of departmental officers. Those officers have no ability to respond
to or seek redress for such an attack on their professional competence under parliamentary privilege and must suffer
having their reputations impugned on the public record.
We are very disappointed that departmental officers have been brought into the political debate in this way. It is
no doubt both discouraging and embarrassing to them in the dedicated performance of their duties to the
government of the day to be made the subject of such comments.
This matter is referred to you for your consideration.
Signed:
Richard Coates, Chief Executive Officer;
Gale Jamieson, Parliamentary Counsel.
Madam Speaker, this is a very serious issue, and I can inform the House that my office has spoken to the relevant officers concerned and they agreed to this letter being tabled in the House.
We have a fundamental principle of government in Australia under the Westminster system in that the public service - and in the Northern Territory we have a great and very capable public service - serves the government of the day without fear or favour. It is an important part - in fact, it is a vital part - of our system of democracy. There is a fundamental tenet that you would attack - and none of us, as ministers on this side of the House, shy away from robust debate in the parliament - ministers on their competence or otherwise, but you do not attack public servants.
Many of our public servants, particularly at the policy level, work extraordinary hours. They work long hours, are very hard-working, capable people trying to do their best to serve the government of the day and the people of the Northern Territory. To have their professional capacity and capability impugned in the way that the member for Araluen did the other day, certainly seems to filter through the public service.
We have a big enough problem in the Northern Territory, as it is, trying to recruit people to senior areas of the public service competing with all the other states. For public servants to come here, they must be able to feel free to go about their work without fear or favour. However, this letter shows that the public service is listening to the debate in this House and, in regard to the bill the other day, have taken great offence to the member for Araluen’s comments.
The referral to the Standing Orders Committee is to see if there are any mechanisms deployed in other parliaments around Australia or within the Westminster system whereby public servants or other members of the public can, if they feel so aggrieved, have some sort of mechanism to put their contribution on the Parliamentary Record or to respond to comments made in parliament, or whether the Speaker can provide further guidance on the appropriateness of using parliamentary privilege to advance such assertions.
However, this is not the only incident. The opposition, since the change of government, has a long-running, sorry history of attacking public servants. I have a few other examples here. These public servants want to go about serving the government of the day without fear or favour. That means the government of the day, the parliament of the Northern Territory, without fear or favour. I have a number of examples here; there are many more.
This is a Parliamentary Record of 16 June, in a proposed censure of the Chief Minister in regards to the METIS …
Mr BURKE: A point of order, Madam Speaker. In speaking to these sorts of motions the other day, you made a point of saying, and this was led by the Leader of Government Business, that the debate has to be centred on the motion. The motion, in this case, is that we are talking about one particular debate in the Assembly last week. For the minister to range widely, I believe, is outside of the terms of reference.
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, there is a point of order. We are speaking to this motion and you should stick to the motion.
Mr HENDERSON: Obviously, the opposition is sensitive, and these issues will be debated during consideration of this by the Standing Orders Committee. This is not the first time; there has been a series of attacks on public servants.
However, this is the first time that we have had senior public servants write in such a way to this parliament seeking a referral to the Standing Orders Committee to try to provide them with some protection.
Not only did senior officers within government take offence at the member for Araluen’s comments, but Susan Lowry from the Victims of Crime Northern Territory has written to the Attorney-General regarding the same debate. I will table the letter from Sue Lowry, who, everyone in this parliament would know, is a very respected advocate for victims of crime in the Northern Territory. In speaking to Sue this morning to see if she was prepared to have this letter tabled, she said that she was and wants to inform the House that she wants to be involved in policy debate. Her organisation wants to have the ability to have input into legislation to further protect victims of crime, but wants to be able to do so in the knowledge that Victims of Crime Northern Territory and their position is recorded accurately in parliamentary debate. I will read the letter into Hansard. It is addressed to Dr Peter Toyne, Attorney-General:
Dear Dr Toyne
- I feel the urgent need to write to you to advise you and your government that my name was incorrectly
used in parliamentary sittings just hours ago.
I was contacted by Ms Jodeen Carney this morning …
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The motion of the Leader of Government Business deals with public servants. I wonder if he is seeking to amend it or whether this is irrelevant to this motion.
Mr HENDERSON: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, the motion states:
- … refers the following matters to the Standing Orders Committee, which will meet today on 12 October 2004
for inquiry and report:
(a) whether the Assembly’s standing orders need to be strengthened to provide persons
other that members of the Assembly with a mechanism to respond to allegations that
they believe unfairly impugn their reputations; …
Madam SPEAKER: Accepted. There is no point of order.
Mr HENDERSON: No wonder they are sensitive, Madam Speaker.
- I was contacted by Ms Jodeen Carney this morning because I was quoted in a press release of yours
some weeks ago as congratulating you on the proposed Evidence Reform (Children and Sexual
Offences) Bill.
Ms Carney informed me that the details of the bill were not as reported in your press releases and that
she would like to send me her reply speech. As I had not seen the bill, I was happy to know more about
the legislation. I acknowledged to Ms Carney that if she was correct in the concerns verbalised to me over
the phone, I would like to know more. If I agreed, I would address the concerns in an appropriate way.
- After receiving Ms Carney’s information I decided I would attend the sittings this afternoon to understand
more about the bill and of MLAs concerns if any. Consequently, I did learn much about the bill and of
opposition’s concerns. However, my innocent observation from the public gallery turned into more than
I had bargained for.
My name and the reference to Victims of Crime NT has been used by Ms Carney without my permission
insinuating we supported her concerns with the bill.
- I therefore make clear, the Victims of Crime NT support your introduction of the Evidence Reform (Children
and Sexual Offences) Bill.
I apologise if you were as shocked as I was to hear our name. Stakeholders such as ourselves do wish to be
informed of the details of legislation change before introduced, and I encourage you to approach us for
feedback in the future.
Yours sincerely …
Madam Speaker, this is a serious issue. Every one of us here wants to see children who are the victims of sexual abuse have their day in court without over-the-top cross-examination and intimidation. Every opportunity was afforded to every member of this House to have input into the development of that legislation.
That the member for Araluen should seek to use parliamentary privilege to attack the competence, the capabilities and the motives of hard working public servants and victims groups that have contributed to the development of this legislation does the member for Araluen no credit whatsoever. There are a number of other examples of attacks on public servants; public servants have been accused of lying in this House without any form of redress.
This is an appropriate motion to send this issue to the Standing Orders Committee for consideration as to what vehicle can be afforded to public servants and members of the public if they see fit to respond to allegations such as this that are made in this parliament under parliamentary privilege.
By no means does the government seek to, in any way, curtail debate and freedom of speech for members in the House. Parliamentary privilege is an important part of the Westminster system. However, when we receive correspondence such as this from public servants who are trying to do their job without fear or favour, it is important that the Standing Orders Committee consider the request and report to the parliament in the first sittings next year.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Madam Speaker, it is certainly unprecedented that the government would show such sensitivity in this matter.
It is interesting that the sensitivity of the public servants is about words such as the legislation was ‘a mess’, a ‘dog’s breakfast’, ‘absurd’, ‘not properly thought through’ etcetera, etcetera, and that was of such objection to the experienced senior CEO of the Department of Justice that he himself would sign the letter, Richard Coates, Chief Executive Officer. You said that Richard Coates, Sue Oliver and Gale Jamieson, who are the signatories of this letter, are listening to this debate. I hope they are because I would say: ‘Oh, poor diddums! Poor diddums!’
If that is the attitude of senior public servants who are responsible for drafting legislation for debate in this parliament, that the comments of the shadow Attorney-General in interrogating this legislation is such that you feel compelled to write not to the Chief Minister, not even to the minister who is your direct superior, the Attorney-General, but to the Leader of Government Business, it smacks of some sort of encouragement, frankly.
Members interjecting.
Mr BURKE: It seems to me that Richard Coates, who served me during my time in government, would not be so sensitive. Frankly, I would like the opportunity of having Richard Coates and others on oath in the parliamentary standing committee so we can interrogate exactly the extent of their concerns and why they felt so compelled.
It is worth airing the fact that if it is such an unprecedented situation where public servants’ names have been used - in fact, the names where not even used. There was not a name mentioned. Richard Coates’ name was never mentioned, as I recall, but I do recall Ken Clarke’s name being used in this Assembly. I recall Jennifer Prince’s name being used in this Assembly when you made the most outrageous allegations, using public servants as your authorisation, about the conduct of the previous government. I have heard Bill Freeland’s name used in this Assembly, scurrilously, by the Labor government regarding his capacity as a senior public servant of the Northern Territory.
So bring it on! Bring it on if you are so confident in your outrage about the comments of the shadow Attorney-General. I would be quite confident that not only can she defend herself, but she and the public servants are quite adequately protected by the safeguards that are in place at the moment.
If one wants to refer to, say, the Commonwealth, does anyone recall the number of times a previous Secretary of Defence was mentioned in committees of the federal parliament to the extent where not only was he sacked, but he took action against the federal government because of the way he felt he was impugned?
In comparison to those few examples, what the shadow Attorney-General said in debate last week I believe was not only warranted, but also demonstrated her concern and capacity as shadow Attorney-General to interrogate whether this legislation was properly thought through, properly drafted and sufficient to provide safeguards that she wanted for children of the Northern Territory.
If a few public servants were, by implication, by suggestion, involved in the drafting of the bill, too bad! Richard Coates, grow up! Do not play politics in the Northern Territory. If you want to be respected as a public servant in the Northern Territory, Richard Coates, and you certainly have had my respect in the past, be a bigger man than signing your name to this garbage.
With regard to this motion, the opposition welcomes it, supports it and we look forward to the interrogation of these public servants on oath.
Madam SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. Deputy Chief Minister.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, it is instructive …
Mr BURKE: Madam Speaker, I move that the motion be put.
Madam SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be put.
The Assembly divided:
Ayes 11 Noes 13
Mr Baldwin Mrs Aagaard
Mr Burke Mr Ah Kit
Ms Carney Mr Bonson
Ms Carter Dr Burns
Mr Dunham Mr Henderson
Mr Elferink Mr Kiely
Dr Lim Ms Lawrie
Mr Maley Mr McAdam
Mrs Miller Ms Martin
Mr Mills Ms Scrymgour
Mr Wood Mr Stirling
Dr Toyne
Mr Vatskalis
Motion negatived.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, it is quite instructive that it was the member for Brennan who rose to contribute from the opposition side because the member for Brennan has form in this regard. You only have to go back to Estimates Committee hearings a couple of years ago and his vitriolic attacks on the newly-appointed Commissioner of Police. We have seen again in his contribution this morning how he goes further ...
Mr BURKE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! I ask the minister to either make the allegation by substantive motion or produce the transcript.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Brennan, you, in fact, did a similar thing mentioning public servants, so I will rule no point of order on this. However, minister, would you make sure you do not make allegations that you cannot substantiate.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, the member for Brennan further impugned the credibility, the honesty and integrity of one Richard Coates, where he demanded that he be brought in so ‘we can interrogate him’ in the good old military style, the good old jackboot style: ‘so we can interrogate him’.
That underlines exactly what this motion is about: all they want to do is cast aspersions on public servants. It is unprecedented for public servants to write to government to complain of being attacked in this Chamber - on the one hand being attacked and, yet, on a different quarter all together, alleging being misrepresented by a member of the opposition.
That is why the government seeks to refer these letters to the Standing Orders Committee for their consideration. The fact that the member for Araluen’s attacks on public servants and her verballing of another individual has resulted in letters from the public servants and individuals so affected underlines the imperative need for government to address these matters. The most appropriate forum is to send it to the Standing Orders Committee.
The member for Araluen’s actions shows three things about her and the Country Liberal Party. In the first place, they are bullies and their language underlines that. The parliamentary antics, the performance put on by her and her colleagues are all part of the one performance designed to belittle, demean and humiliate our public servants. It shows they have absolutely no respect for the fundamental principles underpinning democracy, our institution of the Westminster parliamentary system. It shows the type of minister the member for Araluen would be and the type of government she would be a part of - a government that bullies and blames public servants rather than work with them for the good of the Northern Territory.
We all recall the arrogance of the CLP in government; it was breathtaking. However, in opposition, that arrogance has not diminished one iota. They have not learned a thing …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, stick to the motion.
Mr STIRLING: The member for Araluen and her colleagues use this Chamber and the forum to bully, harass and pose. They treat this House and their own role within this House with contempt. They prefer to draw attention to themselves through poor behaviour, interjections and shouting. That is what we have seen over the past week.
The member for Araluen, of course, is well known for her posturing and posing. She was the subject of an editorial in her own home town as a result of her performance in parliamentary sittings in Alice Springs. We can all remember that.
They fail to adhere to this golden principle that runs through our democratic institution. It is a fundamental principle that government is responsible for the decisions. The minister is responsible for the decisions, not the public servants who are there to provide advice to ministers of the Crown. By attacking public servants in this way, the member for Araluen attacks that single fundamental principle and the sound basis for governing that it provides.
It is interesting and instructive, again, to note that when she does align her targets on members opposite, it is often in the most personal, demeaning and humiliating fashion. I recall some time ago when the member for Barkly was contributing to debate, in her most cynical fashion, she said: ‘Oh my God, three syllables’. That is designed to humiliate and demean the member for Barkly, but it reflects on her and it reflects on the mind set which says, ‘I am a trained lawyer. I have a law degree. I have the intellect to be able to put others down …
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, would you please go back to the motion.
Mr STIRLING: … if I so wish’. That is where she comes from. As recently as last week, the member for Millner and his pronunciation of the word ‘ask’ was also subject to ridicule by the member for Araluen.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, I have spoken to you – order, thank you! Minister, would you resume your seat for a moment? I am not going to say it again to you. You are wandering way off this particular motion by making a personal attack on the member for Araluen, which is not in the motion. Confine your remarks to the motion or I will have to ask you to cease.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, we can read a lot into the mind set. Those sorts of remarks are more demeaning for the member for Araluen than they are directed at members opposite. She has much to learn about respect, tolerance and human behaviour.
This is not the first time we have seen this from the opposition. I referred to the member for Brennan and his attacks on the Commissioner for Police. The newer, more recent Leader of the Opposition described those public servants in a demeaning fashion as ‘from down south’, singling out at that time the head of the Power and Water Corporation, Kim Wood. He was here last week in debate on 5 October:
- It leaves the decision of our most important natural asset, our parks, to this bureaucrat who does not have
the expertise to make an important decision of the Territory.
The member for Araluen has previous form as well. She climbed into the Commissioner for Public Employment at Estimates Committee hearings earlier this year to have a go at the commissioner on a matter that was probably something on which she ought to have sought a briefing. These attacks, outside those on members of this House, which is where the attacks should rightly be, are on people who are unable to otherwise defend themselves, publicly or otherwise. It is simple cowardice. It is cowardly behaviour to come in here …
Mr DUNHAM: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The word ‘cowardice’ should not be alleged in relation to any member of this parliament because it is defamatory, it is untrue, and it can only be done by way of substantive motion. Please withdraw.
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, it is rather unparliamentary and I will rule it out. Deputy Chief Minister, withdraw please.
Mr STIRLING: I withdraw, Madam Speaker. The behaviour in general does demonstrate the sort of government if, God forbid, they were to win the next election. It would be a vengeful government; it would be out to punish anyone it saw as ever having worked and assisted the Labor government.
The public attitude of the member for Araluen probably demonstrates exactly what is undoubtedly being said by her colleagues, perhaps in a more discreet and private fashion. Given the chance to punish those public servants who have served this government, they would be in there, cutting their way and sacking their way through layers and layers of public servants.
She demonstrates again the arrogance of her colleague, the member for Drysdale. He said a Labor government keeps the CLP from their rightful inheritance. That just about says it all.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, you are wandering far from the motion ...
Mr STIRLING: The same arrogance from the member for Greatorex who said: ‘This is our flag; get your own’.
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, I call you back to the motion, thank you. You are wandering too far away from it. The Leader of Government Business responded by saying that we are referring it to Standing Orders Committee to protect people who do not have the mechanism to do respond and that is what you should be speaking to.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, I am happy to and say that in government, it is the public service that has shown us the ropes. We are very appreciative of their work with the new government and getting on top of how government operates. I am proud, and this government is proud, of the men and women of the public service who work with this government to move the Territory ahead as distinct from the attitude to the public service and the public servants shown by attack after attack by members opposite.
You never hear them acknowledge it after 26 years in government. They did it all; they never acknowledged the work of the public service over their history. We are happy to credit the public service and say that we are proud of them. They have learnt nothing from their time in opposition. They do need more time thinking things through.
In the meantime, the Standing Orders Committee can consider these letters, has to consider these letters, given the fact that they have taken the time to write to you, Madam Speaker, the Leader of Government Business, and the Attorney-General. It is up to the Standing Orders Committee to see what they can make out of these letters, and what action they can propose to prevent a recurrence of this sordid mess.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, I agree with the Member for Brennan: let us bring this on.
There are many public servants who come to me and complain bitterly about the politicisation of their jobs and their departments. This government is asking this House to go down a path to bring public servants into an arena where they are going to be politicised. The first steps have already been taken. We have signed letters from public servants tabled in this House. Now we are talking about it, their names are being mentioned. It has always been a taboo in this House to go down that path because it is a sticky road. Now that the government is going down that road, let’s explore what is going to happen.
I introduced several bills last week. Those bills were criticised. Where did I go to get advice on those bills? To those public servants who now have signed a letter of complaint to the Leader of Government Business saying that their integrity has been impugned. Surely when the government attacks an opposition bill - because the opposition member sponsoring the bill has gone to the same public servants who write the legislation - that must be seen by the same public servants as an attack on their professionalism.
My bill was criticised last week because my bill ‘does not provide a solution to the problem it seeks to address,’ according to the Leader of Government Business. Surely, that is a reflection on the professionalism of the public servant who drafted the bill because I am not a lawyer so I sought professional advice. The professional from that lawyer was this: I will draft a bill which will attend to what you want the bill to do. We will create the legislation.
The government roundly criticised that bill for its shortcomings. This is the same public servant who now signs a letter saying that her bill was attacked. Now, this is difficult for her. This puts her in an extremely difficult situation, and the minister’s attempt to pursue this course is going to cause further grief. Now we are setting up a fight within the public service because Parliamentary Counsel, who had signed the letter that the minister tabled, was criticised by legal people within the police department because the Leader of Government Business, the person promoting this argument, has said:
- The clear advice I received from the legal people within the police force is that the bill does not fully clear the
issues and the anomaly that the member of Macdonnell has foreshadowed.
That is a criticism from one legal team of another legal team. Is this really where the government wants to take the public service? Does the government want to take the public service down this road of beating up on each other and taking the public service into the political arena, which is this arena?
Traditionally, the public service has been very heavily quarantined, but now let us talk about the exercise that we have seen from members opposite. Not so long ago, the public service took an operational decision in the police department to breath-test people inside public houses. Without going to the merits of that one way or the other, the minister, the very man who brings this motion into the House ...
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker. I do believe, based on your observations of straying from the motion before us, the member is straying.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I draw your attention to subparagraph (a) of the motion, which clearly places this inside the ambit of it.
Madam SPEAKER: There is no point of order, but do stick to the motion.
Mr ELFERINK: Absolutely, Madam Speaker. The minister issues a media release saying that the Commissioner for Police is not following Labor Party policy.
Mr Henderson: Government policy.
Mr ELFERINK: Labor Party policy; that is what it said. That, effectively, put the police commissioner in a very invidious situation. The minister for Police had said that the Commissioner of Police was not competent to do his job effectively and was not following the policy. Oh, my God!
Now, if the opposition had not realised that it was such a monumental stuff-up on the part of the minister, we should have called for the police commissioner’s head to roll, and it would have placed the police commissioner in a very awkward situation. Did the opposition choose to do that? No. In fact, the opposition very carefully stepped through it and said: ‘We understand that there was a difference, it is not a very smart thing to do, but we have full confidence in the competence of the police commissioner’. We stepped in to save the minister and his commissioner a great deal of embarrassment.
Madam Speaker, the Minister for Community Development has demonstrably used his position to place public servants in an invidious situation by pursuing the Anderson stuff.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell, I will not allow you to go down that line.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, he …
Madam SPEAKER: No, not down that line, thank you.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, it makes it very difficult because, under subsection (a), there are several public servants whose reputation …
Madam SPEAKER: Yes, I know, but I have allowed people a fair amount of leeway, but I will not allow you to go down that path.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, then I would ask what evidence the member for Johnston, because of his actions in relation into an investigation into his son, those public servants are allowed to bring before this committee.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I also point …
Madam SPEAKER: Order, thank you! Resume your seat when I am speaking! I will not allow members to bring personal family matters into this House. It is not on, and you all know that. This is getting a little bit too wide, member for Macdonnell. Just be warned, otherwise I will not allow you to continue.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I am worried about those public servants who need a mechanism to respond to allegations that they believe unfairly impugned their reputations. That is the purpose of this motion. I am speaking directly to the motion, but I am also pointing out to members opposite the road that they are taking us down, and I ask them, in all genuineness, to reconsider where we are going with this.
Madam Speaker, last week, the Attorney-General said that a citizen who had been convicted of nothing should keep an eye on his rear view mirror, thus suggesting that the police force of the Northern Territory will be used in a vendetta against an individual. Should a police officer arrest this person, for whatever reason …
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell, where is this going?
Mr ELFERINK: Where it is going …
Madam SPEAKER: Get to your point. I am not going to allow this sort of debate for much longer.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, I want to remind the government where they are going with this and where it is going to end up.
Madam SPEAKER: All right.
Mr ELFERINK: By pointing out a few examples, I hope that the government will wake up to itself and realise that the politicisation of the public service actually starts with this motion.
I have grave reservations about where the minister and the government want to take us on this. If they want to take us down that road, we go down that road, but the parameters that are outlined by the Standing Orders Committee when we invariably find ourselves in there must be broad enough for all public servants to bring their concerns about the way that they have been treated at the hands of government and parliament so that they can bring evidence to that committee so that we can actually hear what goes on in the public service.
I have expressed my concerns. I am on the record. Now that the government is taking us down this track, we will have to go down it. I support that we go down this track in the sense of this one thing: these things do need to be investigated, but they have to be investigated, as the government says, without fear or favour. It will be very interesting to see if they are capable of creating a terms of reference that will enable the committee to fairly and justly look into the grievances of all public servants in relation to the way they have been treated at the hands of these people.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, there has been talk in parliament today about behaviour in parliament and also that some actions by some members have caused ill feeling amongst the public service.
I am not happy with some of the behaviour. In fact, I was talking to one member on Thursday night, and we felt that the behaviour in parliament was very poor and there was a lot of ill feeling. It was sad to feel that on Thursday night.
However, that is not really the issue before us. The issue is about the motion giving public servants the right to some method of refuting allegations that they believe have been made against them. We have to be very careful here. One, surely, should be able to criticise departmental policy. I have criticised the department of planning on several occasions. However, I hope people do not take that as personal offence. There is a fine line. The public service should not be immune from criticism. After all, in a classic example, I asked during Estimates Committee hearings how long the roundabout at the corner of Lambrick Avenue and Temple Terrace took. It took twice as long as was scheduled and cost an extra $270 000. It would be fair for me to criticise whoever designed that roundabout for lack of planning because, as I mentioned in the question, someone did not identify high voltage electrical lines underground. We have to be careful that we do not get too polite, but, on the other hand, I do not believe members of this parliament should be personally attacking public servants.
I am not going to support this motion for the reason that it has been hurried though parliament. Hurrying motions through parliament should be done on very serious matters. This matter, whilst it is important, I do not believe is serious enough to be rushed through. On General Business Day, members of the opposition and I tried to pass I do not know how many motions for matters to go to committees. I had one on cotton and Mr Anderson, and there was hospital waste and quite a few others. They had been sitting on the Notice Paper for months. Yet, today, we hear a motion at 10.30 am that government wants to put this to the Standing Orders Committee - just like that.
I would like a lot more time to think about this issue. I know the Speaker has had a briefing about this issue, but I have not seen the full contents of the motion. The right of the public servants to reply when they feel that they have been attacked in this House is an important issue. It would have been appropriate to dealt with this as a normal motion so we could have spent a little more time putting more thought into what we were going to say.
As I said, I am not opposed to the motion as such, but it should not be rushed through in such a manner. The danger of what is happening today is that it becomes political and point scoring. It is an important motion, but we should have just left it to the normal processes of parliament rather then rushing it through. If this is a precedent, I hope to see many private member’s motions put through to committees on General Business Day.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Madam Speaker, the member for Nelson finished on the point at which I will start: the committee system.
The committee system has been abused by this government because it is very difficult to have anything other than matters of the government’s agenda put before it. We are in agreement with the government on this issue. We think that these people, who are so aggrieved, should have the opportunity to talk to either this parliament or the committee in a public hearing on sworn, transcribed evidence, and they should be able to put their case so that it is able to be …
Mr Stirling: Be interrogated!
Mr DUNHAM: Interrogated is the word. It is a verb meaning to check the veracity of things. The three public servants who have put their names to this have said they are quite happy to come before the parliament or a committee of the parliament to put their case. I believe there will be robust questioning of that, and that should be commended. I was a member of a committee that looked at a letter signed by a CEO named Paul Bartholomew to the then Health minister, Mrs Aagaard, the member for Nightcliff, which went to the Chief Minister. That letter referred to both me and Ken Clarke. Now, apart from me and the Chief Minister, all of those people have been sacked - all of them. Think where you are going with this. Clarke was sacked. Bartholomew was sacked. The member for Nightcliff was sacked.
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! It is on the record time and time again that these officers have not been sacked.
Mr DUNHAM: Okay, let us call them forward to give evidence because …
Mr KIELY: They have given evidence.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Drysdale, withdraw it.
Mr DUNHAM: I withdraw the fact that they have been sacked. The member for Nightcliff is no longer the Health minister, Mr Ken Clarke is no longer the Under Treasurer, the CEO of Health, Mr Bartholomew, is no longer the CEO of Health. That is where we are going.
When you insinuate public servants into the political landscape and debate, it is an immensely dangerous thing. That is where we are going with this. I am a public servant of 20 years standing. I have worked for the Commonwealth government and the former CLP Territory government, and I have advised ministers. We were very careful about using public servants to make public statements. The protocol, when I was Health minister, was that if it was a matter of fact and science or expertise, you would use that particular scientist or expert. If it was a debatable or contentious matter, the minister should stand and deliver. That was the protocol.
We have now seen, under this government, public servants pushed out into the limelight as some sort of human shield to stop attacks on the government. We thought, given the pronouncements of the Chief Minister about the railway, that it was a matter entirely of her architecture and her leadership that it happened right up until it turned in to a muck-up and then out comes poor old Mr Tyrrell. He said: ‘Oops! The whole thing was actually me. It was not the Chief Minister; it was me’. You used him as a hostage to go out the front to say: ‘We do not need to be bashed up on this. Let us use Mr Tyrrell’.
It is now a very unfortunate state of affairs in the public service in the Northern Territory that public servants are being used in this way because they were not hitherto. It was particularly ironic that the Leader of Government Business brought this on because we do not have to go too far back in Hansard to see his record. This is the man who said there were no intentensivists with qualifications at Royal Darwin Hospital and we were going to lose accreditation. The only way to answer that is to have a poor public servant with ‘doctor’ in front of his name and intensivist qualifications after it stand in front of a camera and say: ‘It is not really true because I do have the qualifications’. That is an attack. Attacks about the competence of Royal Darwin Hospital were made time and time again when this man was the shadow, and they are attacks on public servants.
This parliament still hears that this government brought in a budget and it had ‘for presentation purposes’ on it. We know the author of those words, ‘for presentation purposes’, was Mr Ken Clarke. We know that the advice to the Treasurer about how the numbers were handled was advice from Mr Ken Clarke. We have it in evidence; it is on oath. For the government to continue to attack various matters relating to the past and say: ‘Well, that was all the government …’. For instance, the Deputy Opposition Leader said: ‘Twenty six years of government and they never acknowledged the public servants’. That is untrue. We often acknowledged the public service.
The difficulty is, when you have member such as the member for Arafura who stands up and says: ‘This neglect in child welfare, in child abuse, in renal failure …’
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Drysdale, I have to say that we are not discussing the member for Arafura. Get back to the debate.
Mr DUNHAM: No, we are talking about a process of using public servants and defaming them …
Madam SPEAKER: We are talking about a motion referring this matter to the Standing Orders Committee.
Mr DUNHAM: Yes, sure.
Madam SPEAKER: Get back to it.
Mr DUNHAM: I am quite happy to acknowledge the work of the public service in the 27 years of CLP government. I am happy to say they were deeply embedded in much of our advice, policies and plans. You have to remember that every time you attack and defame those years of NT government, you are attacking and defaming public servants as well.
Just remember the high moral ground that you assume, now that you have, where you cannot say anything nasty about public servants, but everything you did for 27 years was entirely a matter of political making and devoid of any public service input. That is just nonsense.
If we go now to how we draft policy, go to the debacle of pool fencing. Not only did the minister amend it on his feet in committee, but the act was so deficient that it has come back to this parliament. If you want to run the case that if legislation comes into this parliament and is so perfect that you cannot ever criticise drafting instructions, how many times have we amended things in committee? How many times has this parliament gone into committee and made amendments? Do not run this case that there is such perfection in how legislation is drafted in this place that it can never be attacked because that is just nonsense.
I also look to some of the debate we have had. For instance, recently there was an instance at Port Keats where a clinic was closed. Who came out to talk about it? A doctor. This department has a sorry history of insinuating public servants into the political landscape and debate. It is very bad. I agree with my colleague, the member for Macdonnell, that when this committee sits - and I hope these resolutions are passed; I hope there is an opportunity for public servants to use the processes of a committee to put an alternative case. You have to remember that privilege is also conferred on people who give evidence. If a public servant gives evidence in a committee that the government is doing the wrong thing and if that public servant then suffers any detriment, that is a severe departure from privilege and should censure the government.
Let us say to public servants: ‘You can say anything you like. It will not impact on you’, and there is an open invitation now for all people, including the people who signed these letters, to give evidence about things that might have impacted on them. I hope that Bill Freeland is one of them, and I hope that Ken Clarke is one of them. We can hear whether he jumped or was pushed in evidence.
I am sure there are many public servants who are going to be very keen to turn up to this committee and, with the full protection of parliament - in other words, if they suffer any detriment at all, it is a gross departure from privilege - we will have a number of witnesses who turn up, put their hand on the Bible and give evidence about things that might have impacted on their career. We look forward to it. We hope that they advertise widely in the newspaper for public servants to come forward. We hope that they describe the method in which they are able to give evidence and describe fully the protection that this parliament affords them. I hope they set aside several weeks because there are many public servants out there who are pretty keen to talk.
At Royal Darwin Hospital, there are a number of public servants who believe that there are issues of bullying and they have written letters to the newspaper with ‘name and address withheld.’ Why would that be? Why would they not divulge their name and address? It is because they are worried about victimisation. That is what they are worried about. There is a significant issue at the moment at Royal Darwin Hospital, as members opposite would know, about a new media advisor to the department who has come from the NT News and is aware of those names and addresses withheld. People know that is a fact. The government must know because we know.
Let us support this in the best interests of parliamentary democracy and openness. Let us say that these matters should go to a committee for open hearings. Let us not leave it to the three who chose to sign their names to this letter. Let us open it to any public servant who wishes to divulge matters that offend them and let us also have a look back through the Parliamentary Record at whether the offence shown by the Leader of Government Business is in fact genuine or some sort of last minute stunt to capture the imagination of this parliament about perceived or real offence.
Madam Speaker, we support the motion and look forward to the hearings.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, I am a member of the Standing Orders Committee, and I look forward to the deliberations of the committee in regard to this motion.
This is such a charade by the government. I said before that for three years, they have had their collective fist around the throats of public servants, creating a culture of fear, and now they are starting to woo the public service; trying to tell people: ‘This is the way we are going to go. We are going to support you now,’ and using a charade to attack member for Araluen.
If there was serious debate about this, where are the rest of the members? We have four members on this side of the House talking about this issue. The Chief Minister is not prepared to do that. The Chief Minister is silent on this issue.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Greatorex, get back to the motion.
Dr LIM: When the public service drafts policies or legislation, at the end of the day, the minister has to take ultimate responsibility. The minister has to read through the draft legislation, and introduce it. When there is criticism of the legislation or the draft or the bill, it is the minister who has to take the responsibility, and, if it is a dog’s breakfast, it is the minister who has to take the responsibility that it is a dog’s breakfast. To think that public servants who have drafted this would take personal umbrage, to me, is stretching the imagination.
We have the Public Service Code of Conduct. We are going to go past this and bring them to the Standing Orders Committee to ask them what the issues are. We are going to that, I assume, because the motion says that we are going to try to discuss how we are going to do it in the Standing Orders Committee, to develop a set of rules so that public servants or other persons feeling aggrieved can respond.
It will be an interesting exercise to get them to front the Standing Orders Committee and hear what they have to say. Are they going to be prepared to say it freely, without fear so that, once the committee process is over, this government will target them again? That is the issue you need to think about. The charade is going to be very transparent. People are going to see through it very quickly and it is not going to be of any value.
Motion agreed to.
NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSPORT, STORAGE AND DISPOSAL (PROHIBITION) BILL
(Serial 243)
(Serial 243)
Continued from 18 August 2004.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Madam Speaker, I understand I have 30 minutes to conclude my comments, and, given the importance of this legislation, my comments should take no more than five minutes because this legislation protects the Northern Territory against an issue that does not exist.
It not only does not exist as an issue, we have been assured by the Howard government which, with the strong support of the Australian population, has been re-elected to another term in government, that the option of a nuclear dump, not only in the Northern Territory but in any other state of Australia, is off their agenda and they are pursuing other options. The reality is the Northern Territory was never on the Commonwealth government’s agenda, and if it was on any government’s agenda, it was on the agenda of a number of previous Labor governments because this issue has been around since 1992.
I said when this legislation came before us that it was high farce and nothing but a scare campaign to run a political issue in order to mislead Territorians and gain votes on an issue that had no substance and did not exist. I am very pleased that, notwithstanding the concerted campaign that has been run by the Labor government of the Northern Territory, using the clout and capacity of the Chief Minister as their lead speaker on this issue in the media during an election campaign, that Territorians have returned the object of their allegations and derision back with an increased majority - not only the Howard government, but Mr Tollner himself. It is pleasing that Territorians have seen through the spin and recognised the exact nature of the statements that he made, and with the benefit now of evidence that came to the public’s attention at the end of last week, he has been proved to be correct, certainly in saying that there has been radioactive waste lying around the Northern Territory that is not properly stored.
I believe that the real issue for the Northern Territory government is to do what they were asked to do when this bill was first introduced. I asked them if they wanted a mature debate on this issue to present information to the public, to Territorians, about what the current storage standards are in the Northern Territory; where the dumps are in the Northern Territory that contain radioactive waste; whether those dumps comply with legislation that exists in the Northern Territory or Australia-wide, and what audits have been done on those storage methods.
The government gave the impression to the general public that they were going to introduce this legislation, which was very important in their mind, had the opportunity to do so last week, gave every indication they were going to bring the legislation on last week, and did not do so. The reason they did not do so is beyond me, but it demonstrated one thing: the legislation had no real importance in the government’s mind.
As I said at the outset, they gave it to a junior minister to run in the parliament. It was only ever a political exercise, and it deserves appropriate importance: it is a non-issue for the Northern Territory. When it comes to dumps anywhere else in Australia, that is for other states to argue.
From the clear statements by the federal minister responsible, there is no dump going to be established in the Northern Territory so there is nothing to fear. What he did say, and what Territorians need to know, is what confidence they can have in their Northern Territory government as to what dumps they have and what standards they are applying to make sure that there is no danger to the public or to our environment from those wastes.
The ultimate hypocrisy is that the minister who has carriage of this legislation, the member for Arafura, ran a scare campaign amongst Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, and knew that she had radioactive waste in a shipping container in Kakadu, in her own electorate, and chose not to tell anyone. That is the allegation I make against the member for Arafura. As far as credibility goes, you have none; you have absolutely none.
I hope the member for Arafura reflects on the statements that she made in this parliament last week with regards to radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. This is the minister responsible who has been consistently running a scare campaign in Aboriginal communities on the damage that could be caused to our environment by radioactive wastes being improperly stored when she either knew that there was waste in her own electorate in Kakadu National Park, or, I hope this is not the case, was sadly unaware of it. She said in this parliament that where deficiencies in legislative controls have been identified, it has been this government that has fixed them through the new Radiation Protection Act. The current Radiation Safety Control Act sat on the books since self-government in 1978. Within three years of coming to government, Labor has completely overhauled these controls, introducing new legislation which reflects modern best practice.
I would like the member for Arafura to tell me under what standards, and what act in the Northern Territory or otherwise, does it allow radioactive waste to be stored in a steel shipping container in Kakadu National Park and whether she would like to retract the fact that Labor, within three years of coming to government, has fixed them because that is clearly not the case.
It was only in the ABC news on the day of the federal election that we heard the report that said that, while Labor was campaigning heavily against a Commonwealth nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, the government has now confirmed it has two licensed low-level waste storage facilities. Royal Darwin Hospital is storing about 2 m of nuclear material, while the disused Mt Todd mine site houses about 15 contaminated industrial mining gauges. The government says both are safe and secure facilities. However, the Territory government has blamed the Commonwealth for storing radioactive mining waste in shipping containers in Kakadu National Park.
It seems to me it is a government that is good at blaming everyone else, but does not even know how to attend to its own backyard. If you have been three years in government, have such a concern about radioactive waste in the Northern Territory and have been charged by the Commonwealth, clearly, not to worry about nuclear or radioactive waste from any other jurisdiction in Australia, but to attend to your own radioactive waste properly, and you run a scare campaign amongst Territorians that we should be scared of Commonwealth action, you are absolutely silent when it comes to any information of any worth as to what you are doing with your own radioactive waste. It is only by discovery that Territorians find out that we have radioactive waste in a steel shipping container in Kakadu National Park. If that is not an embarrassment, what is? It is not good enough to say: ‘That waste has been there for years’.
You are the government that said it is a whole new era of enlightment since Labor came to power. You are the government that said that you have the utmost concerns for the environment. You are the government that said that you have the utmost concern that any radioactive waste would be stored properly in the Northern Territory. Yet you are the government which has been exposed in ensuring that Territorians were not aware of what waste was being stored in the Northern Territory.
You are the government that had every opportunity, and you can check the Hansard debate for my call - and I said it publicly - to give us the information. If you want a mature debate, give us the information. I suggest that you get some experts to look at previous reports. I also said in the debate I knew that there was at least one report that referred to radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. This government, which talks about transparency and honesty, chose not to give anything to the public except some statement from the minister in the House last week when she was speaking on another issue, and somehow suggests that because she is a minister who can parrot a text that has been written for her, that we should have confidence.
Tell me, minister: if you did not know that radioactive waste was stored in a shipping container in Kakadu National Park, in your own electorate, how can we have any confidence that radioactive waste being stored at Royal Darwin Hospital is being stored to the appropriate standards of the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory? How can you possibly stand up, notwithstanding anything you say in this Chamber today, and expect any Territorian to believe you? They won’t. You have no credibility. Your credibility has gone. I told you that you were a sucker and a monkey when you ran this legislation and you were given carriage of it.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Brennan, withdraw that remark! Just withdraw it. It was unparliamentary.
Mr BURKE: I withdraw it
Madam SPEAKER: Yes.
Mr BURKE: In my defence, in the context of the organ grinder and a monkey, the Chief Minister has taken the responsibility of being the lead in the public on this issue. She is the one who has had her face in front of the television cameras and ads against David Tollner in the last election. In fact, it still needs to be discovered whether that breaches any electoral law because she has used public money, I believe, to run …
Ms Lawrie: Wrong!
Mr BURKE: … a political campaign. Right. Okay, paid for by the ALP. When it comes to carriage of the legislation, it is the minister for the environment who has carriage. The Chief Minister is missing. That is why I say one can hardly see the importance of this legislation in terms of its carriage when the Chief Minister is absent. One cannot see the importance of this legislation when the …
Ms LAWRIE: A point of order, Madam Speaker! The member for Brennan well knows the standing order in relation to the presence or absence of members in the Chamber.
Mr Dunham: He did not say she was absent from parliament. He said she was absent from the debate.
Madam SPEAKER: Absent from the debate is the way I took it.
Mr BURKE: What is particularly telling in this whole tawdry episode is that the government, that has had every opportunity to present information to the public, notwithstanding the history as to what government was in control in at the time, about what is the true state of radioactive waste in the Northern Territory. Is there any chance of our environment being affected? The map that I saw of the waste that is in Kakadu indicates it is right on the banks of the South Alligator River.
If the minister says: ‘Oh, yes, but there is no chance of it leaching into the environment’, how can you have any credibility? You have none, absolutely none.
I ask the question: as the Minister for the Environment and Heritage and having carriage of the health portfolio and a minister who has been around to say to the Aboriginal communities that radioactive waste is a danger in the Northern Territory and we are going to protect you from it, what has she done in the three years that she has been in government to investigate whether or not potable water being used in Aboriginal communities breaches international radioactive standards? Does she know that communities are concerned? Has she taken any interest in those issues, or has she been a puppet to run a radioactive argument of which she has no knowledge and no capacity?
The legislation is irrelevant. As I said, it purports to protect the Northern Territory against an issue that does not exist. It was always a political exercise and continues to be a political exercise. We said that at the outset. The effort that government has put behind this legislation demonstrates that clearly. The fact that it is being debated today, after the federal election when they had every opportunity to demonstrate to Territorians their interest in this, demonstrates that fact.
We did say that the legislation was not only high farce, but if it purported to have any capacity at all, clause 5(1) needs to be removed because it says:
- A provision of this act relating to the transport, storage or disposal of nuclear waste does not have any effect
to the extent it is inconsistent with the law of the Commonwealth but the provision must not be taken to be
inconsistent with that law if it can be complied with without contravention of that law.
The legislation has no bearing whatsoever if it is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth. In layman’s terms, that says if the Commonwealth wants to do it, has the capacity to do it, can legislate to do it, this legislation has no bearing, merit or standing. We wondered why you would include that clause in the bill.
We proposed an amendment. We have been told that, on the advice of the Solicitor General, by removing that subclause, it would be in contravention of the Australian Constitution, but no information other than that. This is a government that works on media releases; it does not provide any information of any worth to the opposition.
If I may digress, the issue that the Leader of the Opposition raised today is a classic case in point: Territorians and the opposition need to be informed properly. The water front development may be a great development, but we have the responsibility to be properly informed, which does not mean briefings by ministerial staff or media releases.
This is a classic example, too. The government says the opposition’s amendment has no standing because the Solicitor General says it may breach the Australian Constitution. I would like to see that advice. I hope the minister tables it. More than that, we would have liked the opportunity to spend more time looking at the advice and seeking further advice. If it were any other legislation, I guess we probably would, but because this is nothing more than a political stunt, and we know that the government has no real interest in it, the political opportunity has now passed, we are just going through the motions, who would really bother?
I ask the question: why doesn’t every item of legislation introduced in the Northern Territory parliament have that disclaimer? By virtue of the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act being subordinate to any act passed by the federal government, it is a given. Why doesn’t any other legislation in this parliament have that disclaimer?
I ask a further question: on the one occasion when the Northern Territory felt that it really would bring on a fight with the Commonwealth government on an issue that we knew would involve the debate and interest of Australians fully, it was called the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. That act was subordinate to the Commonwealth if the Commonwealth decided to act arbitrarily on it. Where was our disclaimer in that legislation? Would we have proposed an act that we felt could have been dealt with onerously by the Commonwealth? Do you imagine a guy like Marshall Perron would say: ‘We had better include a subclause, when we introduce the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, that says “but this act has no bearing if it contravenes any act of the Commonwealth”.’ We did not. It seems to me that the Solicitor General’s advice is unsatisfactory, and I have not even seen it, in logic, and I wonder why he would or give that advice.
However, assuming it is there, I would like to have interrogated it further, but I have no interest in doing it, and I am sure that the government does not really have any either. This legislation is on the parliamentary agenda. It will be passed today. We do not really care what you do with it, frankly. It has no bearing, it has no merit, it has no worth and it is a waste of time, Madam Speaker. So, proceed. You will not have our objection.
Debate suspended until after Question Time.
VISITORS
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, we have some visitors in the gallery. Our visitors are Year 7 students from Casuarina Street Primary School in Katherine accompanied by their teacher, Ms Anna Absalom. On behalf of all members, I extend to you a warm welcome.
Members: Hear, hear!
NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSPORT, STORAGE AND DISPOSAL (PROHIBITION) BILL
(Serial 243)
(Serial 243)
Continued from earlier this day.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, I want to add my comments on this bill. The fact that it has been a charade all along, the deceit that this government has tried to put on Territorians in the lead-up to the federal election is bad and pathetic. It is really a shame that the government has to resort to such acts to get some mileage for their federal campaign.
I draw members’ attention to the minister’s comments when she introduced the bill in August. She spoke about protecting the environment, the health of Northern Territorians, the industry and protecting the wonderful reputation of the Territory in having all these pristine places.
If we were protecting the Territory, you would think that the government had a full inventory or knowledge of all of the repositories that we have spread across the Territory. Following today’s Question Time, it is evident that the minister, the government, is not fully aware. For the government not to be aware and then try to pretend that it is there to support Territorians and their view that we should not have repositories in the Territory in the misleading way that they have done it, to me, is most unprincipled.
If you go back some 12 years ago, let me read to you from a paper that was produced by the federal parliament, titled A Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Methods for Choosing the Right Site. In its introduction, and I will read a couple paragraphs:
- This paper provides a report for public discussion on phase one of a project to identify a suitable site
for a national near-surface repository for our radioactive waste.
- The project was announced by the Honourable Simon Crean, MP, Minister for Primary Industries and
Energy, on 1 June 1992.
So it is something that side of the House and their party started some 12 years ago. It describes a process where they were going to identify areas around the country. It has three phases to it. Phase one was a study, which is the one I am reading from, that was to be undertaken over June to September 1992. Phase two was going to be 1992-93 and, finally, phase three in the year 1993-94, when a site was going to be identified.
With that study came several papers produced by eminent scientists and parliamentary committees to look into it. It was 1995 when Bob Collins, in fact, tabled the document as the then Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, and I read from the publication National Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Site Selection Study - Phase Two 1994 and a report on public comment, November 1995. From page 2 of the report:
- On 18 July 1994, the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, the Honourable Bob Collins, released
for public comment the discussion paper A Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Site Selection
Study - Phase Two.
This is not something that is new. This has been around for well nigh 12 years. At the end of the day, the federal government, in the name of Minister Ian Campbell, came down and said: ‘There is not going to be a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory imposed upon it by the federal government’. He assured Territorians without any equivocation.
On the same day that Ian Campbell made that statement, we had the Chief Minister who, in an ad in the federal campaign, had this to say. It is a Northern Territory Labor Party 2004 election advertisement, which was televised on Channel 9 TV in Darwin, spoken by the Northern Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin:
- The Territory is a great place to live and visit, with its clean and unspoilt environment, which is why
my government is fighting to make sure Australia’s nuclear waste is not dumped in the Territory.
She already had the reassurance of the federal minister that this was not going to happen. For her to then continue with that ad, over and over again, is nothing but deceit. This is not truthful. This is misleading Territorians every time the ad ran on Channel 9. For them to say: ‘Well, the party paid for it so that means it is all right’, is not all right for someone like the Chief Minister to articulate such a point. It is deceitful of the Chief Minister to do that.
Then, last week, when this matter was the first item on the agenda for Government Business on the Wednesday following General Business Day, this matter was postponed on the Notice Paper all together until today. Had they been serious about this matter, they would have debated it last week; and they did not. You have to ask the question: why? It makes you feel very cynical when this government decides, time and time again, when they do things; it is really not for the betterment of Territorians.
Last week, we debated the storage of hazardous material and, at that time, I made a few comments. I had briefings from officers from the Department of Health and from WorkSafe about how radioactive material had been handled. You will recall a point that I made then: that radioactive ore is transported from Ranger uranium mine to the Port of Darwin at least once a month in 44 gallon drums that are loaded into 40 foot shipping containers. I have not worked out how many drums would be in each container but, obviously, there are quite a few drums, therefore making up several containers, which will then be lined up at the port. When I asked the officers at the briefing what the ambient radioactive level is outside the containers, the answer was that they did not know. When I asked if you happen to have two rows of containers side-by-side with a small aisle in the middle for inspectors to walk between the two rows of containers, what would happen to them - would they be exposed to a level of radiation that is not acceptable - the answer was that they did not know. I have yet to hear from the department as to what those levels are going to be.
Interestingly, over the weekend, we found out that there are two containers of radioactive waste material sitting in Kakadu at Gunlom Falls. At the briefing, I was not told about these two containers. Either the officers knew about it and did not tell me, or they did not know. When I put the question to the minister this afternoon asking what he knew about it, his answer was he did not know. Really, he used lots of words, but what he said was he did not know what was there and what efforts or procedures had been used to get those containers at Kakadu checked out.
Obviously, this government has no control over this. The Minister for Employment, Education and Training does not know. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, who has been going around scaremongering in Aboriginal communities about radioactive waste material, was not aware either because she did not tell us anything about it when she presented the bill six weeks ago during the August sittings.
You need to ask: what is this government up to? Is it trying to scare Territorians, using ‘radioactivity’ as an emotive word, ‘nuclear waste dump’ as emotive words to make people to react? ‘Not in my backyard’, is the most common reaction you will hear. If the government did that to frighten people, to politicise the argument rather than using the argument to ensure that we are going to get the best form of management of nuclear waste, then it is the wrong thing for the government to do.
There are at least 2 m of radioactive waste material that has been stored in the basement of Royal Darwin Hospital. To date, I have not seen it myself. I only have the words of officers to assure me that everything is in order. If I have not been informed properly about these two containers that are at Gunlom Falls, then can I also rely on the officers’ advice that the repository in the basement of the Royal Darwin Hospital is safe? I don’t know. Perhaps it is something that needs to be further investigated and the minister needs to come in here and give us assurance that it is a safe place. Until you know that, you are not going to be satisfied that we are going to be living with a radioactive lump of whatever in the basement of the hospital for the next four or five generations of Territorians. That would not be adequate at all.
It is important for the minister to understand that if you want to try to bring this sort of thing into legislation, you have to be able to reassure Territorians that you have the best method of control, and that you have the department and the officers there doing the work that is necessary to be done. At the moment, as the minister said, there are four or five departments all having various levels of control over radioactive material.
Wouldn’t it be better if you can bring it together under one agency and then the other agencies, which have something to do with it, can at least then report to the single agency in over-arching way? Until you do that, you are not going to be able to assure Territorians that you have the right institution there.
With those few comments, Madam Speaker, I suggest to you that this legislation was put together by this government in a hurry during the federal election campaign just to make political mileage. Then, at the end of the federal campaign when they saw that this thing was going to fall off its wheels, they decided to abandon it all together and leave it until this week to debate the matter out.
As you saw, the minister was very keen to jump to her feet to try to gag the rest of the debate that should occur. This is clearly a sign of a government that is not honest in its dealings with this matter. They want to try to get it over quickly and for the minister to gag debate as quickly as she can so that no one hears what the reality is.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, this is very important legislation, despite attempts by the opposition to somehow link it with the federal campaign.
The problem is we had a federal member who said on public radio that it was our obligation to accept radioactive waste from the rest of Australia. We do not think so, Madam Speaker. We have no problem with storing our own nuclear waste. After all, we use some of these radionuclides or isotopes for medical reasons. We use some equipment that has nuclear material in it in the mining industry, and we have no problem at all with storing that in our area, and we do that very well.
We object to the assertion that we have an obligation to store national nuclear waste. After all, other states did not think it was a good idea to have national nuclear waste stored on their sites. South Australia was one where we saw bipartisan support; both the Labor and Liberal parties objected to the attempt by the Commonwealth to impose upon South Australian a nuclear waste site or repository, as they call it. In Western Australia, exactly the same thing happened.
I am not at all pacified by statements by Senator Campbell that they are not going to establish a nuclear waste site onshore in the Territory. I am alarmed. Let’s not forget that, for immigration reasons, the Commonwealth excised our islands so illegal immigrants arriving at the Tiwi Islands cannot claim to have arrived in Australia. To tell you the truth, I would not be surprised if they decided to excise one of the 800 or so islands we have offshore from the Territory for a nuclear waste dump. That would be very alarming news. It is the last thing that we need here.
Many people do not object to the fact that there is a need for a national waste dump. What they object to is the way the Commonwealth went about trying to impose this waste dump on any state or territory. It would be a better idea if the Commonwealth had the guts to sit down with the Territory and the states and discuss the whole issue.
Coming back to the discussion today and Question Time, I am alarmed. It looks like the opposition is attempting to prepare Territorians to accept such a national repository site in the Territory and they are trying to prove that there are already nuclear waste sites in the Territory.
A few days ago, we heard that the Royal Darwin Hospital site that was not very safe until Senator Scullion came out and said it was a state-of-the-art storage area. I recall members on the other side saying that some of the nuclear waste was incinerated, which is totally and absolutely untrue. After all, the incinerator at Royal Darwin Hospital has not operated for a number of months now because the hospital is using an autoclave.
Then they tried to prove that there is a nuclear waste disposal site at Mt Todd. That is absolutely untrue. The case at Mt Todd is that there are 15 gauges that have been used in the past in the mining industry as density measures, flow meters, or to measure the density and quality of welding. These gauges use radioactive material. They can be used tomorrow and should a new mine open tomorrow that requires this kind of equipment, my department is prepared to provide these gauges to the mining operators to be utilised for the purpose of their construction. That is the reason they have not been decommissioned or destroyed. We choose to keep them all together at Mt Todd because it is a mining site falling under the Mining Management Act and regulations. There is sufficient storage area, and it is under the protection of an enclosed environment and can be supervised by competent personnel.
Returning to nuclear waste, there are two types of radioactive or nuclear waste. There is the naturally occurring radioactive material, known as NORM, and waste materials containing nuclear reactor products. These are the isotopes and the material that we use for medical diagnosis or, in the case of cancer, for treatment. The NORMs are waste from the mining industry and relate to mine tailings, particularly from uranium mining. Let us not forget that until the 1970s, there were a number of uranium mines operating in the Territory, all of them under the control of the Commonwealth, not the Northern Territory government. The only one that does operate under the Mining Management Act is the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu. That is the only facility that currently operates under the terms of the Mining Management Act.
At the end of the operation of uranium mines in the Territory, most of which are within the Kakadu National Park area, the Commonwealth undertook a rehabilitation program. I recall that the first time I became aware of the problems in the Gunlom area was 1998 when my family went camping and I came across a sign, which had on it the international radiation symbol and warned people not to stay for extended periods of time in the area because some of the tailings from the old uranium mine had been uncovered by rain. The Commonwealth intended to undertake cleaning and rehabilitation of the site.
In 2000, the Commonwealth, within the Commonwealth-administered Kakadu National Park, excavated the tailings, placed them into drums, put the drums into containers and put these containers in interim storage in a fenced compound in the Gunlom area of Kakadu. They are managed and monitored by the Commonwealth.
That was the year 2000. In the year 2000, the party in power was the CLP. When this operation took place by the Commonwealth, there are two possibilities: either the CLP government of the day and the department assessed the waste and found that the tailings, the waste, had very low levels of radioactivity; or they did not, or were unable to apply their act because it was on Commonwealth land.
The reality with NORMs, such as tailings, is that the radiation levels are very low and, in some cases, so low that if they are placed in a drum, there is no radiation detected outside the drum or, if they are placed in a container or even in a compound, you cannot detect radiation. In some other cases, such as Rum Jungle, the Commonwealth cleaned up the mine, they buried the waste and then sub-contracted the Territory to construct a cutting to cover those wastes effectively so no radiation will be emitted, or no water will be find its way in to the tailings and, in turn, contaminate the water table or water courses.
To try to blame this government now, in 2004, for something that happened under their government is very hypocritical, to say the least. Once again, I say that what happened in Kakadu took place under the authority of the Commonwealth. The rehabilitation was done under the Commonwealth, as it was their obligation because they operated the mines under Commonwealth control and authority, and they are currently under the control and monitoring of the Commonwealth and of the Office of the Supervising Scientist.
Other forms of radioactive material that we have in the Territory are drill samples from the uranium project at Coronation Hill. They are stored at El Sharana camp in the south of Kakadu. We are talking about samples of drilling. These samples of drilling are used every day in the mining industry. What you get out of these samples has an extremely low percentage or content of uranium and it is uranium that is not enriched. It is uranium that has not been processed, and is naturally occurring in the area. The radiation levels from these cores are extremely low.
Even in the Ranger Uranium Mine, processed uranium is extremely low in radiation emission because after the uranium oxide has been put into drums and containers, it has to be exported to processing plants in Asia, America and Europe to be enriched, and it is the enriched uranium that emits a significant amount of radiation that is significantly dangerous to the environment, human beings and other animal forms. So we are talking about an extremely low content of naturally occurring uranium in the area.
There are other radioactive core samples - we have some in the Cold Store in Darwin and we have a purpose-designed facility to house this material. We are proceeding with construction of an upgrade of the storage facilities.
To say that in the Territory we already have a radioactive material waste site is absolutely untrue. The only ones we have are two licensed sites. Let me rephrase that: to say we have a waste disposal site the way it is proposed by the Commonwealth, or the way that it is alleged by the opposition is untrue. We have two licensed sites. One is at the Royal Darwin Hospital that houses medical waste with a very short half-life, or very little radiation emission, and we have the other one at Mt Todd that houses 15 mining gauges that are not waste; they are equipment that has been taken apart. They are still there and are still going to be operated. They can be utilised by other mining operations.
Madam Speaker, the purpose of the legislation we are putting in place is to stop any other material from outside the Territory coming to the Territory for storage in a national waste disposal facility.
I was very interested to hear the comments by the member for Brennan regarding the amendment. I have been advised that the legal opinion with regard to the amendment was hand delivered yesterday afternoon to the Leader of the Opposition’s office. It was given to one of the Leader of the Opposition’s staff. It was mentioned that it was a legal opinion and the staffer commented that she was going to pass it to the members of the opposition because at the time, they were in a meeting. So that, Madam Speaker, shows that a letter was delivered. Obviously, it did not reach the Leader of the Opposition, but it was not the fault of the government and he probably should make inquiries with his staff members.
Again, it is amazing how the disposal of nuclear waste and the transport of nuclear material has become an issue in the Territory in 2004. I well recall in 1998 when a container containing iridium 192, a radioactive isotope, fell off the back of a truck at the Berrimah lights, and it was a big scare in the Territory at the time. We had the emergency services mobilised. The traffic was diverted. No one was allowed to stop there because, quite rightly, we were afraid that the way the isotope was transported was not safe. If the container had ruptured, the area might have been contaminated with a significant cost to the Territory and we would not know who was contaminated. The incident was so bad, and the legislation was so bad, that some of my colleagues in Environmental Health worked very closely with the people in the Health Department to redraft the Radiation Act to cover the transfer of radioactive material. Today, we have modern legislation and, to their credit, they did an excellent job.
It is amazing how everything was right then but everything is wrong now, especially having the member for Brennan as our Health minister, because I was working then in the Health Department, come out publicly and say there was nothing wrong, everything was fine with the act, and everything was safe for the disposal and storage of radioactive material. All of a sudden, it has become an issue not for any other than political reasons.
To blame us for the comments made by the member for Solomon is very unfair. I recall at the time I was in Katherine and, driving back, I heard on the radio a statement made by the member for Solomon talking about a large number of drums with radioactive material disposed all around the countryside in the Territory. I was surprised about it because I have been around in the mines, and the Territory generally, and I never came across abandoned drums somewhere in the bush, in Kakadu or anywhere else. I was aware of the cleaning that took place in Gunlom. I was aware of the drums that were full of tailings from the cleaning up. Tailings are not concentrated radioactive material. It is soil that can be or may have been contaminated by some of the uranium ore excavated from the mine sites. I was certainly aware that these drums were housed within the containers in the Kakadu area.
Regarding the points made about the Ranger uranium mine and the spill of contaminated water, the water was actually processed water. The Office of the Supervising Scientist found out that there was no significant effect impacted upon the environment from the release of this water. There has to be an ongoing investigation and assessment of the possible effects on human beings who consume that water, but certainly Magela Creek and the area did not show any changes in the presence of uranium in the water.
Again, most of the contaminated processed water from the Ranger uranium mine is actually within the mining lease, as expected under the Mine Management Act. Under the act, mines have to supply a Mine Management Plan every year to the Department of Mines. The plan is assessed and the Department of Mines continues its assessment and audits on an annual basis or more frequently if required.
The other radioactive material, which is actually core samples, is stored in Jabiluka at Djarr Djarr, which, again, is in the Jabiluka lease area. Because it is a mining lease, they have to provide a Mine Management Plan to the department. The department will assess the Mine Management Plan and conduct audits at regular intervals in order to ensure compliance with the Mine Management Plan and to ensure that there is not any possible contamination of the environment by some of this radioactive material.
Once again, I stress that, in the case of Ranger, the naturally occurring uranium is very low, extremely low. From that point of view, you do not have any contamination; only when it is converted to uranium oxide. Uranium oxide content is low. It still has to be processed and enriched in certain plants in America and Europe in order to become suitable for use in reactors.
The legislation is very good. As I said, we have no objection to storing our own nuclear materials. We have an obligation to store our nuclear materials that we use in the Northern Territory for medical purposes, for treatment or diagnosis. We have an obligation to store the material we use in mining operations. However, I do not feel obliged to have a waste site here in the Territory to store materials that are produced or utilised by other states and territories in Australia.
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Visitors
Visitors
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, I acknowledge the presence in the gallery of students from Milingimbi Community Education Centre accompanied by their teacher, Mr Stuart Porteous. On behalf of honourable members, I extend a warm welcome to you.
Members: Hear, hear!
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Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, it is curious that last week this high priority legislation, which was so important immediately prior to the federal election, suddenly slipped from number one to number five on the Notice Paper, effectively killing it off for debate last week.
Second, it is curious that the Chief Minister was so passionate about this issue that she had to take advertising, paid for, according to members opposite, by their own party, and had to absolutely drive this message home. I am curious as to whether we are going to hear from the Chief Minister during this debate now that the federal election has come and gone.
What is nuclear waste? What is this stuff that we all find so interesting that we are prepared to spend money, taxpayers or parties’ money, taking out advertising about it? Ever since we have been making bombs out of this stuff, hysteria has surrounded this material. Once upon a time, when Marie and Pierre Curie were playing with pitchblende and such products, creating radium, it was considered the miracle stuff, the light you had when you did not have visible light; the stuff that made X-rays possible. From miracle stuff, it went to become very sinister when we realised how toxic it was and that you could make nuclear bombs out of uranium isotopes like U235.
There are all sorts of different disposable or waste items. You either have the isotopes themselves, uranium and its isotopes, iridium, as we have heard, and its isotopes, and the stuff that is contaminated, and that comes in all shapes and forms. If this stuff is so evil, why does the Northern Territory produce it? The reason is that not all nuclear products are necessarily evil. We all know someone who, at one point or another, has had cancer. How do we treat cancer? We can either do it chemically with chemotherapy or with a nuclear product. One of the many and varied isotopes produced in the Lucas Heights reactor, which is the reason that reactor runs, is used in medical treatment of cancer, and very successfully. Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma is treated with radioactive isotopes. However, as a consequence of that, you have waste products.
It is curious how we pursue these waste products down the line to the point where they are finally stored. You have high, medium and low level waste products, and we are told that about how nuclear products are all very bad and the Commonwealth has to find a place to store the stuff, and not in our backyards and all that sort of thing. It becomes a matter of hysteria. Once you see the international symbol for radioactivity, as we saw on the Labor How to Vote card at the last election, once you see the word ‘nuclear’ crop up, people become a little bit nervous.
It is curious that the Territory government has repositories and the federal government has dumps. It is curious that the Northern Territory government produces by-products and the federal government produces waste. The fact is that if we want to use the vernacular generated by members opposite, there is a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the northern suburbs underneath Royal Darwin Hospital. If you want to use the vernacular in an attempt to generate hysteria in the last week leading up to the election, there is a nuclear waste dump in the middle of Kakadu National Park, and I have to say slightly up-hill in the catchment area of the South Alligator River.
I do not know about you, Madam Speaker, but it is my understanding that at least once or twice a year, it rains in Kakadu and as a result of that rain, water flows down hill and water would flow from this nuclear waste dump, or repository, towards the South Alligator River. Yet the government expects us to believe that the quality of their nuclear waste is somehow superior, different, more noble perhaps, than the quality of the nuclear waste that is produced by the federal government at Lucas Heights.
Radiation is radiation is radiation. I do not propose to suggest that the government has a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the northern suburbs. What I do propose is to suggest that the Northern Territory government has engaged deliberately and calculatedly in an effort to stir up hysteria about nuclear waste in the Northern Territory. That is what the campaign was about last week; it was not anything other than to stir up hysteria.
Why was it so important that this bill came on now? It was all part of the campaign. The government wanted to take this legislation in to the period leading up to the sitting week prior to the election. What did it want to do? It wanted to talk about the nuclear waste dump issue and how they were going to legislate it away and we were going to be tough and what were those miserable so-and-so’s from the CLP going to do in terms of looking after the federal government’s nuclear waste.
So bad was it that the Chief Minister spent Labor Party funds running advertising on the television. That is how bad this was all going to be. Now, why, if that is what the government’s intention was, was there suddenly an urge last Thursday to shift it from number one to number five on the Notice Paper? There is an interesting question. Two words, Madam Speaker: Senator Carr.
What did Senator Carr say to people in the Northern Territory about the Australian Labor Party’s policy for the future of biological material in the Northern Territory? What was the Labor Party’s policy for the Northern Territory in terms of biological material? This is interesting because it is another one that makes people a bit nervous, words like ‘anthrax’, ‘smallpox’, ‘SARS’ suddenly start to crop in to the vernacular.
Senator Carr, a member of the Labor Party, used the words ‘anthrax, smallpox’ and ‘SARS’, among a few others if memory serves me correctly, and he said it was the Labor Party’s policy to put a $60m institution here in Darwin to study these diseases. The minister came into this House last week and said: ‘Oh no, there are going to be no bugs there’. The fact is that there were going to be bugs there.
Ms Lawrie: No, there were not.
Mr ELFERINK: Oh, yes there were! He said so.
Ms Lawrie: No, he did not.
Mr ELFERINK: He did! The member for Karama said: ‘No, he did not say it’, but the fact is he did say it and he identified the bugs. So concerned was Senator Carr in terms of the bugs, he reassured Territorians about the filtration systems and other protections that would be in place so that there would be no such outbreak. This is curious. If the bugs were not going to be there, you only had the material to study, the files that were sent up from down south, maybe e-mails, and so sensitive are these e-mails and files that you needed special filtration systems and the like to protect Territorians from the bits of paper that were going to be studied. Rubbish!
Second, Senator Carr said that this was a potential terrorist target. Why did he say that? Because protections would have to be put in place to make sure that it was safe from terrorist attack.
Let us now talk about political opportunity. One would think that if members opposite were running this hysterical campaign about nuclear waste and Senator Carr promised to spend $60m introducing anthrax, SARS and smallpox to the Northern Territory, there might be some concerns raised by this side.
The government was fully aware of this at the time and that is why the matter was shifted from last week to this week. Why? Because now it is a dead issue. It has ceased to be interesting. It is curious how this sudden change happened, and that is the reason why the government stepped away from debating this last week, because they knew they would be inviting debate on this topic.
The government now has a bill before the House that says this bill is subject to anything that the Commonwealth basically wants to do. That is a fairly soft section, and without having seen the legal advice that was offered by the …
Ms Scrymgour: You received it last night.
Mr ELFERINK: Without having seen it. I can tell honourable members - well I can guess for honourable members how the Solicitor General made his observations: any legislation that a state has which is inconsistent with Commonwealth legislation, the Commonwealth legislation will have superiority so far as that inconsistency exists. That is pretty much how the Northern Territory legislation has been treated since the time of self-government. It also applies to a state, I might add.
The Commonwealth is fully capable of passing legislation forcing the Northern Territory and/or any other state into taking a nuclear waste dump. Now, they are certainly not going to do that, despite the scaremongering in which the member for Casuarina engaged by saying: ‘Which island off the coast of the Northern Territory is going to cop this?’. The federal government said they are not going to do that, and that was clearly outlined despite the fact that the government of the day, the Territory government, continued to run their fear campaign.
That inconsistency exists, but that applies to every single item of legislation in the Northern Territory. Not every single item of legislation in the Northern Territory has a disclaimer written into it saying the operation of Commonwealth legislation will have superiority. It is a given. Not every single item of legislation in every other state in Australia has exactly the same paragraph in it. It is a given and a patsy. The suggestion that in some way the legislation has been strengthened with this subordinating clause in it, I refute and I refuse to accept. It is just more guff from the members opposite to generate noise surrounding this issue, but taking away attention from their role in this matter, which was to try and take this stuff out as quickly as possible.
Just after lunch, the minister who has carriage of this legislation tried to jump up and finish the debate off as quickly as she could without any other member speaking.
Ms LAWRIE: Wrong! A point of order, Madam Speaker! The minister jumped at the end of Question Time to respond to a question so the member is misrepresenting the minister completely.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker, I did jump because there was a question that was directed to me by the member for Port Darwin, and I had undertaken to provide that answer at the end of Question Time. I stood to give that answer, but the member for Greatorex, with all his greatness, stood up and did not want to have that answer put on record in responding to the member for Port Darwin. So stop standing up here with your misinformation, member for Macdonnell.
Madam SPEAKER: I can only assume that I misunderstood when you stood, thinking that you were standing to close debate, that is why I gave the call to the member for Greatorex. But you will be able to give that response later on in the debate.
Mr ELFERINK: Sensitive as they are, Madam Speaker.
Ms Scrymgour: No, it is not about being sensitive.
Mr ELFERINK: They cannot help themselves. They are jumping to their feet at the first available opportunity because they think they are beyond criticism.
Ms Lawrie: We prefer the truth, not your lies.
Mr ELFERINK: What a deceitful bunch!
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker!
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Macdonnell, withdraw that remark.
Mr ELFERINK: I withdraw, but Madam Speaker, I am unsure as to what remark I am withdrawing.
Madam SPEAKER: You know what remark you are withdrawing.
Mr ELFERINK: No, Madam Speaker, I do not and I seek instructions.
Madam SPEAKER: You are not to call them a deceitful bunch.
Mr ELFERINK: I seek clarification, Madam Speaker. ‘Deceit’ is a word that has been used regularly and without restraint in this parliament, and I seek clarification.
Madam SPEAKER: The clarification is that when the Speaker deems that a phrase used in a context, and the way that it is delivered, is unparliamentary, it is so. I am ruling it out of order.
Mr ELFERINK: In that case, I accept that, Madam Speaker. I withdraw it. What a misleading bunch of people they are.
Madam Speaker, the fact is that they have realised that there was a classic flaw in their approach to the election and they wanted to avoid the issue that had been left for them by Senator Carr.
The government says: ‘This stuff was all inherited from you lot’. The fact is that we have also heard from the minister that we have better, improved acts. We changed them to improve the way that we do this stuff. Under this improved legislation, a shipping container full of nuclear waste sits in the middle of Kakadu National Park unmolested. This is their improved model; it has nothing to do with us. These are the improvements that they made. The fact is the improvements have not gone anywhere near fixing the things that they suggest need fixing.
They say: ‘These acts do not operate. These are all issues of the Commonwealth’. The last time I checked, the Criminal Code operates in Kakadu National Park, as does the Summary Offences Act, the Motor Vehicles Act, the Traffic Act, and all other legislation in the Northern Territory. Just because the owner of particular land inside the jurisdiction of the Northern Territory happens to be the federal government, that does not stop the operation of Northern Territory legislation in those areas. I can even name the High Court decision that dealt with the use of the Traffic Act inside the RAAF Base Darwin. That case was R v Svikart, if memory serves me correctly, and held that the Northern Territory Traffic Act operates on Commonwealth land. The principle is consistent in other legislation. To say that Northern Territory legislation does not apply inside Kakadu National Park is unconvincing. Unless I can be convinced otherwise, as far as I know, as long as Northern Territory legislation is not inconsistent with any federal legislation, the legislation under control of the minister and the rest of the government is active and workable.
Bearing this in mind, the Northern Territory government is already aware of that because, leached from the tailings dam of the Ranger uranium mine is something that has the Northern Territory government making very loud and public comments inside Kakadu National Park, on land which is under the control of the federal government. Therefore, the Northern Territory legislation does operate in those environments. Yet, the Treasurer in his role as Minister for Employment, Education and Training, with carriage of the appropriate legislation, seems to be blithely unaware of this.
Finally, we come to the legislation itself and the opt-out clause for the Commonwealth. This legislation is a three-ring circus and a political stunt. The clause makes no difference to how it operates in the Northern Territory. However, it is better to bring this three-ring circus into something closer to reality than what is being spewed forth by this government. This legislation was part of a political campaign. Rather than pulling it, the piece of garbage that it is, off the Notice Paper, this government is persisting with it because it feels obliged. They should not persist with it; it does not make any difference one way or the other. I will not be supporting it or opposing it because I do not care. It is meaningless tripe.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, if you look up the word ‘blasphemy’ in the dictionary, you will see that it means ‘irreverent behaviour towards anything held sacred’. This bill presented by the government to this parliament is surely, then, blasphemous. Why? Because this bill is nothing more than a piece of political trickery deliberately planned to be debated in parliamentary just before the election date.
Funnily enough, with sleight-of-hand, the bill was removed from being number one on the Notice Paper last Wednesday to not even being debated last week. I wonder why. This government shows that it is not interested in a reasoned debate on this important issue. What it wanted last week was a head-on fight with the Commonwealth government to try to enhance its chances of winning the seat of Solomon. We can see that that did not work. It is blasphemous because the government has used this bill to irreverently and cynically try to further its political goals instead of using this sacred House for a serious debate on an important issue …
Mr Kiely: This House is not sacred; it is not a church!
Mr WOOD: To some of you, it is not. Obviously, it is not sacred to you.
Mr Kiely: No, it is not sacred to me. No, it is not …
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Sanderson, order.
Mr WOOD: It is a place of respect, member for Sanderson.
Mr Kiely: No, it is not. Bringing your religious connotations in here.
Mr Baldwin: You will get your turn. Sit down.
Mr WOOD: Madam Speaker, the member for Sanderson might treat this place with disdain and disrespect, but it is a place …
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker, he is alleging actions and attributing convictions to me that are not true.
Mr WOOD: I said ‘might’, Madam Speaker.
Mr KIELY: You cannot say that sort of thing.
Mr WOOD: Why not?
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Nelson, will you withdraw that? Just withdraw it.
Mr WOOD: Okay, for the sake of peace and quiet, Madam Speaker, I will withdraw it.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Sanderson, I suggest you stop your interruptions because they are provocative.
Mr WOOD: Madam Speaker, proof of what I am saying could no more be validated than in the final sentence of the minister’s second reading speech:
- This bill sends a strong message to Canberra that if they want to override the Territory on this issue,
they will do so against the express wishes of Territorians.
I find it very difficult to debate this issue knowing that this debate is a bit of a joke and was really part of a failed federal election campaign, but debate it I will.
The matter before us highlights how parochial politics can get in the road of sensible outcomes to all Australians. I am proud to be a Northern Territorian, but parochial politics can reinforce myths and legends deliberately designed to scare and mislead the electorate in the belief that this will keep them in power. Parochialism does not assist good policy making. It is like a one-eyed football supporter giving his or her opinions on an umpiring decision, and I have first-hand experience of that. Objectivity goes out the door. Win at all costs comes to the fore. What we should be doing is crawling out of our parochial cocoons and realising that we are Australian.
We have an issue that affects us all and we need to work together to find a solution. Here is an opportunity for our nation’s leaders to sit down together and work out a solution. Surely, that is what leaders should be doing: working for the benefit of our nation. Sadly, this is not the case and it can be seen by the government’s rhetoric and the rhetoric from the Labor state premiers, such as the Premier of South Australia who turned what should have been a bipartisan agreement into a parochial battlefield. Mr Howard, in the light of that and an on-coming election campaign, told the states to look after their own waste. Again, politics.
Madam Speaker, what are we talking about? We are not talking about a nuclear waste dump. That is just emotional language deliberately used by the minister in this debate to muddy the waters, confuse the public, and, of course, hide the truth. As Matt Coffey wrote in correspondence to me:
- ‘Nuclear’ refers to active enrichment or fission taking place in a reactor. When a product is removed from
such a facility it is termed ‘radioactive’ as it is now in a waning process, gradually reducing irradiation.
The correct term is ‘radiation storage facility’.
What are we talking about? We are talking about a site 4300 m of stockpiled radioactive waste which is presently housed at 50 to 100 locations throughout Australia. Much of that is stored at the Lucas Heights site in Sydney. The Lucas Heights facility generates nuclear power and is involved in nuclear medicine and nuclear research for industrial and mining uses. Materials needed for medical use such as radioisotopes used in X-rays are produced here. Spent fuel rods are stored at Lucas Heights, and some of these rods are sent to France for re-processing. There is also 2010 m of contaminated soil in South Australia. Radioactive waste also comes from hospitals and medical facilities, from mining industries, universities, and even in things like exit signs and domestic smoke detectors, which the minister just said he is going to install in all public housing. Goodness me! I wonder if those people know what they are in for.
The federal government was looking to find a single waste repository for all this waste. Believe it or not, 4300 m is two cricket pitches long by 10 m high, by 10 m wide, which is a pimple compared with the area of Australia. We are talking about a very small area in a very vast continent. We did select a site, but, because of politics, that did not happen. In other words, we did not have the maturity to act as a nation to find a solution.
When the Territory government says that we should only look after our own waste, it conveniently forgets that many Territorians go south for medical treatment, especially treatment involving nuclear technology. Should we take our own isotopes with us when we go south? The minister said that the government is happy to manage our radioactive substances, but we obtained them from the Lucas Heights facility, so do we wipe our hands of a facility simply because it does not fit our political agenda? We cannot see past our parochial noses to realise that it is not John Howard’s problem, it is not the Commonwealth’s problem, it is our problem because it belongs to us as Australians.
I might be so bold to ask: is there more to this than the eye can see? Is it because Labor does not want to see the new Lucas Heights reactor obtain a licence to operate, knowing that if the Commonwealth cannot find a place to store existing waste or future waste, then it will not get a licence? Is this the cotton issue repeated, where we cannot move on and look at technology today, not years and years ago, where anything to do with the nuclear industry is so taboo to Labor that the whole issue is not negotiable, not to be discussed, and in the too politically hard basket? Just like cotton, the debate is run on public perception and we make sure that perception is fed, especially during an election campaign.
When I could not get a motion up to even look at cotton, not grow it, the L in the ALP standing for Luddites took over. When I heard the Chief Minister and the member for Wanguri give their off-the-cuff reasons for not supporting even a trip to investigate the cotton industry, I wondered whether I was standing in a prehistoric parliament with Fred and Wilma Flintsone at the helm. We are locked in, slaves to our political masters, slaves to our survival at the next election, but never free to open our minds, explore alternative ways, bite the bullet, or even try a bit of common sense.
This issue is about politics. It is as simple as that. To support this view, I would like to read an article by Lesley Kemeny in The Australian in August this year. Lesley is a nuclear scientist and engineer and is an Australian member of the International Nuclear Energy Academy. She said:
- Australia needs a well-regulated and centralised nuclear waste repository. So it is a great pity that after a
12-year search, the location proposed by physicists, engineers and geologists as being optimal - near Woomera
in South Australia -- is not to be developed, at least for the present.
The Howard government has shown great wisdom and commitment in funding Australia's new research reactor
at Lucas Heights in NSW. It is, at least, a token recognition that we live in the nuclear age and that great
scientific, medical, industrial, agricultural and environmental benefits can flow to the nation from peaceful
nuclear energy.
By contrast, the South Australian government's petulance and political gamesmanship in refusing the siting of a
nuclear waste repository at Woomera is a silly not-in-my-backyard tactic beloved by coercive green activists.
Such a decision ill behoves a state which financially benefits from its massive uranium production facility at
Olympic Dam and which, one day, could reap further economic as well as environmental rewards through
nuclear power and desalination technology. In fact, South Australia's ‘win’ at a politically sensitive moment
is the Australian community's long-term strategic and financial loss.
The fact is any society that produces radio isotopes and uses radiation sources in its hospitals, universities,
industries and agriculture must plan to have nuclear waste repositories and be able to transport the minuscule
quantities of such waste to the site. International experts are agreed that in 50 years of global activity in these
spheres, there has been no known death or injury in commercial transportation. This should be compared with
the far greater risk of transporting toxic, corrosive or flammable materials in special vehicles along Australia's
roads.
That reminds me: how may triples full of fuel drive between City Valley and Bayview every day, and no one seems to worry?
- Most of the material which would be transported in Australia to a nuclear waste repository is low-level waste.
And all radiation doses from nuclear waste in transport and at repositories are designed to be below safe
background dose levels and pose no risk.
For more than four decades, Australians have been assailed with false perceptions of danger or high risk
emotively linked with such words as ‘radiation’ and ‘nuclear dump’. In the absence of sound education and
informed realism, some will react to this with fear and anger. For some, the cerebral manipulation may even
lead to a phobia.
Now, a phobia can be loosely defined as the reaction of the human psyche to an exaggerated or magnified sense
of risk. Most Australians, after all, would be terrified of a chance encounter with a tiger, crocodile or snake in
their suburban streets or gardens. If the same sense of fear persists when we visit the zoo and see the animals or
reptiles in their enclosures, we may possess a phobic predisposition which could lead to a neurosis.
Radiation neurosis, needlessly associated with nuclear waste repositories, is promoted by Australia's seasoned
anti-nuclear campaigners. And it is sometimes propagated by sections of a sensation-loving media. Because
radiation is a physical entity which is unseen, unsmelled and untouchable, it is an ideal vehicle for inducing
fear and sleepless nights into an Australian community which seems unable to come to grips with ‘relative risk’,
a community which readily accepts death and injury on Australia's roads - a highly probable risk -- but will not
even conceptually tolerate a highly improbable incident associated with a radio isotope.
The purveyors of radiation neurosis love pseudo-science. They frequently try to associate frightening phrases
such as ‘damage to the gene pool of mankind’, ‘latent carcinogenesis’ or ‘the evil nuclear industry’ with minuscule
levels of radiation, levels which are far less than the average background level which we all absorb. Their argument
is as foolish as the stupidity of suburban councils that erect signs declaring their municipality a ‘Nuclear Free
Zone’. A ‘Smoke Free Zone’ certainly makes sense. But a ‘Nuclear Free Zone’ is an impossibility.
If Australia went down this path, some very strange new societal patterns would emerge. Aircraft travel would have
to cease. Work in some city buildings would be considered too dangerous. Dietary habits would have to change.
Possibly even some medical diagnostic and therapeutic techniques would vanish. And the price of Australian
residences would rise and fall according to their background radiation levels.
The new millennium will see the increased use of nuclear science and technology in every field of human endeavour.
The immense benefits far outweigh the risks. That's why pseudo-science, radiation neurosis and political opportunism
must not be allowed to scaremonger the Australian community.
That is what this debate is about or what it should be about. It is interesting to read Leslie Kemeny on the relative risk. This government can talk about its perceived problems with radioactive waste, but what was ‘relative risk’ when it gave approval for the building of the biggest LNG plant within a few kilometres of the CBD? I bet the actual risk from an LNG plant, although relatively low, is nowhere near the relative risk of a radioactive storage facility built kilometres from anywhere.
The government does not seem to have a concern about leaving 15 radioactive gauges at Mt Todd. Has the government ever thought what would be the consequences of a mine opening up again or what would happen to the Gouldian Finch that breeds in the area? Should not these gauges have been stored at a hot mine where there is already radioactivity rather than left at a cold mine which could be developed again in the future?
I challenge the minister’s statement in her second reading that 90% of waste is stored at Lucas Heights. Using figures from the 2002 National Radioactive Waste Repository Draft EIS Main Report, there are 2010 m of the then – this is 2002 – 3700 m of low level and intermediate waste in Australia, and that 2002 m3 comes from contaminated soils in South Australia. So the statement that 90% of radioactive waste comes from Lucas Heights is wrong. It is more like 35% to 40%. It is nowhere as high as the minister has stated, as those figures demonstrate.
Radioactive waste and nuclear science is like cotton: a political taboo. No amount of logic, no amount of expert opinion is going to sway our government away from its implacable view of the world. It just goes to show that whilst we cheer on our Australian Olympians in Athens we, I hope, support our Australian soldiers in Iraq, we barrack for our Australian Wallabies against the All Blacks, but when it comes to dealing with an Australian issue in Australia, we all hide behind our parochial cupboards or stick our parochial heads in the sand and say: ‘No, thanks, not in my backyard’.
As Matt Coffey writes in today’s NT News:
- … we are now guaranteed eight state and territory sites plus the national and Lucas Heights, which makes 10 sites
and eight different legislation and management regimes ... Is this wise, stupid or just laughable? You be the judge,
because we now have 10 backyards for you to be NIMBY about.
I am interested in other people’s comments of Matt Coffey, who asked why not Montebello Island. Would not the government support this? It was a site for nuclear tests many years ago and is perhaps a good option.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, next time I hear the song I am Australian and the words ‘I am, you are, we are Australian’, I will say to those people: ‘Get real. Get a life’, because these words are nothing more than mere sentimental platitudes. This debate, or should I say farce, over such an important national issue could no more exemplify that very point. The score at full-time today will be: politics one, Australia nil.
Mr BONSON (Millner): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, some of the contributions we have heard today have been amazing. It is as if they want to rewrite history. The reality is that this issue arose because an individual representing all Territorians said that it was our obligation - our obligation - to take nuclear waste from other states and territories.
I am sorry, but the contribution from the member Nelson was one of the most self-centred, blow-wind-up-my-bottom contributions ...
Mr WOOD: A point of order, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker! If I can be censored by the member for Sanderson for saying some very mild things, I am sure you could ask the member for Millner to withdraw his comments.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Withdraw, member for Millner.
Mr BONSON: I withdraw my comments. It was a stand-on-my-soap box lecture. If someone had a good look at how the polling went in the member’s area, no doubt there is political pitch.
I would be very interested to know where this information and his speech was going because the there is a principle here. It is a very basic principle: we in the Northern Territory do not want nuclear waste from other states and territories in the Territory. That is it – bottom line. That is the principle.
We can listen to political speeches all we want from people on the opposite side, but the reality is we did not start this debate. This debate arose from an individual who made a statement. I am sorry. I am a Territorian. I was born and bred here and lived here all my life. My family has been here for generations, and I do not want a nuclear dump in the Northern Territory - bottom line! That is the bottom line, guys! The reality is if we have to look after our nuclear waste, we take that responsibility. However, to the blow-ins, I am sorry to say that we do not want nuclear waste here …
Members interjecting.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Millner, cease for a moment. There has to be some decorum in this House. Other speakers have been heard in relative silence, and I suggest that the same standards apply to the member for Millner.
Mr BONSON: Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. As a result of comments, it suddenly became an issue not only within the Northern Territory, but across the whole of Australia. What I fear is if the Northern Territory government did not take this up and make it a national issue, then we, as a Territory with only two seats in the House of Representatives, would have had to take on other states’ and territories’ nuclear waste.
This legislation is designed to flag to the Commonwealth government that we do not want nuclear waste from other places in Australia. As the member for Macdonnell pointed out, the Commonwealth of Australia has a constitutional right to make changes to Territory legislation, and they have done in the past. By presenting this bill, we are flagging that they, the Commonwealth, will have to legislate to overturn our legislation. This, in itself, has caused a political debate right across Australia.
We cannot rewrite history. The Northern Territory government did not come out and say: ‘We are against nuclear waste’. There was a reason; something generated this. What we have seen from both sides of parliament in the Northern Territory is a recognition that we do not want to be the identified site for nuclear waste and of all these issues that have been raised over the last weeks and months, that has to be a good point.
The member for Macdonnell said the bill is meaningless tripe. I do not think, member for Macdonnell, the bottom line that we do not want nuclear waste is meaningless tripe. I am of the view that individual states and territories should be responsible for their own nuclear waste. Therefore, we put the responsibility on them to minimise that waste and to look after their own waste.
We heard from the member for Greatorex that this is a political stunt. Member for Greatorex, all I can say to people who may not have a long-term interest in the Territory, but I certainly do, is whether it is in the northern suburbs of Darwin or out on remote areas of Arnhem Land or the Central Desert, Alice Springs, Katherine, there is not one individual Territorian who has walked up to me and said: ‘Yes, we want a nuclear dump. It is our obligation and it is going to create jobs’. Far from it.
This bill will deliver legislation very similar to that of Western Australia and South Australia. That is, we will look after own waste. We have less than 1% of the nation’s radioactive waste and it is of a low level. The Commonwealth government is looking for a site for 90% of the nation’s waste including all the nation’s highest grade waste. The threat of the NT being used in it is very real: low population and a low number of federal seats, as I have already mentioned.
I am not meeting people in my electorate or in wider Darwin on the doors or at the markets who want a nuclear dump in the Northern Territory. I believe that this bill is very much a case of this parliament representing the views of Territorians. I would argue that the majority of Territorians would support this bill. The opposition may not know, but, as I have already stated, the Australian Constitution allows the federal government to overrule our legislation. This will be a flag to them and will create a political debate across the nation about the Commonwealth government interfering in state and territory rights, as we have seen in the past.
Mr Dunham: Like the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act.
Mr BONSON: The member for Drysdale knows that we have seen it in the past and he knows the hoo-ha that it has caused. Now maybe they will come down with a cold hand from Canberra and they will put it on to the Northern Territory and they will make us take this nuclear dump. We cannot do anything about it. That is the reality. All we can try to do is flag to them that Territorians do not want a nuclear waste dump. I ask members opposite to question their constituents over this issue. They would have to represent the reflection that people do not want a nuclear dump.
As the debate developed, we saw in the last few weeks of the Commonwealth election, we did see some policy on the run from the Howard government. It is important to remind everyone that as part this, at no stage did the Prime Minister himself rule out the Northern Territory. The best he could do is not rule us out and not rule us in. The best we got was from the Minister for the Environment who ruled out the mainland of the Territory, but not our islands. I certainly hope he was not thinking of the Tiwi Islands or Groote Eylandt or any other place off the shores of the Northern Territory. People on our islands do not want it, just as people in the desert and Katherine do not want it. I am sure that fishermen do not want a nuclear dump on our islands near all the fantastic fishing locations that we have. I certainly do not want nuclear waste transported through our waters and offloaded onto one of our islands.
I believe that this bill will help to tell everyone in Canberra that the Territory will fight tooth and nail against such a proposal. In the heat of an election battle, the Labor Party did stand up and fight this. Rest assured that we will continue to stand up against any plans by anyone to place their nuclear waste in our Territory. This legislation is the strongest statement that the Northern Territory parliament can make on behalf of the NT people. It is very simple legislation; it bans the storage and transport of other people’s nuclear waste in the NT.
I do not understand the CLP’s position - only they do - but I cannot support it. The vitriol from the member for Nelson was one of the most political contributions I have heard him make in this House.
Mr Dunham: He is a politician; of course he makes political contributions.
Dr Burns: He doesn’t think he is.
Mr BONSON: Exactly! I pick up the interjections of the members for Drysdale and Johnston. He purports not to take political views and then makes political statements. They called it a political stunt before they even saw the legislation. They have called it a farce and they have called it Mickey Mouse. South Australia has it and Western Australia has it. Why does the CLP believe that the Territory should not do the same thing?
I understand their laziness in relation to remote areas and islands. They have never cared about these areas before, so why should they care about them now? I am amazed, though, that they have not stood up for Katherine. We have not heard a statement from them about the issue of Katherine and whether it is a good place to have a nuclear dump.
Nuclear waste is bad for business on a number of levels. Sure, there might be a couple of jobs involved in managing it, but hundreds of jobs would be at risk in the tourism industry if the Territory was known as the nuclear dump of the nation. Our pristine environment is what brings people here; it is our biggest asset. A nuclear dump would destroy this.
I listened to contributions of members, and I have not heard an opposition or Independent member say that they want a nuclear dump here. What I have not heard is those members argue that they did not have a representative who said that. It is on record that it was said.
In summary, I support this bill because the last thing that I want is to collect other people’s nuclear waste and for the NT to be a dumping ground for Australia. I cannot see any Territorian supporting such a concept. I have every intention of strongly supporting legislation that stands up for the Northern Territory.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise as the new Environment and Heritage shadow spokesperson, and I am delighted to be able to participate in the CLP opposition team to this extent. The environment is an incredibly important area and portfolio.
I have spoken to the minister already today, and we have discussed briefings and so on. I thank her for her support with that, and I know we will work constructively in the future.
In respect of this bill, I have to bring to the attention of the House the fact that last week I moved a motion that the government send to the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee a number of issues relating to waste products in the Territory, one of which is radioactive waste.
What we wanted to know through a reference to the environment committee was how much radioactive waste we have in the Territory, future expectations in relation to waste products, current storage of nuclear waste products, and what we will do now that the federal government has ruled out the fact that it will establish a national repository for low and medium level radioactive waste products.
In the Territory, we are going to have to organise our own storage place or places. We have heard, on and off, that we have the odd dump in the NT, but this ad hoc way of dealing with it is not good enough and we need to look to the future, given that we are not going to be able to utilise a national storage facility.
Despite the minister’s assurances in the debate last week, we did finally have confirmation via the Northern Territory News on the weekend that there is a radioactive waste dump of mining refuse being stored in at least one shipping container in Kakadu, and we pursued that matter during Question Time today.
The legislation before us, to my mind, is a sad effort. It was given just before Saturday’s federal election, in which, of course, we are all well aware the Martin Labor government ran a marketing campaign trying to frighten Territorians into believing that unless we elected a federal Labor government, there was nothing going to happen except that a John Howard-led Liberal government was going to create a national nuclear dump in the Northern Territory.
Despite what the Prime Minister and others said, whatever assurances could be given that this was not going to happen, the Martin Labor government, headed by Clare Martin and her advertising, went on and on in the media about it. It was obvious that this deliberately deceitful message was not creating the community stir in the urban areas that she was hoping for. That was reflected on polling day for me when only one constituent asked me about this matter, which was surprising, given the amount of money that had been spent on this campaign.
It is my view that the Labor Party in the Northern Territory did some polling and they found out that this issue was not biting, and that they were going to have to stumble around and find something else to pursue. However, that message was obviously coming through to them a bit late because we know that in the middle of last week, this bill was slated as being number one on the Notice Paper for Thursday’s debate, and then by the time we came into the Chamber on Thursday morning, it had dropped down to item five, and we all know that under the current government, it is incredibly rare for this government to be able to sit long enough during a sittings day to be able to get to item five on the Notice Paper.
Quite obviously, this bill had been deliberately dropped on the Notice Paper in an effort to get rid of it so that it did not cause any sort of messages in the media prior to polling day on Saturday. This really highlights to all of us, and should highlight to all Territorians, the fact that this bill is nothing more than a political stunt. It was one of the parts of a campaign designed deliberately to frighten Territorians into believing that something that was not going to happen was going to happen and, quite frankly, the government should be ashamed of themselves.
I have been advised, for example, that in some Aboriginal communities, people from the Labor Party or their colleagues were speaking to people along the lines of: ‘Did you know that the Liberal government, if elected, is going to put a nuclear waste dump here in your area?’ That was a shameful thing to do. You know it was not true, and yet people were being deliberately misled along those lines. It is an appalling trick to pull on people.
In conclusion, it is quite obvious that this bill is nothing more than a farce.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is good to speak late in a debate and hear some of the contributions, such as that of my colleague, the member for Nelson, whom I believe made a very level-headed contribution.
It is very difficult in Australia to talk about anything to do with nuclear activities. The Australian public seems to have a binary attitude to it; it is good or it is bad. It is very difficult to discuss degrees within that, and it is very difficult to discuss the science and unemotional issues attached to it because the debate quickly turns into an emotional one. I have said in this House before that I have been to some nuclear power plants and reprocessing facilities. I have seen it transported, I have seen it processed, and I have seen it turned into energy rods. I have seen where it is stored and I have seen how it is stored in water when it is hot.
When we went to some of those facilities, I was interested to find that the emissions outside some of the facilities must be zero. This Parliament House would not pass that test because the granite you walk on out there, the Mt Bundy granite, is hot. It emits radioactive particles. If you ran a Geiger counter over it, it would give you a beep. It is a naturally occurring material in the Northern Territory from which we make a lot of money.
The government is quite happy to talk about how good mining is, how much money comes from mining, and the prospectivity of the place. One of those commodities is uranium. Uranium is used for many purposes, the greatest preponderance of which is peaceful and related to the generation of power. If we are unable to get to the stage where we can talk about this in a logical way, we are back to the three-mine policy idiocy and lunacy about: ‘You can mine it in South Australia; that is good uranium. That is bad uranium there at Koongarra. We have our waste but that is someone else’s waste’. As my colleague from Nelson also said, there are Territorians who have been the beneficiaries of nuclear facilities in hospitals in other places.
I would have thought it is good to have a national approach to this. Indeed, people who are new to the debate might wish to look at some of these documents. They go back to 1992, and a federal Labor government. They are excellent documents: A Radioactive Waste Repository for Australia: Methods for Choosing the Right Site. A significant amount of activity was put into choosing a site.
My friend from Millner said: ‘We only have two federal politicians, so they will pick here’. There are the sites; they have picked them. They have identified them. They are there. You can see why South Australia was jumpy because there are several in South Australia. There are two here: Tanami and Bloods Range, both in fairly remote areas. Then they said: ‘Having picked those sites, let us look at their suitability’. There was a fair bit of work done. There was consultation with a variety of players including the Central Land Council, which made a submission. They looked at both of those sites and found them to be largely unsuitable. The sites that were under consideration by various federal governments, including the Labor ones, included Tanami. The Tanami region is considered to be unsuitable to host a national radioactive waste depository. Bloods Range, as stated for Tanami.
We can run an emotional argument that it is going to ruin tourism because it is going to be jammed into some place and dissuade tourists from going there. If you go to places where there are some radioactive emissions such as, for instance, the mine at Jabiru, you will see tourists are very keen to have a look. They do not have a massive problem with it. While I will not be so foolish as to say that there would be a tourist product out of going to have a look at a nuclear waste repository, these things do exist.
I talked about the power station in Normandy in northern France. They have devices in the shopping centre that show you all the independent monitoring on the water, the air, and various other things. I was pretty interested to see that there was a great fishing site near this power station because the power station produces steam, which is returned to the water and recirculated, and it is clean. It goes in as clean steam. Into that cold water goes hot water and, thus, creates a new fishing zone and people quite willingly use it. They do not have any great scare about having two heads or waking up in the night glowing or anything like that.
There has to be some capacity for us to debate these things. A pretty good effort was put in by a previous Labor government and the current Coalition government in having an approach where they talked to the people, called for submissions, looked at the geology and the accessibility of sites, contaminants to ground water, etcetera. Those reports make pretty good reading.
The reality is we produce nuclear waste. That is the reality. In the same way one of Labor’s more foolish policies of the good uranium in South Australia and the bad uranium in the Northern Territory, we now have the government saying we have a dump being considered for the Northern Territory, but ‘Any of the stuff that we store is low level, it is okay. Trust us on this’.
The Chief Minister was unconvincing this morning when she was asked why certain documents were sought at the start of this debate. I remember it well because it is quite unusual for a rejoinder immediately that a bill is introduced. Normally, it is adjourned for a month. The rejoinder came from my colleague, member for Brennan, who said if we are going to do this in a way that is transparently not a stunt, why don’t we get the data? So tell us where it is stored and how it is handled and all the rest of it, and we can have a thinking debate.
It is obvious that it was never ever the intention to have a level-headed, thinking debate. The only purpose of it was so you could paint up a corflute sign to hang out the front of an election booth. That is its entire purpose.
The trite contribution from the member of Millner about we are really a child of the Commonwealth but we will stand up to a man and tell them how to do things is the sort of stupid jingoism and parochialism alluded to by the member for Nelson. It is unhelpful for the debate. It is an unthinking contribution on the basis that we do not need to worry about anyone else’s problems in Australia because we are really not Australians, we are Territorians.
There is the capacity to have a better approach to this. Obviously, the current federal government is going to be reluctant to do that because it will be used in a negative way against them. That is the problem for the Chief Minister. Having decided that if you store nuclear waste, it is a dump, she now has to discuss with us her ‘dumps’. One of them is Royal Darwin Hospital. It is all very well to say to the people: ‘You don’t need to worry about that because it will have no injurious effect on your health’, but maybe that is not such a good site.
I would also like to know whether it has been audited. Has all the stuff that has gone in there remained in there? Has any been transported elsewhere and is it still secure? I would not be confident that the informal storage arrangements currently in place are periodically audited. I would not be confident to be able to say this material that went in there is still there and there have been stocktakes and various techniques to make sure it is still there. I would not be surprised if, by mistake, it ends up in land fill. It would not shock me because that sort of thing can happen if you have informal arrangements such as we have at the moment.
We can progress with this bill. We can put it on the statute books, but what the government has to tell us is whether this law will have any effect. We have been told that apparently Territory laws do not apply in an enclave in Kakadu National Park. It is the most specious argument I have heard in my life to say that you cannot have any capacity for Territory law to apply in Kakadu National Park when it comes to radiation facilities, but every other statute applies. That is just implausible. It just cannot be sustained as an argument.
This legislation, too, would seem to be a dust gatherer with no purpose. I would like to see a thinking contribution as a rejoinder from the minister that addresses where the sites are, the capacity for them to be audited, for stocktakes to take place, discussions about the security thereof, whether those sites, particularly the one in Kakadu where she took a couple of approaches at answering it, but it would seem from her first answer that she is not satisfied that it is an appropriate way to store waste in containers out at Kakadu.
We can probably dispense with this pretty quickly, but I suspect that there will be significant amounts of finger pointing and people will recall this for some future time, that our federal member was happy to sell out the Territory and let everybody dump their waste here willy-nilly. A debate of that type, quite properly, should rebound on the government, and it should rebound on the way that people say: ‘Okay, given that you produce nuclear waste yourself and you store it in a dump yourself, please tell us how that occurs’.
It is a matter for this government to hang its head in shame how this was used as a fairly crude and stupid, blunt political instrument. The fact that they lost the election might have something to do with this. Many people had a more thinking approach to it than the government expected and they were able to, for instance, hear the words from Ian Campbell, the federal minister for the environment, who said the Northern Territory could take that as an absolute, categorical assurance that there would not be a nuclear waste repository here in the Territory.
We know it was never a site, apart from the two selected, analysed and found to be wanting. We know the federal minister discounted it, yet it still ran as an issue. In fact, it ran as an issue on the TV as an ad long after it was refuted. It was a pretty sneaky campaign trick. It back-fired on you. If your logic held true, that if you voted for Dave Tollner you would get a nuclear waste repository, it is a fairly simple matter now of waiting and if such a repository does not occur, an apology is due because that is what people were told as they went to vote: ‘Don’t vote for this man or you will end up with a nuclear waste dump’.
I, too, have heard the story about Aboriginal people being told that it could well happen in their community. They are just dangerous, foolish lies that often occur during campaigns. For the Labor Party to have been so close to this campaign does not auger well for them. We expect something of its ilk to jump out at our Territory election, and I hope they use this as a salutary lesson to be aware of the intelligence of voters because they are not as stupid as many in the Labor Party tend to think they are.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I have listened with interest to this fairly prolonged debate. It would be very easy to pass the debate off as a picking over of what was said or thought in the federal election and to dismiss today’s bill as being one of no substance and, therefore, dismiss what it was intended to address.
There is a serious issue before us today, one that members generally need to think about seriously in respect of the various parts of the Northern Territory we represent. I do not think there is any doubt that if you went around and canvassed the opinions of NT people about the location of a nuclear waste dump, no matter where it was proposed in the Territory, there is ample evidence that there is strong resistance to the proposition.
We have heard some erudite contributions giving all sorts of reasons why we should look at this in the cold, hard light of day and maybe we should look at informed debate. The first people who have to be informed if there was to be any attempt to put a facility of this type in the Northern Territory are Territorians.
It is all very well to talk about extensive consultation that supposedly happened when the consultancy went through the Territory and other parts of Australia to evaluate potential sites for such a facility, but I can tell you absolutely that you can drive through all the communities along the Tanami Road, one of the proposed sites, and not one soul would be able to tell you of any consultation that they had. There is no knowledge of this out there.
When you look at the reaction of people in that area to the cyanide spill some year or two ago, people are still seeking closure on that. It was one of those things for which the follow-up was not adequate, and that has been admitted in reports, but what we are left with is a feeling of loss and betrayal out in the Tanami area.
These are the people who were being considered as neighbours to a facility harbouring nuclear waste. I do not believe in this House at this moment, with that kind of lack of consultation in the electorate, that we have any right to countenance a nuclear waste facility in the Territory.
Regardless of whatever assurances came out of the federal election in the heat of battle where, clearly, the conservative party needed to offer a rapid reassurance to the Northern Territory voting population that such a facility was not going to appear here after the election, things are said in elections. Some things are held to, some things are not. Our duty in this House, all 25 of us, is to make it absolutely clear at this point of time, with the current attitudes of the Northern Territory population, as to what Territorians think about such a proposal.
There are many ways we could do that, and this House, on many occasions, has sought to send a strong message to the Canberra parliament. I remember the Remonstrance with which Shane Stone trotted in; a highly theatrical document written in old Gothic English script, and we all said: ‘Yes, we are going to sign this’, because it basically said that if you want to do something in the Northern Territory, if you want to do something that impacts on the lives and the interests of Territorians, you had better come and talk to us about it and you had better start showing some respect for the interests of Territorians and to the primacy of the Territory as a part of Australia.
It is all very well to talk about us all being Australians and we all have to toe the line, as the member for Nelson seems to think, that we are not allowed to sing a semi-national anthem unless we give in to these types of national imperatives. It is all very well for some national initiatives to be aimed at this area of Australia, the Territory, but the key thing is if you are going to do that, if the Commonwealth government wants to look at the Territory for this, or any other initiative, they have to come and talk, with respect, to the Territory population and to its parliament.
That is the issue for us today, and if it had not been for the heat of a federal election, I daresay we would have had a fairly high level of consensus in this House about this particular action. This is an action of sending a message. We know that the bill before us can be overruled by the federal parliament. That is the whole basis of much of the statehood debate that we have had in the Territory over many years. We know that our laws can be overruled by Commonwealth laws. The Commonwealth parliament could very well pass legislation to establish a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, and we could not do anything about that. However, what that would embody would be a very powerful statement against the interests of this part of Australia, against the interests of Territorians, clearly running roughshod over what our parliament has said is the express wish of the Territory electorate.
If they want to get over that, we want to make it as hard as possible for them to do it, by decree, if you like. If they want to have a reasoned debate and come here and talk to Territorians, no matter where they are, about the possibility of hosting such a facility, if Territorians are persuaded by their arguments to offer that hosting arrangement, good luck to them. That is the democratic process and it is a process that has been applied with respect. Given the way this has transpired to date, I believe we are bound, as representatives of Territorians, to send this message to Canberra.
If you are going to have a bill going to Canberra, you want one that is as hard as possible to overturn. That is why we sought the advice of our Solicitor General, Tom Pauling QC, in the wording of the bill and the proposed amendment that was foreshadowed by the opposition. I will read the Solicitor General’s advice in full. It has been referred to in the debate. It is fairly apparent that some of the opposition members have not received a copy from the Leader of the Opposition, so let us put it on the public record. This is advice SGO/2004/625:
- Nuclear Waste Transport, Storage and Disposal (Prohibition) Bill 2004:
This office has advised over many years on the peculiar difficulties that arise constitutionally
where Territory laws conflict with Commonwealth laws.
Many statutes have just terms provisions to avoid invalidity. The purpose of subclause (1)
of clause (5) was:
Commonwealth and Territory laws; and
to be inconsistency in some particular way perhaps, in respect of the
ANSTO waste.
If subclause (1) is removed …
This is the proposed amendment and the subclause referred to is:
- A provision of this act relating to the transport, storage or disposal of nuclear waste does not have any
effect to the extent that it is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth but the provision must not be
taken to be inconsistent with that law if it can be complied with without contravention of that law.
That is basically stating the bleeding obvious, that the Commonwealth laws do override Territory laws to the degree that the two are inconsistent. The Solicitor General goes on to say:
- If subclause (1) is removed as proposed and there is partial inconsistency, the legal result could be that the
whole of the law could be struck down as beyond power, not to mention the effect of section 7(a)(3) of the
ANSTO Act. The passing of the amendment would make the bill more vulnerable to being struck down,
rather than read down, on constitutional grounds.
All the Solicitor General is offering to us in this debate is that if we want to make it as hard as possible for the Commonwealth that we have to force them to introduce overriding legislation, then leaving the bill the way it was drafted is the best way to do it. Amending it to remove the reference to the Commonwealth legislation and potential inconsistency is simply making it easier for the Commonwealth to strike the entire bill out as being against the Constitution. It does make any sense to do that.
It really brings us back to a very simple proposition for members to consider today when then decide whether they want to support this bill: given what Territorians think about this issue right now, that there has not been a comprehensive attempt by the Commonwealth to change the public opinion or even to inform people of the aspects of this issue, do we want to send a simple and unqualified message to the Commonwealth government? That message is that Territorians do not agree with this proposal at this time. That is a pretty simple thing to ponder.
I challenge any member of this House to provide any evidence that the electorate they represent shows any support for this proposition. You can go on and on and trust the Commonwealth government; they gave all these assurances during the election. I do not think this is an invalid thing to be doing now. I do not believe that this debate has ceased nationally. It is very important to tell the Commonwealth that they have a lot of work to do if they want to progress a proposal of this type in the Northern Territory. That is what we need to do as part of our duty of representation to the Territorians who put us here.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Environment and Heritage): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I will wrap up what has been an interesting debate on this legislation.
This is very simple legislation, which seeks to prevent other people’s nuclear waste being transported and dumped in the Territory. I simply do not understand why the opposition cannot say: ‘We support it’. It is not about how we are managing. At Question Time, I said that last week we had quite a long debate on a motion moved by the member for Port Darwin. Much of the response to that motion went into how we, as a Territory, as a government, manage and look after our own waste.
This legislation is about not wanting to become a dumping ground for other people’s waste. Do I repeat it again so that people understand that this is about waste coming into the Northern Territory?
Western Australia and South Australia have passed very similar legislation. When the Commonwealth government was attempting to place such a facility in South Australia, the South Australian parliament passed very similar legislation, but their legislation had bipartisan support and it was a very powerful message to Canberra that the people of South Australia would not take it lying down. Already with our legislation, we have shown Canberra that we will not be a pushover, that the message is very clear. We, as a government, are not going to accept that the Northern Territory is going to be a dumping ground.
This bill is not passed yet, but we heard about its ramifications. A member of the opposition said before that it was introduced on urgency. That is not true. This legislation was introduced some time ago. They have had ample time and opportunity in which to look at this and to support it. We have asked them a couple of times to support it and they still do not want to support it.
Just by introducing this bill, we have demonstrated to the Territory that we are not going to lie down and accept that the Commonwealth or anyone else is going to use the Northern Territory as a dumping ground. We do not have the population and we do not have many federal seats in parliament, but we have made a statement that has been very clearly heard. I pick up on the opposition who said that the message was very clear during the election both in Darwin and Palmerston.
Let me tell you where this dump was going to be. Let us look outside of Darwin and Palmerston. Let us look at the electorate of Lingiari. Are they not Territorians out there? Do they not have a right to be consulted and talked to and told that if the Commonwealth is proposing this, there are places in Lingiari at which the Commonwealth could look? For members opposite to say that, in terms of Darwin and Palmerston, people categorically rejected any statement from the Commonwealth about a nuclear dump, they need to look beyond the Berrimah line. We have members from Central Australia who come in here and talk constantly about the Berrimah line and ask: what about us in Central Australia? Let us look beyond the Berrimah line. Who lives beyond the Berrimah line? We have many Aboriginal people in Aboriginal communities.
Islands were also mentioned. They were not ruled out, but were talked about. Then again, the islands are questionable, because we saw what happened when the Minasa Bone came in to Melville Island and the Commonwealth government, in a knee-jerk reaction to address the issue of refugees coming into this country excised the islands from the mainland of Australia.
It is important to understand that the position of the Commonwealth government does have to be carefully monitored. We are the first to admit that this bill has limitations. The Commonwealth government can completely overrule it should they wish. However, on this side, we have said that it is the most forceful statement this Assembly can make. This legislation makes it harder for the Commonwealth to put a dump here. Why would we make it easier for them? The opposition has tried to detract from our no nuclear dump position by scaremongering on waste. We heard more of that today in Question Time.
Last week, as I said in Question Time, there was a very detailed explanation of how we deal with radioactive waste. Let me state again, as I said to the member for Port Darwin, there are two sites in the Territory for which the Northern Territory government has jurisdiction where radioactive waste is stored. At the hospital, there are 2 m which are kept in a facility that, by the way, their own Senator, Senator Nigel Scullion, called ‘state-of-the-art’. Also, at Mt Todd, the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development owns 15 industrial gauges containing enclosed radioactive waste.
I said in Question Time, the member for Brennan in particular has been casting all sorts of theories on how hazardous waste is managed. It is funny, as I said in Question Time, how his position has changed now that he is in opposition. What has changed? With the support of the opposition, we are strengthening the Radiation Safety Control Act and updating it into the new Radiation Protection Act. What else has changed? Why is it suddenly something that was good when you were in government and now bad from opposition?
Let me come to the shipping containers in Kakadu. Kakadu, as we know, is managed by the Commonwealth and the tailings come from the Ranger uranium mine, which is supervised by the Commonwealth. Let us be clear: the member for Solomon was complaining about the actions of his own government.
The waste at Gunlom, which was an issue raised, is not the Territory’s responsibility. It is Commonwealth waste on Commonwealth land. If we look at Kakadu National Park and the Commonwealth Environment and Biodiversity Act, Ranger uranium mine is monitored under the Mining Management Act. Waste has gone out of that mine into a site at Gunlom. Monitoring this waste is the responsibility of the Office of the Supervising Scientist.
In the year 2000, agreement was reached to take the tailings away from Ranger and put them into these storage containers because there was a fear of having waste in the tailing dams during the Wet Season leading to leaching into rivers and creeks. That was in 2000. When the Commonwealth made this decision about this waste, the CLP in government either failed in their duty to come to an agreement with the Commonwealth to have this waste taken out of the Northern Territory or they agreed to it. They agreed to this in 2000.
Regarding the waste at Gunlom, I said that I am concerned and I will be raising it not just as the member for Arafura, but once federal Cabinet is sorted out and the environment minister named, I will be taking the issue up with your federal colleagues.
With respect to the yellowcake from Ranger, the Northern Territory government regulates such waste through WorkSafe and under the Radioactive Ores and Concentrates (Packing and Transport) Act and the product is tested for radiation levels and is known to be within allowable limits. Packaging and transport is in accordance with the Code of Practice for the Transport of Radioactive Substances. Members opposite are trying to create an issue when there isn’t one. We manage our own waste. We store it appropriately and transport it appropriately. Again, I re-affirm that we do not want to become a dumping ground for other people’s waste.
The member for Brennan concluded that because the Commonwealth is storing some tailings in a shipping container in its parks in Kakadu, the facility at the hospital must be dangerous. I refer him to Senator Nigel Scullion’s ‘state-of-the-art’ quote.
There would be nothing easier than for me, as Minister for the Environment and Heritage and the member for Arafura, to go into fits of outrage over the Commonwealth’s action. Unlike the CLP, I do not want to scaremonger and turn people away from Kakadu, but, yes, I give a commitment on record that I will take this issue up with the Commonwealth and we will deal with it, but I am not going to scaremonger.
We have heard the opposition try to suggest that decades ago, Bob Collins and Bob Hawke wanted a dump here. They have this bizarre logic that this means it is okay for the Commonwealth government to place it here. It does not. This legislation clearly says that we do not want anyone else’s nuclear waste, no matter who proposes it. This legislation makes that clear.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, from the day we announced that we were considering this legislation, the opposition has opposed it. Before they even saw the bill, the Leader of the Opposition called it a stunt. Since then, he has backed this up by calling it ‘Mickey Mouse’. The member for Brennan has been particularly opposed to it. He has called it a farce. The member for Brennan has also opposed this legislation because he claims a junior minister has carriage of it. What is his problem with the minister for environment, which I am, having carriage of legislation to protect our environment? We know that when you were in government, you treated the environment portfolio as a junior portfolio, as an annoyance that was in the way. We are protecting our environment seriously.
Last week, we saw the Leader of the Opposition flag that he wanted to strengthen the legislation. We were interested in what he had to say. If he had an idea on how to strengthen the legislation, then we were keen to hear it, although he had not sought a briefing. If he had an amendment that meant he would change his mind and support the legislation, we wanted to hear it. We need all members of this House to support this bill. However, it was not until late on Thursday that he tabled his proposed amendment to remove clause 5(1). Straight away, we knew that this amendment was likely to render the whole bill invalid. However, we sent it to the Solicitor General for his advice, and we now have that advice. Despite some of the voices over on the opposition bench saying that they did not see this advice, it was forwarded to the Leader of the Opposition.
I can advise that our legal advice, as the Attorney-General said before, is that the proposed amendment would completely sabotage the legislation. The advice that we have, as the Attorney-General said, is that the whole of the bill would be struck down. Either this sabotage was due to incompetence or was quite deliberate. Which one is it? The member for Brennan asked: ‘Why do you need this clause when it is not in other legislation?’ It is, and he knows that it is in other legislation. Yet he stood up here and said that this clause is not in other legislation.
Mr Burke interjecting.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: The same provision can be found in the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act. It can also be found in the Cobourg Peninsula Aboriginal Land, Sanctuary and Marine Park Act, and it can be found in the Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) National Park Act, and maybe there are others. The opposition knew this because they were the ones who introduced these acts when they were in government. So we see that what the previous government carried out as a matter of course is suddenly ‘a farce’ when this government does it.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it will not surprise you to hear that we will not accept the amendment. On the one hand, the opposition has feigned their support for our no nuclear waste position but, on the other, they seek amendments to our legislation that render it invalid. I wish I could say that this legislation will prevent a nuclear waste dump ever being located in the Territory. I cannot. We can be overruled. However, it is the strongest statement we can make, and that is why we have introduced it and why the opposition should support it.
Very early in the piece, as a number of members said, we were the ones who ran the campaign on this. They only have to look at the words that the member for Solomon first raised this when he said that we all have a responsibility as Territorians to the rest of Australia to store other people’s nuclear waste. This bill says we are not going to stand for other people’s waste being transported to or stored in the Northern Territory.
There are other comments I could address, but I will not. The member for Nelson’s comments are not worth a response because if I have ever heard a patronising message, standing on his pedestal and wagging the finger, and telling people what to do, that was it.
Motion agreed to; bill read a second time.
In committee:
Mr CHAIRMAN: The committee has before it the Nuclear Waste Transport, Storage and Disposal (Prohibition) Bill 2004 (Serial 243), together with Schedule of Amendment number 90 circulated by the member for Brennan, Mr Burke.
Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.
Clause 5:
Mr BURKE: Mr Chairman, I move amendment 90.
Members are aware that this amendment seeks to strike out clause 5(1), based on the opposition’s belief that the clause is unnecessary. It is clear that the government is not supporting the amendment.
I heard the comments from the Attorney-General about the Solicitor General’s advice. I was not aware of the Solicitor General’s advice prior to hearing the Attorney-General’s explanation. On hearing the Solicitor General’s advice, on the one hand, I accept the advice of a person of the status of the Solicitor General. However, given the fact that the government says that this bill is of such note and seriousness, I have never heard advice from the Solicitor General that is so brief.
I would have thought the Solicitor General would have given some case precedents as to where there is consistency or inconsistency with Commonwealth legislation, which was, as I understood it, his explanation that could render the whole bill invalid. I would have thought the Solicitor General would have been more definitive in giving examples of case precedents where that has occurred in the past.
However, the Solicitor General’s advice is sufficient for the government to object to the amendment. In the absence of any more explanation from the Solicitor General, I stand by the amendment.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Mr Chairman, in response to the member for Brennan, clause 5(1) recognises the unique constitutional position of the Northern Territory. Whilst the legislative powers of the Territory, under the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act are broad, we are subject to certain limitations. One such limitation is with respect to laws passed by the Territory’s Legislative Assembly that are inconsistent with the law of the Commonwealth.
While the Territory is not subject to section 109 of the Constitution, which deals with inconsistent state legislation, the High Court has determined that the Territory is subject to the same principles. However, in at least one High Court decision, this principle appears to have taken a step further, leaving some doubt whether the Territory Legislative Assembly has the power to pass inconsistent legislation.
For the benefit of members, I should point out the clause to which the opposition so objects is not new, and I said that when I was summing up.
In relation to the ACT, this issue was recognised and addressed in their self-government act. The Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act contains a provision almost identical to the one we are discussing here today.
The Northern Territory does not have this provision in its self-government act, as I assume you would know. When issues such as this arise, as you should also know it is necessary to insert a similar provision in Northern Territory legislation. When you said: ‘Point me to one act that has the same provision’, I did. The same provisions are found in the Territory Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act at section 71 and in legislation dealing with Nitmiluk and the Cobourg Marine Sanctuary.
Perhaps members opposite do not understand the law. I believe they do, and they know full well that removing this clause will stop our legislation from achieving its aim: preventing the Territory from becoming a national dumping ground for nuclear waste. As I said before, I only see their actions as a deliberate attempt to sabotage.
Mr BURKE: Apart from those accusatory comments, you can read well. I ask the question of the minister: you said when you quickly read that text that the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act is not subject to section 109 of the Constitution and the High Court has ruled on issues in the past. Do I gather from your comments that a challenge to our legislation by the Commonwealth would be subject to High Court action?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Mr Chairman, in response, yes, like any - hold on! It can be challenged, just like any other legislation introduced in this parliament.
Mr BURKE: Okay. So have we now reached the point that if my amendment was agreed to and the Commonwealth decided to act onerously and arbitrarily by establishing a disposal facility in the Northern Territory, and this legislation is intended to block Commonwealth action, are you telling me that the Commonwealth would have to go to the High Court in order to implement their aim?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: I will get some advice, but as far as I can see, no, but I will just get that checked. No. The member for Brennan surely will know that it is a fact of life in terms of the Northern Territory that the Commonwealth can override us at any time. We saw that, and you mentioned it in debate, with the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act. The Commonwealth overrode that. So in answering your question, I said no. That is a fact of life; that is what we face here.
Mr BURKE: So what you are saying to me, therefore, is that for the Commonwealth to act against our legislation, they would have to do so by a new act of the federal parliament, similar to the way they acted against the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: What the Commonwealth did in the euthanasia case was amend the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act, and they did that to be able to override the Territory’s powers to make such laws.
It is entirely possible that the Commonwealth could legislate to override Territory law and that is a fact of life, as I have said, for Territorians and this parliament. Passing this legislation remains, as I have said previously, the strongest statement that we can make as Territorians - and if we are all united as Territorians and we keep standing in this parliament and saying we are here for the betterment of Territorians - that we do not want to become a dumping ground for national nuclear waste.
Mr BURKE: Minister, I am working from a very short statement from the Solicitor General that remains unclear to me, but are you saying to me that if this amendment were passed, this legislation would be invalid? Without any action by the Commonwealth whatsoever, it would be invalid legislation and, if so, why?
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Answering your question, the Commonwealth has the powers to make laws in relation to the environment because it is a party to the International Convention on the Environment. It can then draw on its foreign affairs powers to make environmental legislation giving effect to these conventions. Where state legislation is consistent with legislation of the Commonwealth, this usually results in the offending provisions being struck down, and only where this is not possible will the offending legislation fail.
However, the Territory’s situation is different. Without the clause, the High Court has cast doubts on whether the Territory has the power to pass legislation at all in areas such as this where it is likely that the Commonwealth has legislated or may legislate for environmental protection. This clause protects the operation of the legislation. This clause is not needed in all Northern Territory legislation because the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act clearly sets out an area of Territory responsibility.
It is not unusual to put up a clause such as this in areas where legislative authority is shared with the Commonwealth.
Mr BURKE: I won’t pursue it. I will have to read the Hansard transcript and seek separate advice, but I won’t pursue any further.
Amendment negatived.
Bill agreed to.
Bill reported; report adopted.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Environment and Heritage): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a third time.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Madam Speaker, before we dispense with this legislation, based on debate that has occurred this afternoon, the government continued to make the assertion that the CLP supports some hypothetical situation that if the Commonwealth government wanted to put a radioactive waste facility in the Northern Territory, we will support it.
I would like to put it very clearly on the record that the CLP opposition would not support any action by the Commonwealth that could possibly occur in this regard. That is clear and unequivocal and has been in our situation right throughout. What we do not support is hypocrisy. Our arguments in this debate have been, and I do not wish to go over them again, that if the government wanted the debate approached seriously, they would have provided sufficient information for a serious debate to occur, and that information has not been forthcoming.
An example of the information the government should have provided is that included in all of the studies that have occurred, and I imagine this is just a small sample, since 1992 on an issue that has been raised since the late 1980s. I would have thought a government with any maturity and responsibility to inform Territorians would have included a background summary of what has happened on this issue over the years and led to the conclusion, logically, as to why the Northern Territory government opposes any suggestion in the future if it may arise as to why a nuclear facility should be located in the Northern Territory.
That information could have been provided. The arguments could have been made. The Territory public would have been informed and you would have reached the same result. Our argument is that this has been done in a farcical manner at the outset. The information provided to the opposition and the general public during this debate has amounted to nothing more than stickers in an election campaign. If anyone wants that to be taken seriously, they do not have the opposition’s support. That is what we have been objecting to.
I make the point that the minister took the opportunity to have a go at the member for Nelson’s contribution. It was the best contribution to this debate. He spoke in a mature fashion and raised issues of logic and substance that everyone should consider. I may not agree with the end result and the opposition may not agree with the end result, but at least he argued the far better case than the government.
What we have from the government has essentially been synthesised and summarised by the member for Millner: I am a Territorian, I was born in the Territory, I want to stay in the Territory and no one’s going to stick a dump in my Territory. Fine! That is his opinion, but that should not be the way this government presents legislation.
All the information is there. The sadness is that with all the resources available to government, this has taken me weeks to go to Commonwealth libraries, using the excellent support we receive from the Parliamentary Library Service, to get information. I can tell you I do not reckon one line in any of these books – books that have been out since 1992 and have had the carriage of ministers such as Simon Crean and our Ambassador for the Northern Territory, Bob Collins - that have proposed arguments where sites could or should be located. None of that information has been presented to this parliament by the government, yet you expect the opposition to take this debate seriously.
The member for Stuart said: ‘I have been up and down the Tanami and I can go to any community in the Tanami and I can tell you that none of them know anything about this issue’. Have you read the 1995 report, minister?
Dr Toyne: I asked them.
Mr BURKE: Well, I will tell you. The 1995 report …
Dr Toyne: I can tell you what they said to me because I asked them.
Mr BURKE: No. Well, the people may not have said this to you, but the 1995 …
A member interjecting.
Mr BURKE: I am talking about the responsibility of the government to present information responsibly and maturely for debate. In the 1995 report, which had …
Mr STIRLING: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The member for Brennan had an opportunity in the second reading to introduce this material. It is inappropriate in the third reading to be introducing material that was not covered in the second reading.
Mr BURKE: It was.
Madam SPEAKER: There is no point of order.
Mr BURKE: Thank you, Madam Speaker. This was all covered in the debate. If you had been in here or not asleep, you would have known, or at least been listening to the debate.
Dr BURNS: A point of order, Madam Speaker. The member for Brennan is reflecting on the presence or absence of a member in the Chamber.
Mr BURKE: I withdraw it. The issue is this: the Attorney-General, the senior law officer in the Northern Territory, rises to provide some substance and clout for this debate, and says that no-one in the Tanami knows anything about this. Bob Collins, the Ambassador for the Northern Territory who had carriage of this legislation and carriage of this report, makes comments about the Central Land Council’s position with regards to a site in the Tanami and a site at Bloods Range, and it is good reading because it says:
- CLC provided detailed and informed comments on why it considers the Tanami region to be unsuitable
to host a national radioactive waste repository.
the criterion of good surface drainage is not met in the Tanami …;
… Tanami is subject to seasonal monsoonal events …
Words I am flat-out pronouncing:
- … significant diurnal temperature fluctuations in the region result in significant expansion and contraction
of the regolith, which has an impact on the geomorphological stability of areas.
It goes on for two pages. Then the CLC put in their submission on Bloods Range. The reality is that the sites that were identified in the Northern Territory, at the end of these studies, had very low priority from the Commonwealth. That is the point that the opposition has been trying to make in this debate. That is, when it comes to a government that suggests that we should approach this debate in a mature way, you have been absolutely derelict in your responsibility or duty to provide adequate information to the opposition or to Territorians about the history of this debate and about the very good reasons, apart from emotive reasons, why the Territory would not be a suitable site, based on the studies that have occurred, for any radioactive waste material at any time in the future.
It is all there, and I am quite confident that whether it is a Labor government or a Howard government, the first they would be going to is this sort of information and not the information that has been provided in this debate by the government.
It has been a disgrace. I reckon the member for Nelson has it right. We could have approached this debate in a mature way, but government played politics from the outset. It is still playing politics today, and the minister, quite frankly, has been a disgrace in the way she has carried it.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Madam Speaker, I will add a few comments. The logic of leaving the section the member for Brennan tried to have excluded goes like this: I am going to let you punch me; that way, you cannot assault me. That really is the logic of that clause.
Now we have legislation that basically says the Commonwealth can do whatever it likes and, that way, they cannot roll our legislation over. So if we give the ground in the first instance, they cannot invade us. That is really the absurdity of this legislation. It is not worth the paper it is printed on.
The second thing is that the organ that this government has chosen to use to send a message, the minister’s own word, is the wrong organ. The law, and the member for Nelson had it right, has a function to maintain good order for the people of the Northern Territory. This bill undermines itself in clause 5(1).
If the parliament of the Northern Territory wanted to send a message to the Commonwealth government, the organ that they should have used and is available to this government is a motion. We have sent, as a parliament, motions to the Commonwealth government on numerous occasions. We have sent remonstrances, there are two on the Parliamentary Record, as well as motions even quite recently in relation to what the Commonwealth government has or not provided for roads funding. That is how you send a message.
It would have been a much more convincing message if the words of the motion could have been captured that were acceptable to both sides of this House and perhaps even to the member for Nelson, depending on the words of the words of the motion, by which the whole parliament could have sent a message to Canberra.
Of course, that is not the intention of this legislation. The intention was a political stunt. We now have a political stunt as a law of the Northern Territory. I am becoming concerned about this government’s pedestrian attitude towards things like legislation. The member for Nelson referred to it as being ‘sacred’. Perhaps I would not go so far as ‘sacred’, but it needs to maintain integrity to be taken seriously.
Legislation is relied upon by the courts and by people to stand as a beacon to provide direction for them in our community. If we start to temper or in any way water down the legitimacy and integrity of the legislation that we pass because of stunts that we are trying to pull, it will not be too long before we become a laughing stock. I urge members of the government to consider and reconsider that as a matter of priority because the integrity of legislation is all that stands between us and, basically, social oblivion. I urge the government to stop using legislation as a vehicle for political outcomes.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
CRIMINAL CODE AMENDMENT (MONEY LAUNDERING) BILL
(Serial 244)
(Serial 244)
Continued from 19 August 2004.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Speaker, there is a degree of media hype about this bill and, once again, it has been full of government spin. The Attorney-General said in the Northern Territory News on 16 August 2004, and I quote:
- Now we are not only seizing a criminal’s assets, but the funny money that they have been able to obtain
by illegal purposes.
He then went on to talk about terrorist organisations. On ABC radio on 16 August 2004 …
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! This morning, the minister explained about his hearing difficulties. I have perfectly good hearing. I am having trouble with it. I have never heard her speak like this before and I wonder if it is a game.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Member for Araluen, speak a little louder.
Ms CARNEY: I have a sore throat, Madam Speaker. Fat man!
Mr KIELY: Madam Speaker, how often do we have to put up with this trite, petulant person in this place?
Dr Burns: It is harassment.
Mr Kiely: It is harassment! In a workplace, I would have her. Madam Speaker, I ask for your protection against her petulance.
Dr Burns: And harassment.
Mr ELFERINK: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, would you just withdraw that. Withdraw it!
Ms Carney: I withdraw, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Stand up and withdraw it! Do it correctly!
Ms CARNEY: I withdraw it, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Now, continue your speech. Continue your speech in a big voice!
Ms CARNEY: On ABC radio on 16 August 2004, the Attorney-General referred to the laws introduced to confiscate proceeds and said:
- The whole aim of this raft of laws is to make it unprofitable for people to carry out criminal activities
in the Northern Territory to the highest degree that we can.
The law he was referring to …
Dr TOYNE: Madam Speaker, I am sorry, I just cannot hear her.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, we cannot hear you. I am sorry, but you will have to speak louder than that.
Dr TOYNE: I am sorry. I am not trying to make things difficult.
Ms CARNEY: The law he was referring to was the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act introduced to parliament on 18 June 2002.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, cease for a moment. I am sorry. I cannot hear you. I do not think the member for Macdonnell can hear you. You are just really going to have to raise your voice.
Mr ELFERINK: Madam Speaker, may I make a suggestion? It is not a breach of standing orders for a member to approach the dispatch box and if the member for Araluen has a sore throat …
Madam SPEAKER: Do you have a sore throat, member for Araluen?
Ms CARNEY: Yes, Madam Speaker.
Mr ELFERINK: If she has a sore throat, then perhaps the matter can be dealt with …
Madam SPEAKER: Do you have a sore throat? Is there any reason you cannot project your voice?
Ms CARNEY: You question as to whether I do have a sore throat, Madam Speaker? If I say I have a sore throat, I have a sore throat, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Sorry, I am having difficulty. What did she say? Does she have a sore throat? Okay. Would you like to come to the dispatch box, which is unusual, but at least it will give the minister a chance to hear what you are saying.
Dr TOYNE: Thanks very much for that.
Ms CARNEY: The law he was referring to was the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act that was introduced in parliament on 18 June 2002.
When the Attorney-General introduced that bill, he said that those laws would deter those who were thinking about criminal activity by reducing the possibility of gaining from that activity. He also said it would prevent crime. Clearly those measures have not worked insofar as crime still exists, even though the government says that it does not, and clearly it has not deterred those who are thinking about criminal activity.
The spin was that there were new powers being given to seize assets. The power is already there. So although there are some new aspects to the bill, the political packaging was a rehash of what was done nearly two years previous to that.
Under the act that was introduced two years earlier, there is also power to seize assets such as in section 10(2). The bill does actually contain some new powers and the Attorney-General outlined them in his second reading speech, which was quite different from the pre-publicity.
So now that we have dispensed with Labor hype, we can see exactly what the bill contains. The bill’s genesis is a national summit with Labor leaders where leaders wanted to deal with money laundering. A national response was desired and agreed to. A bill was drafted and, I gather, all Labor leaders consented to it. In many ways it is a straightforward bill, although there are some differences from the provisions that already exist in relation to seizing assets. Not wanting to upset his colleagues from interstate, Labor in the Territory has agreed to it and now produces it.
One question, however, is how significant is money laundering in the Northern Territory. When asked on ABC radio, the Attorney-General referred to the Hells Angels and other organisations and other groups. I ask: to which other groups does he refer? The Attorney-General, when asked who was going to be doing the investigating, said:
- We’ll probably have accountants working rather than straight policing.
If the government is serious about this and thinks it is a problem, how has the problem been identified and what infrastructure and resources are going to be put in place to support and enforce the operation of the bill? Those questions have not been answered by this Attorney-General.
There was also a reference in the media to terrorist activities. People tell me all around the Territory that they are more worried by drunks on the streets than terrorists.
In conclusion, it appears that the bill is produced partly because it is important in other Labor states and the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Labor Party has to keep in sync. That is evidenced by general powers to seize assets including money already being in existence. No detail or anything resembling a commitment to putting infrastructure in place to actively support this bill or its objectives has been mentioned by anyone in government.
Finally, in light of the spin that preceded the introduction of the bill, it is clear that government has used this bill to tell people that it was coming up with new initiatives that would prevent crime. That is what they said when the bill was first introduced two years ago, the objectives of which were to prevent crime. Government has failed and has, once again, been dishonest with the electorate in the communication of the aims of this bill.
Madam Speaker, some would say there is a certain pointlessness about the bill. However, the CLP does not see the need to oppose it.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, that was difficult, I am afraid, and I am sorry to hear that the member has a sore throat at the same time as I have a hearing impairment, but I believe we managed to pick up the points that were being made.
First, I welcome the support of the opposition. This is filling a clear gap in our Criminal Code. We have receiving offences in the current code, but I was quite surprised to go through the code when we were developing this legislation and find that there were no money laundering offences in our Criminal Code in any form.
This bill inserts a new section 23 to Part VII and creates Division 3A which, for the first time in the Territory, deals with offences of laundering activities.
To pick up a couple of points that were made by the member for Araluen, the Criminal Property Forfeiture Act, section 6, Forfeiture Offence, will apply to resources that are identified as part of money laundering investigations. If a resource has been shown to be connected to either a crime or the planned commission of a crime, they will come under the provisions of the act and will be forfeited to the Crown.
In respect of resourcing implementation of these provisions, as we do with any legislation, if the police indicate that they need additional resources to apply these provisions and investigate crimes under them, we will have a look at it.
On the point about this being some sort of national Labor held agenda, we have already seen the Commonwealth, which is not Labor and, unfortunately, will remain that way, as well as Victoria and Western Australia enact similar money laundering provisions. Other jurisdictions are moving to do it, too. I clearly identified in the second reading speech that this is a national process. There is a joint working group that has developed model provisions that we have mirrored in this bill. The idea is obvious: many of these types of offences are national in scope and we want to have uniform legislation around the country to deal with them.
I can assure the member that there is nothing in this bill outside the national provisions that are being promoted through the national process. We hope that the effectiveness of the provisions will be enhanced by doing that so that we have common ground for the various police services around the country to act on this type of offending.
Madam Speaker, I have dealt with the points made by the member opposite and we should proceed on that basis.
Motion agreed to; bill read a second time.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a third time.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
TABLED PAPER
Public Accounts Committee Annual Report 2003-04
Public Accounts Committee Annual Report 2003-04
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Speaker, I lay on the Table the Public Accounts Committee’s Annual Report, 2003-04.
MOTION
Print Paper - Public Accounts Committee Annual Report 2003-04
Print Paper - Public Accounts Committee Annual Report 2003-04
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Speaker, I move that the report be printed.
Motion agreed to.
MOTION
Note Paper - Public Accounts Committee Annual Report 2003-04
Note Paper - Public Accounts Committee Annual Report 2003-04
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the paper.
I am pleased to table this 18th Annual Report of the Public Accounts Committee. A focus of the committee this year has been the opportunity for members to concentrate on consolidating their knowledge of the ongoing implementation of full accrual based accounting within the public sector.
In addition, the committee sought to inform itself of the rationalisation of the government-announced procurement reforms.
Both of these areas have a major whole-of-government impact, and it was essential that committee members be provided with the opportunity to question the most senior public servants from within Treasury, the agency that has full responsibility for procedural changes. The Under Treasurer, Ms Jennifer Prince, and her executive officers provided the unfettered advice committee members sought. Mr Michael Martin, Deputy Secretary, Department of Corporate and Information Services, headed the witnesses who kept members informed on the implementation of accrual accounting.
Public Accounts Committee members again formed the core committee in the Estimates process. Public hearings were held from 8.30 am to 11.30 pm, Tuesday, 22 June through to Thursday, 24 June 2004. Committee members also formed the Government Owned Corporations Scrutiny Committee, with a public hearing on Friday, 24 June, at which senior representatives at the Power and Water Corporation were questioned.
The committee report, incorporating issues from both the Estimates Committee and the Government Owned Corporations Scrutiny Committee, along with all tabled papers and answers to questions taken on notice throughout the public hearings were tabled in the Assembly during the evening of Friday, 25 June 2004. Debate in this Assembly immediately following was an opportunity for all members to air their opinions on the process, and there is no need to revisit those issues at this time.
The committee is one of the sponsors of the Northern Territory Public Sector Annual Report Awards. An invitation to participate in the adjudication process is always provided to the committee, and the member for Millner stepped up to that role for the latest awards. From the strict view of the Public Accounts Committee, it is pleasing to note that this year, the adjudication panel was of the opinion that the reporting of governance and performance is on the improve.
While I am on my feet, it would be remiss of me if I were not to make special mention of the role the previous Auditor-General, Mr Mike Blake, played in providing briefings to the committee. The committee has been a key player in the interview process for the selection of an Auditor-General, and prior to his untimely resignation on 30 April 2004, members have received invaluable contributions from him by way of written and verbal briefings, even to the extent that when the committee sought a special one-off audit within the Office of Public Employment and the record-keeping processes surrounding the termination of CEOs and executive officer contracts, Mr Blake was able to accommodate the request into his already busy work schedule. His report into this matter permitted the committee to sign off on the very important report it tabled in the Assembly on 26 February 2004. Mr Blake was always prepared to place information before the committee, which he considered could provide members with a lead to areas they could give serious consideration for further investigations.
As Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I take this opportunity to thank Mr Blake for the professionalism with which he approached the working relationship between the Office of the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committee. I also wish him well in his new role as Auditor-General in Tasmania, although with the commotion down there just recently over the resignation of the Governor, I imagine Mr Blake would be wondering if the career move was a wise decision.
As I mentioned briefly before, the Auditor-General has an important role to play in the committee reaching its final conclusions in its report on Termination Payments for Chief Executive Officer and Executive Officer Contracts. This report was of a particularly sensitive nature, and the committee took the decision to look at termination payments during the last 12 months of the previous CLP government as well as the first 12 months of the current Labor government. I will not go into any detail about the finer points of the inquiry because that was covered in depth during debate in this Assembly when the report was tabled on 26 February 2004. Suffice to say, this tabling saw what was the first truly bipartisan report lodged by this committee for quite some time, which is a long way removed from the constant tabling of dissenting reports that have accompanied nearly every committee report in the past.
Those are all the points I have to make in tabling this annual report. I have enjoyed the total bipartisan approach by committee members, and look forward to new challenges in the future. I also place on record the effective administrative support provided by Legislative Assembly staff who work within the Committee Secretariat.
Debate adjourned.
TABLED PAPER
Assessment of Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource and
Management Systems within the DEET Central Australian Office
Assessment of Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource and
Management Systems within the DEET Central Australian Office
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, I rise today to table a report entitled The Assessment of Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource and Management Systems within the DEET Central Australian Office.
MOTION
Note Paper - Assessment of Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource and
Management Systems within the DEET Central Australian Office
Note Paper - Assessment of Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource and
Management Systems within the DEET Central Australian Office
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, this report comes about as a result of representations made to me by individuals in Central Australia regarding matters of concern to them.
I have used the opportunity afforded by the Public Sector Employment and Management Act, section 18(3), to order this report. Under that section of the act, as minister responsible for public employment, I can receive a report into the organisational effectiveness of workplaces. Under section 18(4) of that act, I am required to table the outcomes of these reports for the parliament, and am doing so today within the time frame required.
The report pulls no punches. It gets to the heart of a number of serious concerns raised by individuals in Central Australia and deals with organisational shortfalls in the operations of the Central Australian DEET office and the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment. It does not make pretty reading. However, it does not just dwell on the past; it provides a way forward to better operations.
In December 2003, I asked for a report to be prepared into the DEET Central Australian Office and provided a deadline of March 2004. As people were leaving the Territory on annual Christmas leave, it was felt we needed someone on the ground quickly. Ms Marli Wallace of Bandt, Gatter and Associates was brought in to provide the assessment.
Initial work on the report was completed before the required March 2004 deadline. However, in affording natural justice to all involved, and in the interest of ensuring the report did not provide personal information outside of the necessary public reporting requirements, the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment sent a copy to DEET and sought views and input. As the report also mentioned their office, they, too, provided comment on its findings.
Following input from the agency and bearing in mind privacy and natural justice considerations, the material was re-presented to Ms Wallace for further examination and writing. That was the appropriate thing to do. I am prepared to accept criticism for the length of time the process took before I will compromise natural justice to employees. Since that time, final discussions have been held between OCPE and DEET and the report was presented to me last week.
The report does highlight issues of concern. It is not my intention to enunciate all of these today, as they are laid out in the report for members to read. However, I feel I should comment in a general sense on the outcomes presented. It is clear that the consultants believed that the organisational effectiveness of the Central Australian office of DEET has been compromised. The report refers to themes apparent during the review.
Summarising, these include a lack of leadership in the DEET Office in Central Australia; the lack of a culture of valuing and supporting staff; a lack of focus on service excellence, active communication and fair and consistent dealings; idiosyncratic approaches to policy and procedure as well as inconsistent and untimely human resource management practices; a lack of understanding of human resource management; a lack of consistency within DEET in bringing human resource management polices and procedures up to date with best practice; the lack of a team approach; the need for clarity of role definition and accountabilities across the whole organisation; the drifting of workers compensation and rehabilitation cases; and insufficient resources in the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment devoted to dealing with grievances.
The report details some of the poor outcomes that have occurred as a result of these identified themes. More importantly, it proposes a series of reforms that the author believes need to be undertaken to remedy the issues raised. Action is already under way to address the issues identified in this report. Leadership positions in the Central Australian office have now been clarified; the positions have been spilt and advertised. An ECO3 General Manager position, and an ECO2 General Manager, Schools position are now in place. The roles of each position are quite clear and laid out in the job description. It is expected that the leadership position of the General Manager will make the Central Australian office more focussed as a team and provide it with a greater level of decision-making power.
Reporting arrangements have changed. The General Manager will report directly to the Chief Executive and all positions in Central Australia will report to the General Manager. I am very pleased to say that the extremely efficient and capable Ms Rita Henry has won this position. The Central Australian office has a reconfigured layout and new work groupings.
A back-up position at AO8 level will be relocated to the Alice Springs office for a period of 12 months to assist the new General Manager in making organisational. In addition, a senior human resource position has been allocated to the Central Australian office. This position is one of four relatively new senior HR positions placed across the service as a whole to improve human resource management in DEET. The agency has also introduced across the whole of the system improved case management systems, procedures, practices and protocols.
The Office of the Public Employment Commissioner has also made changes to its operations. Early intervention in grievances and strategies to overcome bullying have become key factors in system-wide changes that should impact favourably on the situation in Central Australia. The Office of the Commissioner of Public Employment is also assisting in building human resource capacity across all agencies. Communications are being improved with information on grievance and appeal processes in particular being strengthened. In a situation peculiar to Central Australia, the Office of the Commissioner of Public Employment has also addressed a potential conflict of interest where an OCPE officer had the job of facilitating grievance cases as well as reviewing events and processes undertaken in those cases. The option of a separate officer undertaking the reviews into personnel cases will now be available at all times.
Madam Speaker, there are other issues to discuss in this report and I will take that opportunity at another time. Today, I wish to table the report for members to examine.
The Chief Executive of DEET is today in Alice Springs discussing the report with staff. The union was briefed yesterday afternoon. I say to the union that I doubt whether there has ever been a more comprehensive report or concerted level of action into a specific office. Unfortunately, we cannot change what has happened in the past, however we can learn from mistakes made and we can move forward to ensure that they do not happen in the future. This report gives us the way forward.
Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the report and I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later time.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): In relation to the motion by the minister to seek leave, Madam Speaker, the minister slipped over to this side of the House just before he spoke, and I misunderstood what he was going to do. I thought he was talking on the PAC report when he was speaking to me so I apologise for any confusion.
Obviously, we will take this report and have a look at it. I agree with the minister seeking leave to continue his remarks at a later date.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, my apologies. I thought the member for Macdonnell clearly understood why I went to see him about the possibility of the shadow being here because it was about DEET, but we understand.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): No sleight or anything, Madam Speaker. I was unaware that this was coming up. I had not received advice of this up until a moment ago. There is no problem with proceeding at a later date.
Leave granted.
MINISTERIAL STATEMENT
Northern Territory Mining Industry – Status Report
Northern Territory Mining Industry – Status Report
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, I rise today to provide the House with an update on the Northern Territory’s mining industry. In this statement, I will look into the status of various mining projects around the Territory by commodity and then I will talk about the exploration scene more generally since exploration licences in the Territory are granted to explore for all minerals, although most companies will, of course, have primary target commodities.
Mining is the most significant industry in the Territory, accounting for 21.9% of GSP in 2003, and averaging 21.3% per annum in the past five years. Although alumina production is classified as manufacturing, it is estimated to account for a further 2% of GSP.
Mining is a highly capital intensive activity with low employment relative to other industry sectors. Nationally, mining accounted for 5.2% of Gross Domestic Product but only 1% of employment in 2002-03. Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 data report resident Territory mining industry employment of 2400 in 2002-03, while the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development estimates employment of 4400; 3300 in mining and 1100 in oil and gas. The variation reflects differing methodologies and classification. For example, the treatment of employees undertaking construction and transport activities, but also suggests that a significant number of workers reside interstate, that is fly-in fly-out.
Let me now turn to mining projects by commodity. First, bauxite and alumina. The Gove Peninsula hosts the world-class Alcan bauxite and alumina mine. In July this year, the Northern Territory government approved Alcan’s Environmental Impact Statement, paving the way for a 90% increase in alumina production. On 9 September, 2004 Alcan Gove Pty Ltd formally announced that it will invest approximately an additional A$2bn to expand its alumina refinery. This expansion will increase the refinery’s alumina production capacity from two million tonnes per annum to 3.8m tonnes by 2007, with the potential for additional capacity in the future through continuous improvement. The expansion will occur within the existing special mining leases for the refinery and the associated bauxite mine. The investment will be in new technology and processing equipment to be installed on-site.
The premise for the expansion is the continued use of fuel oil, with the potential for conversion to natural gas if and when it becomes available. Conversion to gas would contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of alumina by approximately 24%.
Honourable members would be aware of the joint proposal by Alcan and Woodside to take gas from the Blacktip gas field in the Bonaparte Gulf to Gove via the trans-Territory pipeline. This proposal was recently outlined in detail in the House by the Chief Minister so I will not dwell on it again today.
The Territory can expect to benefit from both the construction and operational phases of the Alcan refinery expansion through, among other things: the creation of approximately 1500 to 1700 construction jobs during peak operations; additional gross state product to the Northern Territory economy of $90m per annum; and the potential for Territory businesses to secure significant construction and servicing contracts, with tenders to be awarded on a competitive basis.
The significant environmental benefits of the expansion include: improved resource use, 10% improvement in recovery of alumina from the ore; 25% reduction in residue generated per tonne of alumina produced through improved digestion technology; improved energy efficiency by 4% through additional stationary calciners; and a 25% reduction in caustic consumption and a 75% reduction in soluble caustic waste per tonne of alumina via a new liquor purification initiative.
My Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development is working closely with Alcan to update the company’s Gove Mining Management Plan to take into account the expansion proposals.
Turning to manganese, just as the Territory hosts a world-class bauxite mine, so, too, does it host the world’s largest manganese mine, the GEMCO mine on Groote Eylandt. The mine can produce in excess of 2.5 million tonnes annually, 15% of the world’s requirements, and has shipped over 50 million tonnes since 1966. The mine provides direct employment for 300 people and generates a further 150 Australian jobs. The mine’s yearly contribution to the Territory’s economy is very significant: over $30m in wages and on-costs; $38m in taxes, royalties and charges; $6m in capital improvements; and $30m in contracts.
Last year saw a record high production level at GEMCO of 2.5 million tonnes of manganese following several years of production between 1.4 and 1.9 million tonnes. This rise in production was largely attributed to significant increases in Chinese steel production. This increase is expected to continue in the near term, and will provide an opportunity for companies such as GEMCO to further increase manganese production, and we saw recent announcements regarding GEMCO’s intentions in that regard.
Also on the manganese scene, we see the fledgling, but nonetheless regionally important Bootu Creek manganese project operated by Bootu Creek Resources, a wholly owned subsidiary of OM Holdings Ltd, which is a major world player in the steel industry for which manganese is an essential ingredient. The proposal is to develop an open cut manganese mine approximately 110 km north of Tennant Creek and 10 km east of the Stuart Highway. A mineral lease over the deposit was given occupancy approval on 10 September 2004 following negotiations between Bootu and the Northern Land Council concerning Aboriginal land and native title compensation issues.
Bootu intends to mine the manganese and truck some 400 000 tonnes per annum of crushed manganese ore some 60 km west to the Alice Springs to Darwin railway line, before railing it to the port in Darwin for bulk shipping to export markets. Bootu is the first mining company to seek bulk mining product transport and shipping using the new railway and port infrastructure.
This is leading the development of capacity, which it is hoped will be the forerunner of further similar export proposals. The government is facilitating this project to ensure that the new mine can operate in a safe and environmentally efficient manner and that the infrastructure meets the project requirements.
Gold exploration and mining has been a mainstay for the mining industry in the Territory for many decades. Newmont’s operation in the Tanami region of the Northern Territory employs over 700 workers, 70% of whom live in the Northern Territory. Indigenous employees account for between 12% and 15% of the work force.
For a mine in such a remote area, some of its financials are impressive indeed. As at the end of 2003, $150m has been spent on capital investment, $200m on exploration and $62.8m on royalties. The company has had substantial success in increasing its resource base through an aggressive exploration program and is still spending in the order of $10m a year on exploration.
Honourable members will recall the recent passage of the Tanami Exploration Agreement Ratification Bill during the last sittings of the Assembly that will provide Newmont with a stable, long-term framework in which to conduct its exploration over the next 10 years.
At Tom’s Gully, Renison Consolidated Mines NL is aiming to establish an underground mining operation producing 400 000 ounces of gold per annum, with processing being done at the company’s refurbished Tom’s Gully CIL gold treatment plant. Subject to a final decision to mine and development funding, underground mine development and refurbishment of the CIL gold treatment plant is scheduled to commence in the fourth quarter of this year, with initial gold production expected in the first quarter of 2005. The company announced on 28 September that it had entered into a Heads of Agreement for the provision of underground mining contracting services, which is obviously a significant and welcome step forward for the project.
Northern Gold NL recently announced that the Burnside Joint Venture, 50% Northern Gold and 50% Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd, had acquired the Union Reef Gold Project from AngloGold Ashanti Australia Ltd. Anglo closed the mine last year following the exhaustion of available ore reserves. This $4m acquisition adds substantial value to the joint venture, and makes the Burnside Joint Venture the largest tenement and mining asset holder in the Pine Creek region. The Union Reef Gold Project is located approximately 50 km south of the Burnside Joint Venture’s Brocks Creek and Cosmo Deeps mining areas, and approximately 20 km north of the Burnside Joint Venture’s Pine Creek mining leases.
The Union Reef Gold Project contains a well-maintained 2.8 million tonnes per annum CIL gold plant and all related site infrastructure. They will now form the primary treatment facility for the Burnside Joint Venture’s extensive gold resources. These resources will undoubtedly be increased following the joint venture announcement on 27 September of excellent results from a recent drilling program at Cosmo Deeps, one of the joint venture’s portfolio prospects.
Concurrent with the acquisition, the Burnside Joint Venture has sold its one million tonne per annum Brocks Creek gold plant, on care and maintenance since 2000, to Tanami Gold NL for $850 000. Tanami Gold has itself had recent success in discovering gold at Coyote and Larranganni in the Tanami region.
Arafura Resources NL welcomed the announcement by the Burnside Joint Venture regarding its purchase of the Union Reef plant. The plant is located within easy trucking distance from Arafura’s planned gold mining operation at Mt Porter, and the nearby highly promising Frances Creek high grade gold vein system. Arafura believes, and I certainly endorse the view, that it is excellent news that the Union Reef Mill will stay in place, and that the project has been purchased by a dedicated gold mining group with long term plans for the Pine Creek gold field.
Burnside is aware of Arafura’s activities in the region, and I understand there have been preliminary discussions about toll treatment opportunities. Arafura has lodged a Notice of Intent to commence mining at the Mt Porter ore body, and is awaiting the necessary approvals.
Drilling has also commenced at the Golden Honcho section of Arafura’s Frances Creek gold project, where the company has recently announced an encouraging result.
At Mt Todd, Pegasus Gold Australia Pty Ltd, as mortgagor, entered into possession of the mine and sought to sell the mine as a going concern to recoup unpaid monies. When this attempted sale was unsuccessful, Pegasus sold the assets piecemeal by auction in 2001. The government is managing the environmental situation on-site by accessing the remaining security bond funds and utilising equipment on-site that was purchased during the sale of assets by Pegasus.
DBIRD is currently in year three of a five year water management program on-site, and has successfully limited discharge from the mine site to periods of high water flow in local creeks and rivers, and has successfully reduced the current standing water in all ponds to safe levels. Pegasus, in attempting to sell the remaining Mt Todd assets, is negotiating an agreement for the sale of the mineral leases and some nearby exploration licences. The government will seek detailed plans for future management of the Mt Todd mine site before agreeing to the transfer of the leases to any future owner.
The resurgence of mining at Tennant Creek, largely at the hands of Giants Reef Mining Ltd, has provided a significant boost not only to the town’s economy, but its overall wellbeing. Giants Reef has a long-standing commitment to the town of Tennant Creek. The company’s operations are benefiting the town in many ways, including employing local residents with suitable skills, utilising the service of local businesses with suitable capabilities, and assisting organisations and businesses to build capacity in the region
In addition, Giants Reef regularly sponsors various community organisations around Tennant Creek. The company’s future planning involves the support of a regular passenger transport air service to Tennant Creek, rather than exclusive charter for Giants Reef personnel. Giants Reef is also actively engaging indigenous contractors to undertake future planned works within the organisation.
Also in Tennant Creek, we have the Peko Rehabilitation Project, which is essentially a tailings re-treatment project, whose target commodities are gold, copper, cobalt and magnetite. This project was recently given approval to move from being a pilot project into full-scale operation. The magnetite plant is due for commissioning about now, with additional plants for the extraction of the gold, copper and cobalt due to be installed during 2005. Employment during full production will be around 30 jobs.
Giants Reef and the Peko Rehabilitation Project have been, as I said, a much needed and significant shot in the arm for the Tennant Creek community. It would be remiss of me if I did not, at this point, acknowledge the supporting efforts of the member for Barkly in getting those projects off the ground. In the case of Giants Reef, where the government provided a development assistance grant, the member for Barkly has worked tirelessly in support of the project, and I congratulate him.
I turn now to base metals. Since its development in 1993, the McArthur River Mine has progressively introduced numerous improvements that have resulted in cost savings, increased production and improved zinc recovery. Since commencement of concentrate production in May 1995, McArthur River Mine has produced 2 618 574 tonnes of concentrate for export to the end of December 2003. For the financial year 2002-03, the value of the concentrate was around $A150m. Over the past year, world demand for zinc has increased, zinc commodity prices have increased, and world stockpiles have decreased. For many zinc producers, this is good news. However, due to the particular composition of its concentrate, McArthur River is having difficulty selling all its product. There are now only seven smelters remaining in the world that are able to process its concentrate.
Mine owner, Xstrata, proposes a change from underground mining to an open cut operation. Under the proposal, an almost threefold increase in the production rate will reduce unit operating costs, and provide access to a much larger resource which would increase the likely mine life. Xstrata is currently undertaking an internal review of a number of aspects of the expansion proposal, after which time, probably by the end of this year, the draft EIS is expected to be submitted to government.
At Ranger uranium mine, total sales to date have exceeded A$4bn. Ranger supplies around 8% of the western world’s uranium demand. Ranger’s product is sent to countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, all of which have bilateral safeguard agreements with Australia. All uranium oxide from Ranger is used to fuel nuclear power plants for generating electricity.
Energy Resources Australia employs around 200 permanent employees, with approximately 20% of the Ranger work force represented by Aboriginal people, of whom 44% are from the local region. Mining is the single largest employer in the area, accounting for 37% of the employed labour force. To the end of December 2002, ERA paid a total of A$189.2m in royalties. Total capital cost of construction of the mine amounted to approximately $388m, including the expenditure on the town of Jabiru.
Honourable members would be aware of recent water management problems at the Ranger mine. On 30 August 2004, the federal Resources Minister, Ian Macfarlane, outlined a process of auditing ERA’s compliance with the recommendation of two reports by the Commonwealth Supervising Scientist relating to the Ranger mine and processing plant. The auditing process requires ERA to meet certain conditions by 10 September, 31 October and 31 December 2004.
The first audit was conducted on 13 September, and the auditor subsequently advised ERA and the federal minister that they were satisfied that the conditions required by the Commonwealth to be met by 10 September had been fulfilled.
Honourable members would also be aware that complaints had been lodged by the Territory for breaches of Northern Territory legislation. However, since those matters are before the court, I do not propose to go into any details here today.
An exciting new and regionally significant venture in the Northern Territory is Olympia Resources’ Harts Range Garnet Sand Project. This project is, to me, made more exciting by the fact that it involves the production of a new commodity in the Territory, garnet sand and a garnet hornblende product which has excellent qualities for abrasive blasting.
This Central Australian deposit is one of the world’s largest known and highest quality deposits of this material. Olympia has been provided with the guidelines for a Public Environmental Report, which is expected to be lodged before the end of the year. The company is proposing to commence production during the second quarter of 2005.
Initially, the project will involve the production of 200 000 tonnes of garnet or garnet blend for export to Singapore with other regional markets likely to follow. The company is in discussions regarding the use of rail transport to Darwin to allow shipping from the East Arm Port. The project is anticipated to involve about 30 mining, processing and transportation jobs and Olympia has shown a strong commitment to indigenous employment, sourcing workers from local communities.
Beyond the glitter of gold, the dazzle of diamonds and, dare I say it, the allure of alumina, there are the ‘essential extractives’, the very building blocks of our society. Whilst time prevents a detailed look into the extractive industry here today, I acknowledge the industry’s important contribution to the community.
By necessity, this industry must source its material in close proximity to its markets, which often brings it into conflict with urban sprawl. This government has endorsed the Territory Extractive Industry Policy, which provides the framework in which the industry operates and will work with the industry to ensure its sustainability into the future.
Neither does time permit my detailing the current status of other potential projects and proposals such as Brown’s Polymetallic, Batchelor magnesite, Merlin diamonds or Nolan’s Bore rare earth.
I do, however, Madam Speaker, want to take a few minutes to talk about exploration. Exploration is the foundation for future mining activity, and is essential if the industry is to continue to develop and generate employment and revenue opportunities. Globally, there is intense competition to attract exploration expenditure. Exploration is an essential early phase in the economic development of mineral and petroleum resources for the benefit of Territorians. Private businesses and governments undertake complementary exploration roles.
The Northern Territory’s share of Australian mineral exploration expenditure has varied over the years between 6.1% and 10.1%. The level of overall mineral exploration in the Northern Territory follows a similar pattern to the rest of Australia. Exploration activity increased rapidly for gold in 1987-88, base metals in 1989-90 and diamonds in 1996-97. Exploration declined steadily after 1995-96 before stabilising after 1999-2000.
The Northern Territory has large prospective and explorable areas distributed across eight mineral provinces collectively covering about half of the Territory. The remaining half has various potential for petroleum and non-metallic mineral commodities such as diamonds.
Improving the Northern Territory’s competitiveness for mineral exploration and processing requires a combination of responses to exploration supply and demand challenges. Measures by the government sector to improve exploration competitiveness relate to knowledge of mineral prospectivity, land access and property rights in the Northern Territory, and corporate efforts nationally on key exploration inputs such as training, research, technology, data, taxation and legislation.
Through the Ministerial Council on Mineral and Petroleum Resources, the Northern Territory is contributing to the National Mineral Exploration Action Agenda. Through this government’s Building the Territory’s Resource Base package, we are providing industry with pre-competitive geoscientific data on which to base investment decisions and working at improving access to land.
These measures are necessary but, by themselves, not sufficient to ensure the expansion of exploration activity in the Northern Territory. A clear demonstration of that fact can be found in the latest ABS report on Mineral and Petroleum Exploration Expenditure. The report shows that despite the increased number of granted exploration licences in the Northern Territory and the excellent work being done under Building the Territory’s Resource Base, the Territory sustained a 13% fall in the level of 2003-04 exploration expenditure over the previous year’s figure.
Madam Speaker, NT exploration expenditure suffered a consistent and steady decline from $93.8m in 1995-96 to $47.6m in 2000-01. We then saw an arrest to this decline and a slight upturn over the next two years, with expenditure at $48.5m and $49.0m for 2001-02 and 2002-03 respectively.
These latest figures obviously represent a setback, which we will examine closely in partnership with the industry through our regular joint meetings with the Minerals Council Executive. However, the commercial commitment by private explorers is and will remain largely driven by company financial decision-making processes as well as global economic conditions and the associated demand for minerals.
These dynamics are beyond the influence of the Northern Territory government. However, the Northern Territory can constructively inform itself of relevant economic and mineral outlooks so that government and industry can jointly position themselves to exploit evolving opportunities.
In the same way, we need to keep our legislation under review to ensure that it remains contemporary and appropriate. In that regard, a formal review of the Mining Act has commenced and a comprehensive discussion paper will shortly be released to guide wide-ranging stakeholder consultations. The review will look at the types of titles issued, recent land tenure developments, and the interaction of the act with other Territory legislation. As I said, the discussion paper will be released shortly and I encourage all interested parties to contribute to the review.
I want to make it abundantly clear to honourable members that our efforts to provide a competitive environment for the exploration and mining industries in the Northern Territory will not be at the expense of our regulatory responsibilities as is evidenced by the action I referred to earlier against the operators of the Ranger mine.
The outlook for mineral exploration is cautiously positive. The global economy and mineral commodity demand are strengthening. Title applications are flowing through the native title processes. Title holders are reporting increased expenditure on Aboriginal freehold land. Pre-competitive geoscience data is flowing through to explorers and progress continues in the improvement of community relationships and titles administration processes. However, clearly, considerable potential for exploration expansion remains.
As I said earlier, time constraints prevent me from including in this statement every single development currently taking place in the exploration and mining industries. Rather, I have sought to provide members with a general overview and update on our most important industry, an industry that continues to underpin the government’s priorities of regional development and jobs growth.
Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the statement.
Mrs MILLER (Katherine): Madam Speaker, this is my first day as shadow Minister for Mines and Energy and, whilst I have not had the opportunity to obtain a briefing, I am very happy to be able to respond to the statement.
Mining is, without a doubt, a most significant industry to the Territory and has contributed to the development and sustainability of rural towns such as Tennant Creek, Jabiru, the McArthur River region and, until approximately six years ago, Katherine with Mt Todd. Mining has had a large financial impact on all of these regions.
The economic contribution to the Northern Territory has been from two areas: minerals or hard rock mining; and oil and gas exploration. Mines in the Northern Territory that have major mine status are GEMCO, Alcan Gove, Ranger, McArthur River, Groote Eylandt, and the Granites in the Tanami. In addition, we have one mine of smaller status: Giants Reef near Tennant Creek, which employs approximately 80 people. The size of the major mines, their scope of work and size of their work forces are such that three of these mines substantially contributed to our economy.
The smaller projects are important, too, such as Tennant Creek with the mining of gold and copper. The potential for the future is recognised with signed agreements with the Central Land Council for further exploration work.
A concern for the future is that in 10 years time, the Territory could be down three major products in GEMCO, Alcan and The Granites. It is on public record that Ranger’s ore body will be depleted around 2009. It is a complicated project to get up, but assuming that Ranger Jabiluka does not go underground, that mine may well come to an end.
The Greens candidate, Ilana Eldridge, who stood in last weekend’s federal election, wanted Ranger to close after the election if she had any say. Thank goodness she does not. I wonder how the 340 workers at Ranger would have felt about being put on the dole.
McArthur River Mine presently has big expansion plans, and they employ 350 people who live exclusively in the Northern Territory. McArthur could be another mine closed in 10 years, but I hope not.
Where will the industry be in 10 years time? From the time that the exploration licence is given until the decision is made to mine, there is an eight to 15 year time frame. Explorer’s licences are issued for six years, with two by two year extensions.
At present, there are four exciting projects on the go: Bootu Creek north of Tennant Creek, which mines manganese; Garnet Sands project at Harts Range, producing garnet sand and garnet hornblende; Frances Creek near Pine Creek, producing gold; and Territory Iron Project, also near Pine Creek. If all of these projects get up, it will be great. Two of these products are industrial minerals, the Bootu manganese and Garnet Sands projects, which means that these minerals do not command the higher prices, but that, nevertheless, does not diminish their importance to the Northern Territory.
We in the CLP recognise that there are issues that need to be addressed in the mining industry in the near future. Export levels have dropped off 39% in the last five years as we only have five major mines. Money being spent on the ground is diminished, and there are land issues to do with Aboriginal land rights that are impeding future exploration and mining. Rio Tinto has either farmed out tenements or ceased exploration. De Beers have all but left the Northern Territory, AngloGold have ceased exploration and production has finished, and BHP is doing but a smidgin of exploration.
It is not only the senior explorers who are having success in geological finds. Yes, there are junior explorers in the Northern Territory who often have the most exciting and interesting finds. I will use the example of someone who those in this House would know, and that is Mark Creasey. Mark’s work is testament to the substantial fortune to the mining industry, and he is well known for his geological finds and for his humbleness.
In the area of environmental polices, I know that the mining industry does not support an EPA. The industry has submissions before the committee at present. The Coastal Marine Strategy has come to a standstill since November last year when there was a change of Labor ministry positions. This is bogging down industry and needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. I am advised that the industry would welcome being engaged and involved in discussions to further the Coastal Marine Strategy to its conclusion and its implementation.
I am also aware that the industry is concerned, but quite positive, about an Integrated Natural Resource Management Plan, but this is, again, another issue with which the Northern Territory government needs to deal.
Additional challenges that the mining industry face include a shortage of mining engineers. There are not many people coming into mining engineering these days, and that presents a challenge to mining in the future. It is also difficult to recruit and retain workers to remote locations in the Northern Territory, and we need mining engineers, tradespeople and human resource personnel, among others, to work in these locations to ensure their success.
I understand from industry that there is currently a review of the Mines Division’s Minerals and Energy Group. My understanding is that the consultancy engaged did not go through the tender process, which seems to be a regular practice by this government. I believe that this consultancy is between $50 000 and $80 000. I am at a loss to understand why the minister has sanctioned this consultancy when the whole process was previously carried out by respected consulting engineer, David Lee. This current review is destabilising to the department and makes it difficult for the bureaucrats who are doing a great job.
On a positive note, I compliment the government on the continuation of the geoscience program. The government has a role and responsibility in collecting geoscientific data, for example mapping and aerial surveys to determine where mineral deposits are. The Northern Territory Geological Survey Division has an excellent record. The first round of funding for five years of $16m was under the previous CLP government. We saw the benefits of geoscientific data to encourage competitive exploration. This current round of funding only came about after extensive lobbying.
Executives of a mining company personally spoke to the Chief Minister and the previous Minister for Mines and Energy to express their support for the continuation of funding. I also understand that the government role in providing geoscientific data is pivotal to enticing major mining companies to the Northern Territory for exploration. Another positive outcome for mining is the potential to use the railway to transport freight from their site to Darwin for export, which enhances the viability of the rail.
Now to an area that is close to my electorate: Mt Todd. Mt Todd has had an interesting life, to say the least. It is always difficult for governments to give the go ahead for mining production, and decisions need to be made that will benefit the community. I acknowledge that industry and government have to work together to achieve the best outcomes for the majority. Mt Todd, through partnership with the traditional owners, the Jawoyn, and local industries, did wonders for the economy in Katherine. Employment for locals, including training for unskilled workers, created a buoyancy in Katherine throughout the life of the mine.
I can assure you that there were no happy faces when it closed. The demise of Mt Todd came about because of a drop in gold price. The yield was less than one gram per tonne, and the rock was exceptionally hard, which was extremely tough and unkind on equipment and led to high overheads.
Mt Todd No 2 had its downfalls through corporate manoeuvring. We all hope we have learnt a lot through environmental protection and management. Mt Todd is still a known resource, and we know that there is gold there. We have to find a way through sound environmental practice to, maybe one day, have Mt Todd No 3 and have Katherine humming again with benefits flowing from mining activity.
In conclusion, I acknowledge the flow-on benefits of the mining industry in the Northern Territory. While employment is low in relation to other industries, infrastructure and capital investment is enormous. The flow-on effect in taxes, rents and royalties cannot be underestimated.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I look forward to briefings with the minister’s department during the next few weeks, and expanding my knowledge in my new shadow ministry of Mines and Energy further.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of my colleague’s statement on the mining industry in the Territory, because he is a tremendously enthusiastic supporter of mines and the mining industry in general, and it certainly shows in everything he says and does.
I welcome the comments, in a positive light, by the new shadow spokesperson for mining, the member for Katherine. I wish her well in her new responsibilities because it is an important industry to us all.
We all agree that the outlook for mineral exploration is cautiously positive, with global economy and mineral commodity demand strengthening. That is good news for us all. However, critical to developing these opportunities is the need for a ready and skilled work force, and industry and business ready to provide services and goods for large projects across the Territory.
Under the Jobs Plan, this government has in place a sound strategic framework for employment and training, training initiatives for skills development for workers, and employer incentives to assist companies to build on their work force. We are working with industry and with business to skill our young people and to upskill our work force in areas that support the mining industry in the traditional trades and the support industries of hospitality, administration and business.
Much of this planning is strategic, but much of the work is also operational. The Employment and Training Division of DEET is working across a wide spectrum of projects to ensure the maximum number of Territorians will benefit from both the construction and operational phase of projects such as the Alcan refinery expansion. I am pleased to bring the House up to date with a few examples of the activities that we are undertaking to support employment in the mining industry.
In relation to Alcan, DEET has developed a labour market supply and demand analysis for construction of the Alcan refinery camp expansion and day-to-day operation of the construction camp in Nhulunbuy. This analysis indicates 380 jobs able to be filled by local Territory labour, 490 jobs could be filled by Territorians with some upskilling and short-course training, and 110 jobs are considered to be in deficit that could not be trained for in time and will require skilled migration into the Territory. They are not bad numbers, Madam Speaker: 380 up-front; 490 with short course training; and just 110 in deficit. For a project of that magnitude, they are terrific figures. That sort of planning for jobs for major projects has never been done before in the Northern Territory to that level of detail.
The GEMCO mine on Groote Eylandt provides direct employment for 300 people. I am pleased to advise that Employment and Training is to conduct a Futures Expo on Groote Eylandt, the first ever expo for Groote. It will provide the three communities with an insight into what jobs are available and what training opportunities exist to win those jobs. The initiative is strongly supported by GEMCO, which is an active participant in the expo.
The regionally important Bootu Creek Manganese Project operated by Bootu Creek Resources will develop an open cut manganese mine approximately 110 km north of Tennant Creek. A Darwin-based consultant has been engaged to facilitate their employment needs. DEET has offered to assist with identification of opportunities for traineeships and appropriate training programs, including prevocational courses and with funding for training as and when required.
Newmont’s operation in the Tanami region of the Northern Territory employs over 700 workers, 70% of whom live in the Northern Territory. Indigenous employees account for between 12% and 15% of the work force. Newmont is currently running a pre-employment program for local indigenous people. DEET has had several meetings with Lester Davis, the Manager of Learning and Development, and Victor Rigney, Indigenous Employment Advisor from Newmont Australia to identify appropriate training programs. DEET is currently working with Newmont to register their program on the National Training Register. Newmont is funding the initial program, with DEET offering financial support should there be a transition to traineeships and apprenticeships.
Giants Reef has a long standing commitment to the town of Tennant Creek, employing local skilled residents, utilising the services of local businesses, and assisting organisations and businesses to build capacity in the region. Officers from the Employment and Training Division of DEET have met with representatives from Giants Reef to discuss training and employment opportunities for local Territorians. Giants Reef Mining Ltd is funding the training at this time, but if further funding is required, it is available from DEET for apprenticeships and traineeships to enhance the capacity of local people to take up those jobs.
The Peko Rehabilitation Project in Tennant Creek is a project recently given approval to move from being a pilot project to full scale operation. Employment during full production will be around 30 jobs. DEET has had several meetings with Chris Savage and Howard Blizzard from the Peko Rehab Project. They have been provided with information on funding and training programs that they can access as the project moves into operation.
The Olympia Resources Harts Range Garnet Sand project has been provided with the guidelines for its public environment report which is expected to be lodged before the end of the year. The company is proposing to commence production during the second quarter of 2005. The project is anticipated to involve about 30 mining, processing and transportation jobs. Olympia has shown a strong commitment to indigenous employment, sourcing workers from local communities. I also advise that Olympia is negotiating with the Central Land Council and the local community in regard to employment needs. DEET field staff are in contact with the community and the Central Land Council and will assist with funding for training as the needs are identified.
At a recent mining meeting that included representatives from Giants Reef, Peko Rehabilitation Project, Central Desert Enterprises, ExacMin, the Central Land Council and the Northern Land Council, Territory Construction Association and the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development, DEET advised of funding available and training packages that may be most suitable to develop training programs tailored to meet the needs of the individual organisation.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, we are having success in building our work force in the mining industry. We will continue to work with industry and business to see where we need to build and what we need to do to train for skills for the future to make sure this most strategic industry for the Northern Territory has a continuing supply of skilled employees.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to address one facet of the minister’s statement, and that is the extractive industry because it is predominant in my part of the world. It is one area that does not receive enough attention.
There is another industry in conjunction with the extractive industry, and that is quarrying. It was not mentioned in the statement. It is one very important facet of mining that needs to be looked at. If you are looking for an example, you just have to look at the triple road trains that are coming from Mt Bundy every day to the wharf. They are bringing granite boulders from Mt Bundy to the wharf to cover the pipeline. That is mining; it is quarrying and it is an important part of our industry. I am not sure that the minister mentioned it, but it is a fact of life that we are increasing that type of activity in the rural area of Darwin. It is a major part of development for the Territory.
In fact, I went to a Palmerston Regional Business Association meeting where there was some discussion on the gas field at Sunrise. When I asked ConocoPhillips if the existing pipeline would be sufficient to take gas into Darwin, Blair Murphy, the manager, said: ‘No, there would have to be another pipeline’. If there is going to be another pipeline, a lot of rocks will have to be dug out of Mt Bundy. It is a big industry, all right, and it is worth a lot of money to the Territory.
Mr Vatskalis: Yes, and jobs.
Mr WOOD: Yes, jobs. I am not in any way denigrating that fact, minister. I wondered whether it is something that slipped passed the people who put this statement together and I thought I would mention it.
The extractive industry goes hand-in-hand with quarrying. I should also mention that quarrying is a very important industry from the perspective of the road building sector. Sealed roads rely on good surfaces and much of the rock for roads is crushed in areas around Robertson Barracks. I think Pioneer still has a crushing plant there, although maybe the minister could update us on the lifespan of that quarry considering that the Army is going to use it as a training area. I know they have a lease over some of the area. I would be interested to know from the minister how long rock can be extracted and crushed in that area. I hope they can continue to operate from there for a long time because the more we have to travel away from the main centres to mine materials, the more costly it is to deliver them.
In relation to extractive industries, that is gravel and sand, I have said before in this House that they are an extremely important part of the development of the Northern Territory. No road or house in Darwin or Palmerston could be built without them. It has been said before that 32 tonnes of sand are needed to build an average-sized house in Darwin. That is a lot of sand. With the growth of houses in Palmerston, you can see that there is a large industry to supply the building industry of the Territory.
The process for developing our extractive mineral areas should be far more open. I realise that there are advertisements in the paper, but with the ongoing development of subdivisions, both urban and rural, and the effect of extractive industries in those areas, the process of how future extractive areas will affect the environment, road infrastructure and where people live requires examination. It is high time that the future growth of this industry is opened up to more public scrutiny.
I know the minister mentioned the Territory extractive industry policy, but I have not seen the policy and I imagine it is for the industry. It is time that we had an overall look at what effect the extractive industry has on the Darwin rural area because it is from there that most of this material comes. You have heard before that I am not particularly rapt in the concept of scraping the guts out of Darwin Harbour to supply gravel for various projects around Darwin. I believe there is plenty of other land on which that could have occurred. Be that as it may, it has occurred.
That raises the issue of rehabilitation. Whether it is in the centre of the harbour or in the rural area per se, we have a history of poor rehabilitation of many extractive mining sites. I wonder whether it is also time to discuss whether there should be some small royalty paid for every cubic metre of gravel or sand that is extracted. After all, most miners do not pay a large amount of money for their lease. Of course, they have to pay a large amount of money for a truck, and they have to pay fuel and wages, but if the material that they gain has no value to it, is that a realistic approach to the development of an industry that does leave us with various issues like rehabilitation and repairs and maintenances on road infrastructure? Should we really be looking at putting a value on the gravel and sand that is removed from these areas?
You certainly would not want a charge that would mean that there would be a high cost increase in the price of housing, but then if we are not charging for that material, are we basically having an artificial price on housing and other infrastructure? I believe we need to look at some way of repairing some of the land that has been damaged in the past, where very little control was placed on what happened after the miner left. I believe that some sort of charge would be well worth putting in a trust account and spending it money on rehabilitation.
The other issue in relation to rehabilitation is whether we can use the land for other purposes. Much of the sand that is extracted in the rural area of Darwin is usually in wet areas, and I see no reason why those wet areas could not be developed into lagoons. Some of them are done by accident, but there should be a lot more thought go into whether we could, instead of having a patch of sand being developed here and a patch of sand mined here and a patch of sand mined there, whether the whole area should be mined and then basically re-shaped into a wetland. I know some of the sand mines that were developed years ago have done exactly that, where paperbarks have come in and taken over, where some of the trees were left so that there was a seed base. There are opportunities for that to occur.
In the case of gravel, which usually leaves a fairly barren piece of land after it has been scraped, even though there have been many attempts to try and rehabilitate gravel scrapes, and usually what you get is grass rather than trees, whether some of that land would be better cleared and used for fruit trees like mangoes. I know there are lots of mangoes around at the moment, and perhaps we should not be increasing the oversupply of them, but we know mangoes will just about grow on any soil surface. Perhaps there is an opportunity for land that has been scraped, instead of being left there in a basically unproductive state to be used for things like mangoes. Perhaps the land could be sold at a reasonable price to encourage people to use land that would otherwise be of very little value.
I thought I would say a few things on the extractive industry. I know you have two paragraphs on it. It would be interesting to see the value of extractive mining in the Northern Territory. I do not think I have ever seen any figures in relation to that, yet is such an important part of our development. It would be useful to see what it is worth.
On to other issues, I noticed there is going to be some work at looking at hot rocks in the Northern Territory. You sent me a letter recently saying that the government is going to look at whether we have suitable granite in the Territory where there may be the possibility of looking at geothermal technology. I have mentioned this a number of times before, and if people have ever been looking at this issue, they might know that in Innamincka, a company called Geodynamics, which is a private company, with some help from the Commonwealth, is drilling holes down three or four kilometres into hot rocks in the Innamincka area. They have successfully now drilled two very deep bores and it is hoped that they will be able to do a trial run on seeing whether they will be able to produce steam or heat which will drive electric turbines.
The last thing, minister, which is an aside, is that you spoke about manganese from the Bootu mine coming to Darwin on the rail. I am interested to know what environmental precautions will be taken when the manganese reaches the port. I gather the manganese is going to be dumped some kilometres back from the port proper. It is a very dusty material. Will there be any environmental controls over loading and unloading of that material so it does not have a detrimental effect on the surrounding environment or, on a very windy day, it does not drift further than that towards the city of Darwin? That is one of the issues with manganese: there can be environmental issues when it is in a fairly dusty and dry state. I thought I would raise that issue, minister, and see if you have any comment.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, we all know that the mining industry is an extremely important industry for the Northern Territory. We know that there have been some new mines opened in Tennant Creek, and now Bootu north of Tennant Creek, which is great. Mining, as long as it is done environmentally sensitively, will continue to be a major earner for the Northern Territory. Hopefully, it will also help employment, especially for Aboriginal communities, if it is done properly. I know the minister will say that a record number of exploration licences have been issued in the last few years. What we need to see now is whether those exploration licences are going to turn into mines. That is the key to whether we have turned the mining industry around.
Mr HENDERSON (Business and Industry): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I, too, commend my colleague on his statement this evening.
I am passionate about the mining industry in the Northern Territory, and was very proud to be mining minister early on in this term of government. It is an industry in which I have worked. As a fitter by trade, I worked for 10 months in my early 20s at EZ Mines at Rosebery in Tasmania. When I came to the Territory in 1982 or 1983, I spent some months working at the then Nabalco plant at Gove.
Having worked in the industry and had an opportunity to be minister for the industry, I am passionate about it. We are heading for exciting times in the Northern Territory. Global growth in demand, particularly out of China where there is insatiable demand for resources, is certainly going to create opportunities in the Northern Territory. At the end of the day, it is the markets and the value of those resources in the marketplace that will ultimately drive investment. We can see, through the grant of the 700-odd exploration licences in the Northern Territory, that investment is slowly starting to return.
On the back of the demand growth out of China, and a fairly strong global economy, we can see major projects in the Northern Territory. We have had the Alcan announcement of the massive expansion in Gove a few weeks ago. GEMCO on Groote Eylandt has increased output significantly, predominantly as demand grows out of China. In respect of McArthur River Mine’s new owners, Xstrata, we are waiting on a decision to be made there, but, again, given prices and demand out of China, one would have to be hopeful. There is huge investment elsewhere in the resources sector with the Darwin LNG plant under construction. There will, hopefully, be a decision on Sunrise at the end of the year which will see further huge investment in the Northern Territory, down to the smaller projects such as Giants Reef, Bootu Creek, Olympia Resources and a number of others.
I am pretty excited about the future of the mining industry in the Northern Territory. As a government, we will continue to work with the Territory and, very importantly, Aboriginal people who have title to 50% of the land so that we can be an attractive place for investment. Ultimately, those exploration licences will deliver mines if there are resources to be found. However, that is no guarantee in this industry.
The industry employs some 3500 people directly in the Northern Territory, and operational expenditure in the Territory totals over $400m annually. Our service and supply sector stands ready to meet the challenges ahead in support of exploration activities and mining developments throughout the Northern Territory.
Many opportunities, as I said, are emerging for Territory business to participate in the major mining developments that are occurring throughout the Territory. We have, as a government, a range of measures including the use of industry participation plans and support for the Northern Territory Industry Capability Network in seeking to access those opportunities and foster growth, capacity and capability of Territory business that support both exploration and mining development.
My colleague talked about the importance of exploration. We know that the sort of lead times we are looking to between getting on the ground in the first phase of exploration, hopefully discovering a deposit and then investment and lead time to development and operation of a mine of any substantial nature is up to 10 years, so it is important that people get out on the ground today.
One of the highlights of this term of government is the grant of over 700 exploration licences because without those people on the ground exploring, we are not going to have mines in the future. It is important to develop partnerships with government, industry and the owners of the land. Through those partnerships will come trust and, hopefully, through trust will be working arrangements, working agreements and confidence to invest.
One thing that is guaranteed to be a detriment to investment in the Northern Territory is a climate of distrust and antagonism towards traditional people and their title over land. Nothing is more certain to get lawyers involved and to lock people out of land than to have that 50% of the land and the people who own that land not trusting of process or industry in respect of rights to explore and discover resources and deposits that will be developed to the benefit of everyone in the Northern Territory, and certainly for the companies and their shareholders.
A couple of years ago I was talking to the new Australian CEO of Newmont, one of the biggest operators in the Northern Territory. He spoke at length about the company philosophy, for which he is responsible, of embracing people’s rights - not only indigenous rights, but the rights of communities around any proposed mines, the conservation values, and that as an industry, the industry needed a community licence to operate and to expand. Unless people’s rights were at the heart of any corporate entity, then their future investment and return on investment and growth and earnings for their shareholders was at risk. It was great to talk to the CEO. I cannot think of his name this evening, but to have that philosophy at the corporate heart bodes well for that company and for the Northern Territory.
Exploration’s value to the economy in the Northern Territory is approximately $50m annually and slowly rising after a decline over the last few years. Much of this expenditure occurs in the regional centres of Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, and the service and supply industries are developed in those areas. Examples of companies directly benefiting from the support required by field exploration teams undertaking seismic studies, drilling or bulk sampling include BHP Billiton-backed Mithril Resources Limited, which is exploring for nickel in the Barrow Creek area; Merlin, Towana and Elkedra, exploring for diamonds; and Tanami Gold’s exploration program including Coyote and Kookaburra deposits in the Tanami desert - Tanami holds exploration permits totalling approximately 72 000 km2, making them the biggest permit holders in the Northern Territory. All of those companies out there are exploring; they are all spending money in our local economies and regional centres.
Another great forum every year to bring service and supply industry together with the mining industry is in Alice Springs with the annual Mining and Petroleum Supply Seminar. This seminar, which was recently held in Alice Springs, showcased the strength of the Alice Springs and Tennant Creek mining region. Presentations were made by existing operating mines and new developments, including Tanami Gold, Giants Reef, Newmont, Mithral Resources, Arafura Resources, Olympia Resources, along with the following supply companies: FreightLink, IM Training, G&S Transport, and DBIRD’s Indigenous Business and Industry Services unit.
Over 80 people attended the seminar and the feedback from attendees indicated that the standard of presentations and information they contained was well received. Overall, it is a fantastic event that is becoming a fixture on the annual calendar of events in Alice Springs. That is really where government can add considerable value; by bringing the exploration and mining companies together with potential service and supply companies and provide a forum for people to talk about their needs and capabilities. Partnerships will ultimately develop, and that is what has happened in Alice Springs.
Newmont’s Tanami operations produced 629 000 ounces of gold in 2003-04 and currently produces 430 000 ounces of gold annually. As the Territory’s biggest gold producer, it contributes significantly to the Territory’s economy. Newmont spends over $145m annually in the Territory from its Tanami operational budget. Importantly, $100m of this is spent in the Alice Springs supply and service sector. That is of huge importance to the Alice Springs economy.
Work over a number of years by my Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development, the mining sector and the local people in Alice Springs has resulted in that figure being minimal supply out of Alice Springs to over $100m. Just two years ago, the figure was $80m, so there has been a further $20m per annum is spent in Alice Springs over the last couple of years.
Alice Springs has established itself as the hub for Newmont’s Tanami operations. The balance of the Northern Territory spend, about $45m, is spent in the Darwin region. Seventy per cent of Newmont’s 700 employees involved in Tanami operations reside in the Territory, about half living in Darwin and half in Alice Springs. I would like to give Newmont a big rap; they are a great corporate entity in the Northern Territory with a real commitment to the community in which they operate. That investment and commitment to the Territory is paying dividends to the company, which is doing a fantastic job.
Moving from one end of the gold mining sector to the other, Giants Reef is another outstanding company. My colleague spoke about our government’s support for Giants Reef and getting them up and running in Tennant Creek. They are one for the battlers; a small mining group that has low recovery costs and strong local participation. About 50 employees are based in Tennant Creek. That is 70% of total employment at the mine.
Being a small company, local supply and service support is important and this means that Giants Reef spends almost $1m in Tennant Creek, $1.4m in Alice Springs and over $2m in Darwin. Again, this is a big boost to Tennant Creek and its economy. I was pleased to officially open the Giants Reef Mine last year. I, too, pay tribute to my colleague, the member for Barkly, who has been a huge supporter of the mining industry in his electorate. He is absolutely passionate not only about Giants Reef, but Bootu Creek, the Peko Rehabilitation Project and other exploration activities in the electorate. With a local member like my colleague backing the mining industry in the Barkly region, they can only forge further ahead.
Again, it is great to see that Giants Reef is the only listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange with its corporate head office in Tennant Creek. That is not only a wonderful thing, but a great Trivial Pursuit question.
The Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development’s Indigenous Business and Industry Services Unit has had a major impact on the level of indigenous employment in the mining industry. Since 1997, it has aided in the growth of indigenous participation from 3% to a level of around 15% to 20% indigenous employment in the Northern Territory’s mines. We still have a way to go, but that figure is very encouraging.
An undervalued benefit of local indigenous employment is that it can reduce the dependence on fly-in-fly-out operations and reduce staff turnover and, obviously, costs to companies. An example is ERA, which until recently had a 40% turnover, which has been improved with greater levels of indigenous employment. That is a challenge for our education and training industry in the Northern Territory, and the mining industry, to see more indigenous people employed in our mines that are in the remote parts of the Territory. It is a work force that has the capability of meeting the needs of the industry, and we all have to work together to build skills so people are job ready or at least training ready to take advantage of the jobs that are opening up across the Northern Territory.
The government’s Building NT Industry Participation Policy Framework also provides for industry participation plans together with our funding for the Industry Capability Network. These two policy areas are improving awareness of the capability and capacity of the Territory’s supply and service sectors, thus creating opportunities for Territory business to participate in major projects. Industry participation plans have been submitted or are in preparation for the following major projects: ConocoPhillips’ Darwin LNG Plant and Bayu-Undan Pipeline; the Vopak Darwin Fuel Terminal; Blacktip gas field development; Alcan Gove expansion, and the trans-Territory pipeline.
A number of other proponents of proposed projects have also been briefed, and they are encouraged to prepare industry participation plans. The industry participation plans commit project proponents and prime contractors to engage with the Northern Territory government and the Northern Territory Industry Capability Network to develop strategies to inform Territory business of upcoming opportunities.
Supply and service opportunities will be further enhanced, particularly in the regional centres of Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, by two projects likely to proceed in the near future. We have heard about the Bootu Creek manganese project, a very exciting project, which is 120 km north of Tennant Creek, which will produce 500 000 tonnes of manganese ore per annum. To help facilitate the export of this ore, government has committed to provide bulk loading facilities at East Arm Port. A key benefit of the project is the increased employment it will create in the Tennant Creek area.
My colleague spoke about Olympia Resources. We are hoping for an announcement soon about development of the garnet sand deposit held by Olympia Resources. Arafura Resources’ Nolan’s Bore Rare Earth and Phosphate project also provides future growth opportunities. Time does not allow detailed discussion of these projects, but the opportunities for Territory supply will be significant.
The mining industry has long been a dominant part of the Territory’s economy, and the overall value of the industry to the wellbeing of the economy is huge.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I commend my colleague for the statement today. I place on the record my personal thanks and acknowledgement of the work of many of our public servants in the Department of Business and Industry and Resource Development, the old Mines and Energy Department, who for many years have worked to benefit investment in the mining industry in the Northern Territory. They are a great bunch of people who are held in high regard in the industry. I commend the statement to the House.
Mr BALDWIN (Daly): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I, too, commend the minister for this statement. Like the minister for business, I congratulate and commend the hard work of the Mines and Energy public servants and all those involved in the mining industry, some of whom I know very well and are very close to me.
I will raise one issue with the minister for mines. I am sure he is aware of it, bit I wish to put it on the public record. He has mentioned the Pine Creek gold assets. I hope he is fully aware of what is going on in Pine Creek in respect of the old Chinatown area. The minister is nodding his head, so I suspect he is fully aware. I raise the issue because I want to ask the minister for mines, along with the Minister for the Environment and Heritage to go post haste to Pine Creek and have a look at what government is doing in relation to the potential for stopping a very valuable mining industry that could and should take place in that area.
I am not going to mention names. There were names in the minister’s statement. However, the fact is that in the old Chinatown area of Pine Creek, an area once populated by Chinese miners, there are a few objects of heritage value left. It was once a substantial little town that apparently had roadways and temples and so forth. It is definitely a place of heritage significance to the Northern Territory. However, since those days, it has been both mined for the last 100 years and had major encampments there during World War II by Defence personnel.
The Minister for the Environment and Heritage recently placed an Interim Conservation Order over about 30 hectares, mainly over the old Chinatown area, which has caused a lot of nervous concern to the people of Pine Creek. Anyone who knows the mining industry knows that since the closure recently by AngloGold of their operations in Pine Creek, the town’s economy has taken a substantial downturn and the population is falling. Mining is their game, apart from strategies for tourism. Mining is their core staple, and they are pretty concerned that this Interim Conservation Order will stop the possibility of the new joint venture proceeding with an important component of their projected development, which could mean a substantial loss of perhaps 100 jobs and a fairly big revenue turnover for that town’s businesses picking up all the associated attributes that go with mining in respect of economic and social development.
One could say that it is the right thing to do, to impose an Interim Conservation Order over what could be a significant heritage site. I thought perhaps that was the case until I had a good look at the area. I was fortunate to be in Pine Creek very soon after it was declared by the Minister for the Environment and Heritage. There is definitely at least one object worth preserving and that is the stone oven built by the Chinese quite some time ago. There is a place where a Chinese temple once stood and, if you did not know what you were looking for, you would never find it. The remnants of what was there are in a very poor state. In fact, there is a bit of concrete on the ground that could be for anything. There are some grave sites that have supposedly been exhumed, and that requires further investigation. However, the point is it is like a moonscape. There is nothing that depicts what was once there in a substantial way.
Irrespective of what assessment the Minister for the Environment and Heritage has been given about the heritage value of that place, she needs to personally, along with the mines minister, look at this on the ground. I am sure the mining company involved has been in contact with the environment minister and, I hope, the mines minister. I do not care what sort of briefs you get in your ministerials about this area; you really need to have a look on the ground. I am sure the mining personnel, the good people you have in your department, could take you there and show you, along with the conservation and heritage people.
Minister, you need to advocate on behalf of the mining industry. It is a great dynamic when you have a mines minister and an environment minister sitting in the same Cabinet room talking about an issue like the one before you. You need to strongly advocate for the mining industry. She will advocate on conservation and heritage, but please do not do it until you have a look on-site at what is going on, and what it is that may be saved.
I know the company has offered to relocate the stone oven, which is a real issue in itself, because when you talk about heritage objects, the heritage people like those things to stay in their natural place. In this case, please weigh up the economic values against those heritage values. Save what you can and do not put the economic and social benefits of what has been proposed behind those of being able to save the heritage.
It was interesting, minister, just for your information, that I was at the polling booth all day on Saturday at Pine Creek; they have a static booth there. From eight until six, I sat there alongside one of the local townsfolk who had a big display board and a petition. He had ‘Vote 1 for Mining’ on his display board. As I was canvassing every constituent, he was also canvassing them to sign his petition. So you and the government will be receiving a petition, I am sure, in the not too distant future.
As part of the minister’s October Business Month, there is a dinner in Pine Creek tomorrow, the guest speaker at which is a senior officer of the Office of the Environment and Heritage. The minister should not leave him unprotected tomorrow night. I know this fellow. He is a great guy and he will stand up for the job he does, and so he should. However, he is going to walk into a situation where he will not have direction from his minister, except that the minister has ordered this Interim Conservation Order. It would be a great thing if the minister could give him some lead as to what he should be telling the town folk, many of whom will be at the October Business Month dinner. They want to have their say about local business in Pine Creek.
Minister, you need to grab your environment minister and jump in the car. It is less than a couple of hours if you like the open speed limits on our highways. You should go there and check this out because it is very important, and it is important to do it quickly. You talked about the two million tonne capacity of the plant they have down there and all of that, which could be in jeopardy if something is not done about the Interim Conservation Order.
Whilst talking about Pine Creek, it is great to see the local assay company doing very well. It has been based in Pine Creek for a long time, has employed many people over the years, has had its ups and downs and waned in and out, but is picking up much local business including down to Tennant Creek and opening a new operation there to service many of the companies mentioned in your report. I congratulate him for providing that service. He has quick turnarounds, quicker than just about any other assay company in Australia, and that is a great thing in the Northern Territory. It is wonderful to offer mining companies quick turnaround on their assays so that they can punch that information into their formula for where they operate next and how they carry out their mining operation. It is good to see that company doing well. I am sure the minister for business, who knows this person well from past interludes with him, would also congratulate him for his business.
Minister, I leave that concern with you. It is a concern affecting everyone who lives in Pine Creek, and could affect a very large joint venture project.
Dr TOYNE (Central Australia): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I support the minister’s statement on the status of the Northern Territory’s mining industry.
As a member of this government and Minister for Central Australia, I am well aware of the economic importance and benefits that the mining industry brings to the Territory and to Central Australia.
It must be acknowledged that the mining industry is a leader in increasing employment and training opportunities for indigenous Territorians living in remote areas. I commend organisations such as the Indigenous Mining Enterprise Task Force and its members on the fantastic job they do in encouraging these opportunities for indigenous people and communities.
I enjoy it every time I meet the young blokes who went through my school in Yuendumu and hear stories that they bring back from occupying some of these mining jobs. The say how well they are treated, not just with respect, but the skill development and support is terrific.
Of all the mining projects around the Territory mentioned by the minister in his statement, I am most aware of the gold provinces in the Tanami Desert region, which is in my electorate of Stuart. I have previously spoken in the Assembly about the contribution of Newmont in the Territory’s desert region, and I reinforce the important contribution of mining to that region.
Over the past 20 years, about $200m has been spent on exploration in the region by North Flinders, Normandy NFM and now Newmont. Newmont has already made capital investment of over $150m in Tanami operations, with processing and mill facilities at both The Granites and Tanami mines. It employs over 700 people, many of whom are based in the Northern Territory. Since commencing operations, the mines have had dealings with in excess of 600 Territory businesses.
Together with another 64 people employed in oil and gas projects in Central Australia, this is a total of 26% of the Northern Territory’s minerals industry work force located in Central Australia. Mining makes a significant contribution to the economy of the Territory through direct expenditure as well as wages. In 2003, Newmont reported they had spent approximately $265m doing business with companies in Alice Springs, and a further $117m in Darwin.
It is also pleasing to hear from the minister the ongoing developments of the Tennant Creek region, namely through Giants Reef Mining Limited, Peko Rehabilitation Project and Bootu Creek manganese project. I commend the Giants Reef Mining Company for their strong commitment to Tennant Creek and the region. It is through this long term commitment that local people and businesses can survive and grow with the flow-on benefits from the mine. It is certainly great news for our economy.
To assist with developing the economic opportunities that flow from mining, the Martin Labor government recognises the need to improve remote road networks. We have already committed to a $5m upgrade of the Tanami Highway. We will continue to fight hard for the Territory to get more infrastructure dollars out of the Commonwealth government.
As we all know, the future of the mining industry lies with exploration. As the minister mentioned, there are a number of measures needed to keep mining explorers in the Territory. The need for strong agreements such as the Tanami Exploration Agreement is essential in giving developers some certainty. The Tanami Exploration Agreement also demonstrates the need for establishing good, long-term relationships with indigenous people and their representative bodies such as the land councils.
Our Building the Territory’s Resource Base package will assist the mining industry further. These are the types of policy measures and relationships on which this government is proud to work with industry because, by working together, we can keep the mining industry in the Territory strong and advancing.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I strongly support the statement.
Mr McADAM (Barkly): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I support the Minister for Mines and Energy’s status report on the Northern Territory’s mining industry.
Let me commence by saying that the minister has proven to be a very energetic and innovative minister in respect of the mining industry throughout the Northern Territory, and I thank him for his responses. He is always available to talk about issues that relate to the mining industry, particularly in my electorate in Tennant Creek. I would also like to wish the newly-appointed shadow minister for Mines and Energy, the member for Katherine, all the very best. It is a very challenging area and it is something to which she can look forward. We look forward to a very cooperative working relationship in the interests of growing the industry right throughout the Northern Territory.
We have heard the minister and the previous Minister for Mines and Energy speak in respect of some of the projects in and around Tennant Creek. I would also like to speak briefly about them. I refer, of course, to the Bootu Creek Manganese Project, Giants Reef and the Peko Rehabilitation Project and some of other potential mines. They are very exciting. It is expected that the Bootu Creek manganese project will export anything between 500 000 to 600 000 tonnes of manganese product through the port of Darwin for a period of approximately 10 years, but recent developments in that area indicate perhaps there is capacity to extend the exporting of manganese from the region to a period probably up to 25 years, and I will refer to that a little later.
Members will be aware that the major proponents of the project are Bootu Creek Resources, which owns 75% of the Bootu Creek Mine, and Groote Eylandt Mining, otherwise known as GEMCO, have a 25% interest. Bootu Creek Resources is a wholly-owned subsidiary of OM Holdings Limited. It is a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. They trade in manganese and other mineral products, and they operate a ferro alloy plant in China which will purchase 25% of the Bootu Creek product. Existing customers in South-East Asia will take the balance of that production from Bootu Resources.
I will outline some points in respect of the project construction, which will commence shortly. Of course, it is always subject to agreements being in place and essential support infrastructure being available. The joint venture needs to complete main project features before April 2005, but I have been advised that something in excess of $30m will be spent on infrastructure works at the mine at Bootu. There will be railway loading facilities developed and built on the site, which is on the Mackaty Aboriginal Land Trust. There will be a 60 metre haul road from the mine site to the railway, which will pass below the Stuart Highway just north of Banka Banka, so that will also need to be constructed, as will the processing treatment plant at the mine site.
It is envisaged that there will be an 82-bed accommodation village on the mine lease. Already, I am aware that some of the contracts have been let in respect of this project. I know that the catering team is presently located at Banka Banka Station awaiting the construction of the village area. They will, of course, locate to that site at a date to be advised.
Members will be aware that the product, manganese ore, will be carried by rail with FreightLink. We heard from the minister earlier about development of bulk handling facilities at the Port of Darwin and that will add value not only to that project, but there will be immense future opportunities for that facility and the port. My understanding is that the facilities at the port will have the capacity to handle up to 2000 million tonnes per annum without any further capital outlay other than what has been committed by government. Of course, this will be made available to other users for up to 300 days per year. They are dollars well invested in capital infrastructure at the Port of Darwin, and it will provide real opportunities for other mining companies that will be looking to export product through the port.
The life of the mine has been mooted at 10 years, but, as I said, the mine has the capacity to extend out to a 25-year period. In the first 10 years, there will be an average of approximately $3m per year paid to the Northern Territory government. There will be at least 75 jobs, many of which will be, hopefully, filled by local people from Tennant Creek and the region. People like Duncan Beggs, John Brodziak, Trevor Tennant and a few others are working very closely with Julalikari Council and the Northern Land Council in Tennant Creek about utilising local people where possible.
I take this opportunity to thank Peter Davenport, who works for the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development in Tennant Creek. He has played a vital role in facilitating introductions between local companies and Bootu Creek people. There is some real potential here. Duncan Beggs, the Project Consultant with Bootu, came to Tennant Creek a few months ago. Something in excess of 60-odd businesses rolled up to hear what the opportunities might be. So to Peter Davenport, thank you very much. He continues to work hard in trying to deliver as many benefits locally in respect of both businesses and jobs.
There will be other spin-offs: appreciable royalties and rentals will be paid to the traditional owners. In almost all circumstances, these dollars are expended locally, so they are going to be spent in places like Tennant Creek, Elliott and other parts of the Northern Territory. That is an added bonus for local businesses.
I mentioned the meeting in Tennant Creek a few months ago. Already, there have been some spin-offs. I have been advised that plumbers and electricians have been to Bootu Creek getting involved in some of the work that is required, and that other smaller companies have been able to secure contracts of late.
I take this opportunity to speak about a gentleman by the name of Neil Scriven. Neil is a geologist who has been around the Northern Territory for a long time. I understand he first came to Tennant Creek in 1973, and has a long involvement in the mining industry, and gold mining. Neil is a visionary. He is a wonderful character, too. He is the person who basically has brought this mine to fruition by working hard on not only the exploration, but talking to people around the world to get it up.
Most people may not know, but the original Mackaty Manganese Mine was first discovered in 1940 and was mined through the 1950s and 1960s when the product was sent to Rum Jungle to oxidise uranium ore. At that time, the manganese mine at Mackaty existed in black cliffs of up to eight metres high. When the mine was exhausted, they were unable to locate any further manganese of ore grade in the immediate vicinity. In 1996, 15 km from the original Mackaty site, BHP was exploring for base metals, mainly copper, lead and zinc. They intersected some good grades of manganese at depth and considered the area to have potential. However, as we know, in 1998 there was a corporate restructure at BHP and they relinquished their interests in the area.
The Department of Mines and Energy was always aware of the potential of this mine and promoted it right around the world. It was in June 1999 that Neil Scriven acquired the exploration licences. He tells me that, mainly because he was tired of the gold industry, he saw a real opportunity and a future in expanding his vision. He acquired the exploration licence and, as it has been described to me, he trawled the world looking for a joint venture partner.
In September 2000, another local geologist, Geoff Eupene, was able to contact Trevor Tennant from OMH who indicated to Neil that he would be prepared to look at it. That gave rise to Bootu Creek as we know it today. Neil was proud to be involved in one of the first native title agreements with the Northern Land Council. He began drilling in October of 2001 and discovered good shallow manganese mineralisation.
Many people ask where the name ‘Bootu’ came from. It was named by Neil Scriven, and I do not know the precise meaning of the word, but it is a name associated with some of the tribes in Tanzania with whom Neil worked in the 1990s. Some of those tribes, as described to me, were the Chugga, the Shekuma and the A Go Go. He named it ‘Bootu’ because of the kindness shown by the people in Tanzania. Maybe that says something about the man as well.
Neil has applied what he learnt at Bootu Creek, the Mackaty area, to an area 30 km north of the existing mine at Bootu. They have done some drilling and intersected potentially some ore-grade manganese. They are still waiting for assays, but the intersection could be significant. Perhaps it will be the beginning of a manganese province in the region, and I refer to the area from Banka Banka and Alice Springs to around the Renner Springs area.
Neil tells me that the traditional and widespread use of manganese is in steel and, when added to iron ore, the manganese hardens the steel and the oxygen removes impurities such as sulphur. He described it as ‘nature’s bleach’. Scientists throughout the world in the last five years have been working on a laboratory-proven theory that molecules of manganese are the reason photosynthesis occurs at atmospheric temperatures and pressures, and the water produced has been tweaked to produce hydrogen. With the advent of hydrogen as a replacement for fossil fuels, the use of manganese might become more significant.
I wanted to share that with the House because it is a good story, and it shows the faith of people like Neil Scriven who obviously saw an opportunity, which is now coming to fruition.
Very quickly, I want to mention Giants Reef Mining in Tennant Creek. Most people will be aware that Chariot has been operational for in excess of 12 months now, and they have increased production of operations around Tennant Creek from 60 000 ounces per year to an estimated 100 000 ounces per year. Their quarterly production has gone from something like 11 000 ounces to something like 17 000 ounces. That is because of the Malbec Mine, which is the open cut, and some of their other mines.
I want to provide details of the impact Giants Reef has had on the local community at Tennant Creek. As the member for Wanguri said, theirs is the only head office registered on the Australian Stock Exchange. They employ 55 people in the office in Tennant Creek, based in town, and 20 people are employed in administrative and exploration jobs. Barmenco, to whom Chariot Mine is outsourced, employs around 40 workers. Some of those people fly in and out, but of those 40, 13 are local. Already we have something like 33 jobs in the two areas. CDE and ExacMin, which have the contract to dig the pit at Malbec, which is only 900 metres west of Chariot, have 17 workers and three trainees. I know that Giants Reef have spoken to them about providing more equipment for potential work. Certainly, they are encouraging CDE, which is indigenous, to set up in Tennant Creek.
There are six drilling rigs in Tennant Creek, which is unprecedented. They are drilling as required by Giants Reef, but Bootu Resources is also using them, as is a company called Meteoric Resources, which is drilling 3.5 km north-east of Warrego. That is another little company that has just come into town. They see some potential.
Craig Mining is a company mining some of the smaller deposit like Cat’s Whiskers and EdnaBeryl. They are yielding gold, which is a separate operation, but they are mining it as well. There are at least five local people working for Craig Mining.
There is other good news, too, and it shows the impact, Giants Reef let a contract of approximately $1.8m over ...
Mr HENDERSON: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move an extension of time to allow my colleague to conclude his remarks.
Motion agreed to.
Mr McADAM: I will be as quick as I can, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. A catering contract has been let to the Tennant Creek Hotel. It is about $1.8m over three years, and that employs five people. That is more wonderful news. $30 000 a year is spent by Giants Reef on uniforms and other apparel, and that has gone to a local company, Tennant Creek Emporium. Jim Phillips Earthmoving has done many tailings dams for Giants Reef. It is conservatively estimated that there have been eight to 10 jobs in that area.
We heard the member for Daly talk about Ray Wooldridge and Northern Assayers. It is true. My understanding is that they are moving to Tennant Creek very soon. That means the assay tests, which I do not know too much about, can be done on-site. At the moment, Giants Reef sends samples to Pine Creek. It takes three to four days. They will be relocating some of their staff into Tennant. There will be approximately five jobs in that area. Giants Reef is giving some of the laboratory equipment from Warrego, and I think they are providing some capital dollars.
The Barkly Bus and Truck Company takes ore out to Warrego from Chariot. They employ three to five people. Most people will be aware that they have outsourced some work on the potential for copper in Tennant Creek. It is very much early days, but copper is something that will occur sometime in the future.
In respect to sponsorship locally, Giants Reef supplies $30 000 a year to the Barkly Australian Football League, $60 000 over two years, and that is something from which both the BAFL and Giants Reef are receiving immense mileage. The sponsorship has enabled BAFL to employ a Development Officer working with young kids. It is based around self-esteem, pride and self-respect. That is something that is much appreciated. Giants Reef sponsor a whole lot of other organisations in Tennant Creek, like the Show Society. They provide $11 000 per year to the Warrego School, which is a joint venture with government, the government tipping in the other $11 000. All in all, they have done well and they deserve every success over the last year or so.
The last one I want to mention is the Peko Rehabilitation Project. I spoke to people in Tennant Creek today. They have been assembling a magnetic separating circuit unit in Perth, and that is being trucked up to Tennant Creek either by truck or rail. The pad was built at Warrego. People arrived from Perth today to start putting the processing unit together. They expect to be producing magnetite in the next two to three months, and that will potentially provide another six jobs.
Whilst I am on that point, I want to raise the issue of power generation in Tennant Creek. Higher oil prices are placing extra pressure on the capacity of the mining companies, and not only mining companies, but other small indigenous communities and pastoral properties around the place with the price of diesel. Power and Water are looking favourably at reviewing the provision of power generation into Tennant Creek and particularly in relation to the mines, so that is appreciated.
We have heard the minister talk very briefly about the Nolan Bore project, very much in its early stages. That is a rare earth phosphate project out of Alice Springs. Again, that has potential to grow the local communities of Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, the rail and, of course, the port.
The other project of significance is Mithril Resources, which has intersected copper and nickel just north of Barrow Creek. They are subject to further assays, but that has some real potential. There is a host of other companies. Red Metal Resources are looking at Tennant Creek. They have acquired 2440 km2 around Tennant Creek. They are also looking for copper and gold-style deposits, and access negotiations are in process with all the different parties.
I have mentioned Meteoric Resources, but there is a whole lot host of others such as Tennant Creek Gold. The future looks good for Tennant Creek. It really just took one little gold mining company – 10 or 12, however many years it was - to find something. They have provided the confidence and the impetus to all these other exploration mining companies moving into the area.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is true that what has happened around the world has affected mining operation and exploration in the Territory. It is true that we have seen a downturn in mining exploration, not only in the Territory, but also in Australia, most notably in areas where mining and exploration mining was significant, like Western Australia. In Western Australia, we have seen a downturn of mining exploration from about $0.5bn a year down to $380m a year. The same thing has happened in the Territory.
Another thing we have observed in the Territory is the departure of big mining companies from the Territory and the arrival of these medium- to small-sized exploration and mining companies. Giants Reef, as the member for Barkly said, is a typical example of these companies. Giants Reef, which has acquired tenements from big companies that previously explored for and mined gold in Tennant Creek, is doing very well striking deposits of about 53 grams of gold per tonne of ore. A few days ago, the General Manager of Giants Reef, Mr Joe Ariti, told me that at the new Malbec and Cat Whiskers mines, they found oxidised ore that produced 1000 grams of gold per tonne of ore, significantly more than Mt Todd, which produced one to two grams of gold per tonne of ore and the super pit in Kalgoorlie that produced between two to five grams of gold per tonne of ore.
At the same time, we have seen some of the companies coming to the Territory and processing or treating tailings. For example, we have the Peko Rehabilitation Project sitting on four million tonnes of magnetite, which commands a good price because it is used for washing coal. I am also aware that outside Warrego, there are about 12 million tonnes of magnetite owned by a well-known mines person in the area. There is strong demand for good quality magnetite. We have seen now a revival of mining in the Territory that takes place in small- to medium-sized companies rather than giant companies, the multinationals. They have moved away from Australia because the current mining climate is very competitive. Also, with commodities commanding a very high price around the world, these people are trying to maximise their profits.
We have to encourage mining exploration and operations in the Territory. Currently, we have about seven big operational mines, and we do not want to see a reduction in the number of mines. Instead, we want to see an increase. This can only be achieved if we encourage exploration in the Northern Territory.
My department is encouraging exploration by implementing a number of measures and processes, by providing geoscientific data and surveys free of charge to companies that want to invest in exploration in the Territory. We also produce software that can be copied or downloaded from the Internet or can be used on the Internet like the STRIKE software so that prospective explorers can find information about any portion of land in the Territory. They can find titles, who owns it, whether it has been mined or explored; and who is the present owner. It gives them all the information they need before they even put their foot in the Territory.
We have to do more. We need people who have studied geology in the Territory so that they will stay in the Territory. Currently, we have geologists from other states in Australia, from Victoria and New South Wales, who come to the Territory because of its prospectivity. My dream is to see some home-grown geologists. We are having some discussions with the Charles Darwin University for at least an introductory course in cooperation with any other university like the Kalgoorlie School of Mines or the University of New South Wales for the first year of geology with the department providing some scholarships for prospective geologists. We are trying everything to attract people, doing everything to keep people involved in the mining industry here, and we will certainly do everything possible to attract explorers in the Territory.
We are looking at our legislation and how we can improve it; how we can change our legislation with the changing times to address some of the issues and problems that we face; and how to make it competitive with legislation in other jurisdictions like Canada, for example.
We are reviewing the Mines Act. A discussion paper will be circulated soon. A copy of the discussion paper will be on the web and is going to be provided to most of the mining industries in the Territory and local mining industries that have some relations with the Territory. The department also looks at different ways of inviting and attracting people to the Territory. Some of them need a direct approach and direct contact with executives in mining companies that make the decisions or the business cases for exploring in the Territory.
There is a whole gamut of measures that we put in place to improve exploration in the Territory. After all, in 2003-04 the mining industry survey conducted by Canada’s respected Fraser Institute in Vancouver, rated the Northern Territory eighth overall for its investment attractiveness out of 53 global jurisdictions.
In the past, people have expressed concern about exploration and one of the problems has been land access. We believe now that the land access issue is over-rated. We have successful negotiations with the land councils in the Territory, with examples like the Sweet Pea Corporation exploring for oil north of Elliott. Exploration like this takes place after successful negotiations through the right to negotiation process with the relevant land council. Giants Reef is a typical example of negotiating successfully with the Central Land Council. The Central and Northern Land Councils realise that mining can only bring monetary benefits to them because it provides unique employment opportunities for Aboriginal people in the Territory.
We are conducting a review of the Mines and Petroleum Division in my department; that follows the ERA incident. There were perceptions in certain sections of the community that the division was a captive of the industry. We also realised that there would have to be some better ways of interacting with other sections of the department. This review was done by a reviewer who is a panel contractor and this panel contract has been advertised and tendered by the Department of the Chief Minister as part of Risk Management Services, so this was not awarded without a tender process. It was awarded through a tender process to panel contractors under the Department of the Chief Minister. The review will be completed soon and that will follow the review done of the Titles Division. The review of the Titles Division has shown us some places where we can improve efficiencies, service delivery, and cooperation within different sections of the department.
We have problems. We have seven main operating mines and quite a few hundred legacy mines, mines that were once operated and have been abandoned and, because of lack of appropriate legislation at the time, some of them pose problems with rehabilitation. Some of these can be seen to be creating problems for the environment, however, the department is actively addressing these issues. The department has an active program of auditing existing mines, operating mines and legacy mines, and works with the mining industry to address some of these issues.
On the issue raised by the member for Daly, old Chinatown, yes, I am aware that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage has put in place an Interim Conservation Order because action of the mining industry has disturbed old Chinatown and has caused some disturbance on-site. The ICO area includes the Yet Lung Chan Battery site, the intact Chinese oven, the foundation of the Chinese temple, the few remains of the former Chinatown on-site, and the remnants of the Eleanor Mine site shaft and associated features. The Department of Environment and Heritage is working very closely with the mining industry to address some of the issues and to rectify the situation.
The minister, my colleague, the member for Arafura, has given a commitment that she will travel to Pine Creek to see the area and the problems, and consult further with the mining company and the people in Pine Creek in order to resolve this issue successfully.
As I said before, I am very enthusiastic about mines, which provide a significant portion of income for the Territory, about 22% or 23% of gross state product. The sector employs a significant number of people, 2000 to 3000, most of whom are from the Territory. We expect more opportunity for employment with the expansion of Alcan, the opening of Bootu Creek and the expansion of GEMCO at Groote Eylandt.
Regarding the manganese which will be railed to Darwin, the government is considering loading options and the effects of manganese on the environment; possible contamination of the environment will be taken into account when a final decision is made.
In respect of extractive industry, we understand the problems associated with that, and we understand the demands on the industry by the building sector in the Territory. We know that some extractive industries are located not in the most appropriate places, but at the time they were established, that was the only place they could be located.
Currently, we have proposals for mining sand within the harbour area, which is something that will have to be very carefully assessed. Some of it is sand that is replenished by currents and placed in the wrong position. It usually has to be excavated to be removed, but if we can use that renewable resource because the currents will continue to bring sand to this area because of the nature of the harbour, while we want to protect our physical environment in areas like Mt Bundy that are probably not the most appropriate. When these extractive mines have finished operating, they have to be rehabilitated to appropriate standards.
I am committed to mining. I believe it can be done with minimum or no harm to the environment. I have stated clearly and publicly that I support mines, but I am not going to tolerate any breach of the legislation. Our legislation is not prescriptive; the Mining Management Act provides the opportunity for mining companies to provide their own Mine Management Plans to us. These are the plans they have put in place and agree to comply with, and I will not tolerate any company putting a mine in place and not complying with their own plan.
As you are aware, there are currently a number of investigations into mining accidents that have happened recently. My department is investigating without fear or favour because I will not tolerate either contamination of the environment or injuries or deaths in mining places, especially if they are preventable.
I strongly support the mining industry for the employment opportunities and the income generated for the Territory. I will work with the industry to provide information that can be utilised to increase the exploration opportunities in the Territory and to develop and facilitate communication with Aboriginal people, the land councils, and to develop employment opportunities for all Territorians.
I commend the mining industry for their decision to invest in the Territory. We have seen that mining companies not only explore the Territory or open a mine, but continue to invest in the Territory, invest in the community and Giants Reef is a typical example. I pass on my appreciation to them.
As I said before, the mining industry is vital for the Territory. I am looking forward to increasing the number of mines in the Territory and I will be very happy if a new mine in the Territory, Bootu Creek, opens up under my stewardship and that of the Department of Mines and Energy.
Motion agreed to; statement noted.
ADJOURNMENT
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the Assembly do now adjourn.
I would like to comment on some events and organisations in my electorate; first, the Nakara Soccer Club. Last week, I was very happy to present Mr George Lambrinidis of the Nakara Soccer Club a Community Benefit Fund cheque for $2000 to assist the club. In the past, George and his friends re-formed the Nakara Soccer Club, not only because they want to have a few times of kicking a ball around, but also to attract the young people, especially young children, away from television screens and computer games and bring these children back to our neighbourhood parks, like the good old times when we were growing up.
We talk a lot about antisocial behaviour, about crime, and young people doing the wrong thing. The reality is unless we actually give an alternative to these young people, to get these young people away from the bad influence of their friends and take these young people out in our parks, which have been abandoned over the past few years for various reasons, and bring these parks to life, we are not going to seriously address the issue of safety. George Lambrinidis and his friends, with the Nakara Soccer Club, have managed to get these young people together.
They have organised a club, they train at the Nakara School oval. They now have a women’s team and they compete regularly in TASLE. I am supportive of their request. I have spoken to George who asked me if I could write to the Council to seek an upgrade of the Nakara School oval. I have written to the council asking for improvement in the watering patterns of the oval, and whether they can level the oval and lay some new, good quality grass.
It would be ideal if we could find some surplus street lights to install at the oval so they can train at night not only because it is cooler, but because then it will take away that oval from itinerants or people who tend to hang around and spend their evenings drinking. It is a very good initiative. It is an excellent club, and I hope we will see more of these initiatives in our suburbs. As I said, it is a unique opportunity to get the young people away from television and computer games, give them a life and also the parks back to life.
I would also like to comment on the Casuarina Child Care Centre, which I believe is one of the most multicultural centres in Darwin. I visited there the other day and was very impressed because I walked in and there they were: mainstream Anglo-Saxon children, Chinese background children, Aboriginal children, children from African backgrounds, some refugees, and Indonesian. It was a microcosm of Darwin, and these kids will grow up together and this has resulted in our harmonious lifestyle in Darwin.
A few months ago, I was talking to an old Darwinite about how good we are in Darwin, we do not have any divisions, any problems with racism, and he said: ‘How can I be racist towards, let us say, an Aboriginal or Chinese person because I went to school with that person? I spent six years in the same class. I do not see colour, I do not see a background. I see a friend and, irrespective of colour and origin, I cannot make myself be racial with them. I cannot be racist towards them’, and that is exactly true. I am very proud of the Casuarina Child Care Centre and I was very proud to present them with a Community Benefit Fund cheque for $4400 to assist them to meet their needs.
I also congratulate our talented young sport stars from Casuarina, the NT Under-15 Girls Hockey Team, which has just returned from competing at the national Under-15 hockey tournament in Brisbane. The NT North Under-14 girls basketball team has just returned from Canberra. I heard that they all played extremely well and they were excellent ambassadors for the Territory. My colleagues, Paul Henderson, Len Kiely, Delia Lawrie, and I were very proud to have been able to provide a small contribution towards their trip, and we wish them all well in their sporting future.
The Tang Soo Tao team competed in the first Australia-wide Tang Soo Tao tournament in Melbourne on 12 September 2004. Seven black belts and a few coloured belts competed. The team was very successful with all but one team member winning places. Congratulations to Peter Mather of Nakara for coming third in the sparring, and Thomas Winter of Tiwi for gaining a second place.
Finally, I would like to wish one of my favourite senior citizens, Mrs Mary Greenwood of Nakara, a happy 72nd birthday. I hope she had a wonderful surprise party at the electorate office. My Electorate Officer, Debbie, gave me all the news on the party. It was organised by Tang Anola, Mary’s friend. I am sorry I missed it because I was away on a business trip. I know Mary had some difficult times recently with the loss of her husband. However, I was very pleased to see her the other day at the Moon Festival here at Parliament House. Mary is of Chinese background. I was very pleased to see her here enjoying herself and smiling again. Happy birthday, Mary, and I promise not to miss your next birthday.
Mr AH KIT (Arnhem): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to speak tonight in honour of one of the Territory’s longest-serving public servants who will finish in my department in the next month or two. I speak of Ray Hempel, for whom I had the pleasure of attending a farewell function a couple of weeks ago.
I first ran into Ray some time in the late 1970s or early 1980s when I was in Katherine working for the Department of Social Security and then the Kalano Association, and later still in the 1980s, when I was with the Northern Land Council. I was a new boy on the block and Ray was already something of an old hand. I do not believe for a second that either of us thought back then we would be working together some years later in the same department, with me as his minister. I daresay there are a few other older hands who would disagree with me.
This came to mind at the last Ministerial Council on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs meeting in Sydney in June this year. Ray spent 17 years on the standing committee that provides support to the Ministerial Council on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. Many of the ministers who have sat around that table over the years will not have appreciated that in the motions and papers they have debated there have often been a few words that sow a seed or give sustenance to an idea that the quite unassuming bloke at the back has spent considerable hours in debate and manipulation, getting that agenda item on to the table.
This was recognised by the current chair of that ministerial group, New South Wales’ Dr Andrew Refshauge, who paid tribute to Ray on that day. One of the major contributions he made over that time was the motion of bilateral agreements, something that has really come into its own in the post-ATSIC era. I, on the other hand, always like to think Ray had a bit of a smile on his face when he witnessed me as the first Aboriginal minister from the Northern Territory, let alone the other states, being represented on MCATSIA. We have been on the opposite sides of a few arguments over the years. Both of us have cursed each other from time to time, but both of us have a Territory perspective that has often been at odds with Canberra and the states.
Ray started out in the Aboriginal affairs business, like a lot of young officers, with a grounding at ASOPA, the Australian School of Pacific Administration. The training and education that he received there set the scene for the rest of his working life. ASOPA taught its students how to work effectively in cross-cultural community development efforts. In gave them skills that have delivered the goods for the Northern Territory, with its graduates working across the many organisations involved with Aboriginal people: the land councils, ATSIC, local councils, non-government organisations, as well as the Northern Territory government.
It has given us a strange and wonderful collection of people, such as Kirk Whelan, now at Katherine West Health Board; Paul Josif and Gavin O’Brien at the Northern Land Council; Neville Jones working in DIPE and formerly with Community Development; Neil Westbury in the Office of Indigenous Policy and Bill Ivory, whom I understand is currently doing a PhD. I have heard stories of some of their reunions, especially a legendary one at the Low Level in Katherine back in about 1982, an event that I understand would involve unparliamentary language were I to discuss it here this evening.
When Ray started work on communities, such training was an essential ingredient for any young officer. Ray spent time at places such as Lajamanu, Milikapiti, Groote Eylandt, Borroloola and Barunga or Bamyili as it was then known. Indeed, Ray was the last Superintendent at Bamyili, something about which Robert Lee can tell a few stories. In fact, Ray and I have something in common: we share a great admiration for a former leader, Ray Fordimile; a great leader, visionary and a person who always planned and managed the future direction of the Jawoyn people. Ray Fordimile, sadly, is no longer with us, but I know he left a mark on Ray Hempel.
In each place he worked, Ray Hempel took the time to learn about the place and its people. In this way, he gathered an encyclopaedic knowledge about the way these places were established, the people who lived in them, the issues that confronted them then and, in many cases, still do. A large part of Ray’s stock of stories and anecdotes was developed during his days on remote communities. His capacity to relate to the issues that affect a person’s daily existence in a remote community to national policy, to analyse the issues, develop conclusions and propose solutions is something that has set him apart from many of his contemporaries over time.
Ray was gradually sucked out of the remote communities area into management, first field services and then later into the policy area. Ray has worked in the departments of Community Development, Chief Minister, the Office of Aboriginal Development and he is ending his time back in the Department of Community Development. It is in the policy area that he has made his major contribution. Most who have worked in the Aboriginal affairs area would know immediately that it is a hard place for a public servant to survive. Many become cynical. Faced with an almost overwhelming task, some develop the conclusion that they are the only ones who have the answer and that if only everyone listened to them, everything would be okay. Others simply give up and just go through the motions.
Ray quotes George Bernard Shaw who said:
- The art of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have never had it.
Ray’s accurate observation might occasionally have sounded like cynicism but, at its core, there has always been a passion for ideas that might get a better result than the ones we have now. After a working life in the business, he is still able to launch into argument about what should be done, and to hold forth at length on the changes that should be made now.
The Northern Territory government has not always been a place where there has been a queue of people wanting to work in the Aboriginal affairs business. A public servant in the business has needed to appreciate that many a time, painstaking work of many months, building relationships or developing policies can be blown sky high by an injudicious comment by someone who is ignorant of the agenda or the context. This is a business where it is hard to build but simple to destroy. It has taken a special resilience not just to stay in the game, but to maintain optimism that there is a win possible. Ray has demonstrated that resilience in spades.
Ray left Melbourne to get away from the weather and the mind-numbing boredom of the city, but he never gave away the Bulldogs. Finally, the Western Bulldogs are coming to Ray with home games now being played in the Territory and with the Bulldogs making the Territory something of a second home, and hopefully playing next year, wearing colours incorporating a Territory playing strip. Of course, there will be a special challenge for Ray next year with the Bulldogs playing the Aboriginal All Stars on 5 February. Who will he be barracking for when he has lived and worked with the parents and grandparents of so many Territory boys who will be playing for the All Stars? Ray, we will be watching you closely on that night!
As is clear from his record, Ray has a number of key traits that have sustained him through his career. He is dedicated to the cause, he maintains a preparedness to change and take on new ideas. Most of all, though, he is a bloke who just does not give up: he is persistent, a bit of a Bulldog himself, really.
Ray Hempel’s last day of official service will be 10 December 2004. He joined the then Northern Territory Administration on 10 February 1964. This makes him one of the longest serving public servants of the Northern Territory and he has the record as the longest serving Northern Territory-recruited executive level officer.
In these days when we are told that the average person starting out will have four or five long-term careers or jobs, it may sound strange that a person would or could last for over 40 years working for the same employer. To add icing to the cake, Ray has worked for almost the whole time in the one area of government.
Now, just as for years he has battled to try to get better policy settings in Aboriginal affairs in the Territory and across the nation, he is turning his attention to wood. If he brings the same attention and persistence to wood, it will be a worry for any tree in the general district, particularly one that might have an interesting grain pattern.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak about a group of people I have known for some time, many of whom I have been associated with through Dragon Boat racing. Today, I visited representatives of the Dragon Boat Association who are preparing to leave the Territory in a couple of days’ time for Shanghai where they will compete in the World Dragon Boat Paddling Championships.
Dragon Boats started in the Northern Territory some six years ago in 1998 when the then Chief Minister, after returning from Sabah, announced that he was sending a Dragon Boat team from the NT to the Sabah International Dragon Boat Races in June of that year. I was then Parliamentary Secretary to the Chief Minister, and he asked me to try to ensure that a team could be formed to get there.
I had recently joined the Dragon Boat Association at that time and, through a very hurried process, we organised ourselves by advertisements in papers, calling for interested people to join the team. I recall the first day we met at the Surf Life Saving Club at Casuarina Beach. We were a motley crew of about 20 or 25 people, all very keen to paddle, with only one or two who had any experience. We lined up plastic chairs on the lawns of the club and, with makeshift kayak paddles, practiced some Dragon Boat paddling strokes. That is how Dragon Boat Northern Territory began its activities in Darwin. For about a year before that, we were talking constantly about forming an association. We had a visit from the Chairman of the Dragon Boat Association in Penang, Malaysia, who encouraged us to form an association. After some 12 months, with the efforts of people like Austin Chin and several others, we got a team going about March 1998.
In the second week of training, the same group gathered at the club, took the plastic chairs into the water and proceeded to dip the kayak paddles into the ocean as though we were paddling a Dragon Boat. I was able to make contact with the Dragon Boat Association of South Australia after the second week of training. I spoke to the people in South Australia who, fortunately, were coming to the end of their paddling season as winter was coming around. We were able to borrow one of their boats, being their off season, and had that carted from Adelaide to Darwin by road transport. When it arrived, the whole mob of us turned out at Cullen Bay, all rejoicing that at long last we had a dragon boat that we could use in Darwin, and we manually loaded it off the truck into Cullen Bay. Since then, the sport has not looked back.
We kept the boat - it was a pink wooden dragon boat from Adelaide - for three months and we trained almost every day in order to get ourselves prepared for the Sabah International Dragon Boat races. With the support of the then government and then Chief Minister, Shane Stone, we made it to Sabah. We had lots of support from corporate bodies in Darwin as well, and with the combined funding and political well wishes, we got to Sabah and took part in the international races.
We won our division and came home with a gold medal. It is interesting: we wanted to challenge other paddlers as well and we thought that paddling only one race in one division was not enough for the effort that we made to go across so far to paddle in the races. So we challenged the winners of the Sabah National Titles, and then offered them prize money from Daryl Manzie, who was there with me, for the competition. We raced the Sabah national team. We were pipped by a very narrow nose, I would say, in the 500 metre race and we acquitted ourselves very well for a mob that had started training only three months previously. We came back with our heads high and were very pleased with our efforts.
Since that time, DBNT has fund-raised through donations and corporate sponsorships in Darwin, and today they own a fleet of some 12 dragon boats, all aluminium. They are based variously in Cullen Bay, Bayview, at Gove and in Kununurra. At those four locations, there are dragon boats and people paddle them regularly and have a competition amongst themselves in the Top End. I know that they also travel down to Katherine to paddle during the Flying Fox Festival and at other times.
Anyway, at Cullen Bay at 5.30 this afternoon, a group of people gathered to be blessed by the Buddhist monk, a ritual that takes place every time one of our dragon boat teams leaves the Territory to paddle in national or international championships. The group that will be going representing Australia, and they are representing Australia, wearing green and gold, includes 16 from the Territory. They will be joined by a few others from South Australia to be the Australian representative team for the Masters age group. They are captained by Ken Dwyer, Gai Whitehouse, Phil Reader, Lyndall Reader, Jeoff Cooper, Moira Stronach, Neville Shields, Trish Heames, Daryl Manzie, Julie Griffin, Ron Remfrey, David Powell, Steve Boakes, Nick Hedstrom, Willi Rothlisberger and Gregg Eiffler. These are the ones who will be wearing the green and gold on behalf of the Territory as the Australian team to paddle in the Masters races at Shanghai. I believe the race will take place on 24 October 2004 and, if the Minister for Asian Relations and Trade is going there, which I believe he is, I hope he gets there in time to see the races and conveys the greetings of Territorians to them, and gives them good blessings to make sure that they paddle well.
The Northern Territory team will be joined in Shanghai by the Pink Ladies from the Dragons Abreast Dragon Boat Club. I know that the member for Port Darwin is their Patron. There are about eight or 10 of the Pink Ladies who will be going across as well, and will be led by Michelle Hanton, whom we heard last week won the Telstra Business Woman of the Year Award, and an officer from the Legislative Assembly, Pat Hancock, will be going. The Pink Ladies were especially invited to Shanghai by the Chairman of the Shanghai International Dragon Boat Festival. I was told that Michelle Hanton and some of her crew were in Rome to attend the international championships and performed so well and created such publicity that they were specifically invited by the Chairman of the Shanghai Dragon Boat Festival to be their special guests in Shanghai. That is a great honour for the Pink Ladies to be able to demonstrate to the world their efforts, and the value of what they can contribute to women who have had breast cancer and surgery.
This afternoon at Cullen Bay, the Buddhist monk was there to bless the boat and all 20 of the paddlers who were in the boat. Some of you who might have watched the ABC news tonight would have seen them as a news item. I wish the whole team the best of Australian luck. I hope they do well over there. They deserve every chance to win. They have been training remarkably hard over the last many months to achieve this target. I was speaking to Daryl Manzie this afternoon. As you all know, Daryl Manzie is a former member of parliament, the former member for Sanderson. He looks so tremendously fit for a nearly 60 year old; it is scary. However, their training regime is intense. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the afternoons, they paddle for about an hour-and-a-half at Cullen Bay. On Sunday mornings, they paddle as well. If the weather is good, they will paddle in the ocean, or they train inside the lock at Cullen Bay. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 am, the whole team goes to the police gym and they train with weights. Then, on Saturday afternoon, they do the same thing. They train seven days a week: paddle four days and work out at the gym three days.
When you look at the crews of men and women, they are well built, have well-defined muscles, are very fit and have huge tolerance and ability in paddling. Their style has changed, too. Watching them paddle, I remember when we first started, it was just the traditional paddling stroke, which is flexing forwards and pulling backwards with your back. Now, they do a twisting stroke, which is a lot smoother and prevents the boat from bouncing up and down in the water, thus not dissipating the propulsion energy of the stroke.
As I said, I wish the team well. I hope they come back with their heads high, winning some medals while they are in Shanghai. The trip to Shanghai will be a great experience. I was in Shanghai only about three years ago. The city is a mix of old colonial European influence and old Chinese influence, plus the modern development of China in this bustling metropolis that is now Shanghai.
I am sure they will be paddling in the river - I cannot remember the name of the esplanade there now, but it will be tremendous with hundreds of thousands of people turning up to watch the races. That is what it is like in China when you have international races. Just about everyone turns up to watch the races, and with a city of 20 million people, you can expect hundreds of thousands of people to be spectators. They are flying with Royal Brunei Airlines, and I believe that Penni Tastula has assisted in some way with Royal Brunei Airlines to get them to Shanghai. They will stay there for the next 10 days or so while they are training and getting acclimatised to the weather, as well as using the boats from Shanghai.
We paddle with aluminium boats in Darwin, which are about one-fifth of the weight of the wooden boats that are used in Shanghai. Imagine a wooden boat in the water, being paddled through the day, and as the day progresses the timber gets wetter and wetter and the boat starts to get heavier and heavier, making it more difficult. Let us hope that at the final race, we do not have one team coming out with a dry boat and the rest paddling wet boats, which will give the paddlers of the dry boat great advantage over the others, and that would be a bit unfair. However, knowing these men and women from Darwin, I am sure they will do well. I wish them the best of luck on 24 October.
Dr TOYNE (Stuart): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to acknowledge the service of Chief Prison Officer Peter Truman and Prison Officer First Class Alan Wilkes.
Chief Prison Officer Truman has enjoyed a career with Northern Territory Correctional Services lasting almost 30 years. He commenced employment with Correctional Services on 15 October 1973, working at the Fannie Bay Gaol. Shortly after his commencement, he was based at the Gunn Point Prison Farm. On his return to Fannie Bay Gaol, he was appointed Acting Senior Prison Officer in 1974. At the time that Cyclone Tracy wreaked such devastation on Darwin, Peter Truman was seconded from the prison to assist in the clean up operation. From 1986 to 1994, Peter Truman held the position of Chief Training Officer. His influence on the development of prison officers and other staff within the training unit during this time was significant. The unit was soon recognised as a leading training organisation within Australia, and Peter took the opportunity to further his own qualifications and, in 1992, graduated with a Bachelor of Teaching.
A further highlight in Peter’s career was his assignment to Canberra to train federal police in defensive tactics. In 1997, Peter was appointed coordinator of Operation Shine, a program which we know today as Community Support Program. The Community Support Program provides over 38 000 hours of work each year to non-profit organisations and the elderly and disabled. Community Work Programs remove graffiti, undertake environmental clean-ups, building improvements and regeneration of native bush land. Through his involvement with the CSP, Peter assisted with the clean up of the Katherine area following the floods in 1998. His enthusiasm has been paramount in the work done by CSP and what they achieve. His diverse community contacts and networking skills have resulted in prisoner teams being widely sought after by large numbers of organisations.
During his time with the Northern Territory Correctional Services, Peter Truman received the National Medal and the Clasp to the National Medal. Peter’s knowledge, skills and experience will be missed by many within the service.
Alan Wilkes retired from Northern Territory Correctional Services after completing almost 26 years of dedicated service, which began in November 1978. Prior to commencing as a Prison Officer at the Alice Springs Correctional Centre, Mr Wilkes served with the Australian regular Army. While employed with NTCS, Alan continued to serve with the Australian Army Reserve until April 1991.
Throughout his career in the Army and with Correctional Services, Alan received a number of awards for service including the National Medal and the Clasp to the National Medal, the Australian Active Service Medal with Clasps Malaya and Vietnam, the General Service Medal with Clasp Borneo, and the Vietnam Medal among others. His colleagues speak of his professionalism, dedication, wisdom and skill, all of which will be sorely missed by the service.
On behalf of the Northern Territory government, I commend these men on their dedication, and wish them both all the best in their retirement.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to report on the study tour I undertook last month to Holland, London, Kent and Edinburgh. I will table a copy of my report at the end of my 15 minutes. I am certain I will run out of time, but I will endeavour to get through most of it.
In Holland, I met with Ministry of Justice officials in The Hague as well as a victim support organisation in Noordijk. I was interested in a range of initiatives undertaken by the Dutch, however, unfortunately, the scheduled meetings ran over time and we did not manage to cover all of the areas that we intended. Nevertheless, a great deal of information was obtained.
In relation to domestic violence, I was advised that domestic violence is the most extensive forms of violence in the Netherlands, and there is a thorough understanding of the effects on children. The Dutch estimate that 40% of children who witness domestic violence are at risk of becoming perpetrators or victims. In many respects, this type of research and these sorts of figures are not new, but I am not aware of current research or programs in the Territory for or about children.
There should be a long-range study commenced to assess the risk children who witness domestic violence will face as adults. A Northern Territory study is likely to produce similar results to the Dutch, however a study should be commenced, together with identifying detailed strategies to help break the cycle of domestic violence in families as well as programs that are tailored to assist those children who are damaged as a result of the violence they see.
In 2000-01, the Dutch government subsidised defence training for primary school students of a certain age, and it is estimated that nearly 10 000 children have participated in this training, which, in the words of the Dutch, the students ‘learn to increase physical and mental defences against extreme behaviour and abuse of power’. Given the magnitude of domestic violence in the Northern Territory, there is a strong argument in favour of implementing similar training programs for primary school aged children. Dutch research indicates that only 6% of victims report domestic violence, so there is an acknowledgement that more work needs to be done.
The situation in Holland is similar to that in the Territory and, indeed, Australia where generally, state and territory governments are at the forefront of trying to reduce domestic violence. One initiative is the implementation of a scheme that was tried successfully in Austria and Germany whereby perpetrators of sexual violence are evicted from the household after charges are laid. It was difficult to obtain precise information about these initiatives at a time when the Dutch advised that more work needed to be undertaken. Nevertheless, it is anticipated that a detailed proposal will be put before the Australian equivalent of the Dutch Cabinet in the next few months.
Twelve European countries provide for a court order that evicts a perpetrator from the home where violence occurs. Presently in Holland, local mayors have the ability to remove offenders from a home for a period of between 10 days and four weeks, and there does not need to be an assault or conviction. This is based on the likelihood of a violent incident recurring. One difficulty, however, is that mayors seems reluctant to make the relevant orders for a variety of reasons. Police have the power to take perpetrators into custody for six days, which I understand does require a charge to be made, however the general rule is that perpetrators are removed for about three days, sometimes less.
There is a concern that the period of detention or removal is not sufficient and consequently not enough time is available to plan a victim’s safety by making other arrangements for alternative housing or other assistance. Some aspects of the advice in these areas were unclear because of language difficulties, nevertheless what is clear is that the Dutch are determined to leave no stone unturned in their resolve to deal with perpetrators of domestic violence.
In Austria, police are able to order eviction of a perpetrator where there exists sufficient grounds of a likelihood of harm to one of the residents of the house in which the perpetrator lives, and no consent is required on the part of a potential victim. This usually occurs when the police are called to attend the home. They have a discretion to order the eviction, but a report is made outlining the basis of concerns for safety, which is sent to the Australian equivalent of welfare agencies, which, in turn, contacts the victim.
Police have the responsibility to check on the house to ensure that the perpetrator has complied with the order. It sounds unusual in Australia for the police to issue such an order, but it is known as ‘police law’ in Austria, which is separate from judicial law.
Periods of removal or eviction vary, but underlying the scheme is a belief that the victims need to be protected and must have sufficient time in order to consider options. A victim may elect to move from the home, and I gather that in such circumstances, the perpetrator can return. The Dutch are attracted to this scheme because the results indicate that it has been effective and provides women and children security and allows for fast intervention, thereby reducing violence.
In the Territory, victims of violence may apply for a restraining order, but there is no provision for the police to evict the perpetrator from the home other than the ability to hold a perpetrator in custody for four hours under the Domestic Violence Act. A bold initiative such as evicting a perpetrator for a significantly longer period and enabling the police to do so without a court order may have application in the Territory’s remote communities. The mechanics of producing a scheme such as the one I have outlined would be difficult. However, decision-makers should at least try to rise to the challenge.
I learnt about what is called the JOS project, which commenced in 2000 to assist victims of sexual violence. Victims could enlist a specialist lawyer within 10 days after making a report of violence, although some victims elected to retain a lawyer until after the conclusion of the prosecution, few did, as they sought and obtained advice in the earlier period and that was generally sufficient. The initial meeting with the lawyer was provided free of charge. The results showed that the early meeting with the lawyer gave the victim both general and tailor-made advice about a range of matters including the trial process as well as compensation that may be available. Underlying the service was a belief that victims of sexual assaults require specialised advice at an early stage. There was also a belief that the rights of victims needed to be respected and this was best done by the provision of early advice.
The meeting with the lawyer proved very successful for victims and the results of the project have been positive. Victims are provided with detailed advice about legal proceedings against the accused, and they are given a realistic overview of the difficulties of succeeding in sexual assault cases by lawyers experienced in that field. Often, victims report an assault, and sometimes six, 12 or 18 months go by before they become involved in the proceeding. As a result of delays, many victims are shocked to hear that they are required to give evidence or that the case against the accused is not a strong one, or that the prosecution is considering dropping the case. Some victims do not know at an early stage that they will be required to give evidence, or do not know that services are available to assist them.
The Dutch experience is that victims value the service greatly and were grateful to receive valuable information. Results also showed that victims felt more a part of the prosecution process. Figures show that most victims availed themselves of this service. Victims of sexual assault in the Northern Territory may benefit from trialling a scheme similar to the JOS project.
Members will know that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions has a witness assistance service, but that does not become involved until the prosecution commences. It is the case that Legal Aid provides a free service for many, including victims of crime, but there is no specialist service in existence. Certainly, some victims receive the benefit of general assistance from police and others in the health sector, but there is no specific service in place similar to the one used by the Dutch.
Given that the conviction rates for sexual assault cases are notoriously low, there is merit in investigating the viability of such a scheme in the Northern Territory. The fact that victims were advised of compensation available to them is also of interest. There is a compensation scheme in existence in the Territory, which, despite the fact that Labor has done its best to abolish it, the reality is that many victims are not told of their right to compensation until they are advised by court staff or the DPP. In many instances, the victim is faced with time restraints with respect to making an application, or is out of time and must make, through a lawyer, in essence, an interlocutory application seeking an order to apply for compensation, notwithstanding that the limitation period has lapsed.
On balance and having regard to the Dutch experience, there is merit in pursuing the provision of free legal advice for victims of sexual violence within, say, one month of the crime being committed. It will assist victims and will certainly assist them to prepare themselves for what is required when the prosecution case gets to court. They can also be assisted with compensation and other broad as well specialised advice.
Unfortunately, the JOS project was trialled in only two parts of Holland. Although results were positive and a recommendation by those involved that it should be extended throughout Holland, funding restrictions mean that it will not be. In addition, there has been a recent change of direction and the Minister for Justice has decided to transfer JOS to bureaux or ‘victim information desks’ that exist in the main court houses in Holland. The fact is that the JOS project showed that further assistance was required for victims and they utilised the service and found that it was valuable.
Another innovation being implemented by the Dutch is the establishment of victim information desks at court houses. These could be described as a one-stop shop for victims of crime who, naturally enough, attend a court when a prosecution is under way. Of course, we have the Witness Assistance Service at the ODPP and some court houses, although not all in the Territory, have pamphlets available for those seeking help. It may be worth conducting a trial of a victim information desk at Darwin or Alice Springs Court House to see what the response is. It would need to be staffed, and oral and written information could be provided to victims. Furthermore, appropriate referrals could be made to the Witness Assistance Service, lawyers, counsellors and so on. It is important to ensure that victims of crime, any crime, know what services exist for them, and a desk specifically designed for them in court houses is likely to be of general assistance.
An interesting aspect of the Dutch legal system is that involving compensation for victims of crime. It is a fairly complicated system involving compensation made in criminal and civil jurisdictions. However, lessons can be learnt that may benefit Territorians. Under the present compensation scheme, there exists the ability for government to recover compensation paid to a victim from an offender. This recovery from the offender has tended not to provide anything in the way of reimbursement to the Territory for monies paid out. There are many reasons for that, but one is that most crime is committed by Aboriginal people, many of whom receive Social Security benefits. Recovery of any debt from an impecunious person is almost impossible, and that partly explains why recovery of compensation from offenders has traditionally been difficult.
In the words of one Ministry of Justice representative with whom I met:
- The offender is responsible for his deed, so he is responsible for damages and compensation.
Compensation payments are made by the state and it pays the shortfall of any amount an offender is not able to pay after three years. The state insists upon the offenders paying all or some of the amount of compensation, regardless of his or her financial position. Compensation for violent crime is paid for generally by the state, but other compensation is paid directly by the offender regardless of his or her financial position.
In Holland, there is an insistence on recovery, either in part or in total, from offenders, regardless of their financial position. It sounds tough and it is, but the Dutch strongly believe the offender should face up to what they have done or the damage they have caused. While this includes going to gaol, it also includes paying compensation even though they may receive nothing more than Social Security-type benefits. If there is an impecunious offender, an amount is paid, but only for three years. The Dutch believe that they have the balance right: the offender is penalised even though he has little money, then he meets, in financial terms, his responsibilities for committing a crime that caused another person harm and, after three years, he is released from further payments.
This has application in the Northern Territory in my view. Given who it is in the Northern Territory who commit crime, many of whom are impecunious and, importantly, are repeat offenders, there is, therefore, a strong case that they should be made to pay something should compensation be made to the person they have harmed. The word ‘responsibility’ was used frequently by Dutch officials when they spoke about the need to recover compensation from offenders, whatever their financial situation.
If violent offenders were made to pay for compensation that is actually paid for by law-abiding citizens through government, then those offenders may think twice about continuing to commit crime. An increasingly common view of Territory gaols is that those in them are relatively unfazed by being in custody and, for many, it has become a way of life, regularly going to gaol and, in some instances, actually asking the court to send them there. Insisting that even impecunious offenders pay may result in some of them thinking twice about offending before they do it again.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I am running out of time. I am up to page seven of my 14-page report. I am yet to deal with what I learnt in London, Edinburgh and Scotland. I thank members of the Legislative Assembly for assisting me in this trip; it was valuable. I am not sure how many members on the other side of the House will read this report, but I know my colleagues will. I also propose to send it to relevant stakeholders. Indeed, later this week, I am addressing a domestic violence service about the lessons I learnt. I thank those involved and I commend the statement which, after correcting various typographical errors, I will table, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: I make the observation, member for Araluen, that 15 minutes non-stop indicates that your voice has got better.
Ms CARNEY: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, no doubt, had you been listening closely, you would have observed that I am not in good shape.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time is up, member for Araluen.
Ms Carney: Do not comment from the Chair ...
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Your time is up, member for Araluen.
Ms Carney: If you sit in the Chair, you do the right thing, sport!
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Araluen, I remind you that you are talking to the Chair, and I will direct you.
Ms Carney: I am, and you are the Chair.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: I will direct the member, if she is not careful, to withdraw. Have some respect for the Chair, member for Araluen …
Ms Carney: You have some respect for your position.
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: You are on a warning, member for Araluen.
Mr HENDERSON (Wanguri): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to talk this evening about a school in my electorate that turned 21 years of age on Friday, 17 September 2004, Leanyer Primary School. What a great series of events Henry Gray and the team of the school put on to celebrate 21 years of excellence in primary education in Leanyer.
Twenty-one years earlier, the school was officially opened by the then Northern Territory Chief Minister, Paul Everingham. Twenty-one years, hundreds of families, thousands of children and many teachers later it has reached maturity.
Throughout the day the many, many visitors were entertained by performances on stage, in the staff room and then the new Gather ‘n Goss garden amphitheatre. Gather ‘n Goss, a dream long held by art teacher Mrs Margaret Ferguson and shared by Leanyer Student Council and Art Club, became a reality. An area of flat half-dead grass behind a retaining wall had been transformed to become the school’s Gather ‘n Goss Garden. Gather ‘n Goss, a name suggested by past student Danielle Spittle was officially opened by Mr Alex Ford. Mr Ford, a past student and now a parent at Leanyer school, constructed the garden’s roofed stage. He was supported by Mr Serge Rizotti, Mr Geoff Harvey and Mr Ross Williams. Ms Tracey Parker and Mr Maurie Lenoir from the Northern Territory Hockey Association donated and laid Astroturf for student seating in front of the stage. I donated a bird bath to complement the garden, already alive with wildlife, a real nature’s own retreat.
Hundreds of volunteer hours and thousands of dollars raised from ice cup sales and the Student Council contribution have made the dream of a quiet, serene garden a beautiful reality. It really is a fantastic sanctuary in the heart of the school. A big congratulations to everybody who had a part in putting together what is going to be a great long term assets to Leanyer Primary.
Throughout the morning, entertainment and celebrations were offered in three venues around the school. Included were a guitar ensemble, talented pianists, and the Leanyer School Choir. Dancing groups performed on stage and a Korean karate demonstration was presented.
At a special midday assembly led by Sean Kennedy and Olivia McClelland, Student Council President and Vice-President, the whole school celebrated. The traditional ‘Happy Birthday’ was sung with Kyra Mulvena leading the school’s Beat choir and the whole school in heartfelt rendition. I spoke to the assembly gathering, declared it to be a school that had attained its maturity and again thanked all of the past teachers and members of school councils over many years who have put so much work in making Leanyer Primary School the great school that it is today, which has such a great reputation in the northern suburbs of Darwin.
After lunch the Leawanala band, students drawn from Leanyer, Wanguri and Alawa schools conducted by Ms Ilona Retallick from the Northern Territory Music School, entertained a large and appreciative audience. The day was one of celebration and showcasing student talents to our many attending parents and invited guests.
Celebrations continued on Saturday, 18 September with a bush dance on the school’s soon to be roofed basketball court. The dance attracted several hundred people. All classes from Transition to Year 7 demonstrated dancing skills, partnering each other and their parents. A great festive night was highlighted when His Honour the Administrator, Mr Ted Egan and Ms Nerys Evans led the gathering in singing ‘Happy Birthday’.
His Honour then sang a folk song with the band that night and the hundreds present joined in with the chorus line. It was great to see Ted and Nerys at Leanyer School and it goes to show what a fantastic Administrator Ted Egan is. He is well loved and respected wherever he goes and it was great to have him at Leanyer to join in the 21st anniversary celebrations.
The following Monday, children were happy to offer feedback about things that appealed during the anniversary celebrations. Everyone had a great time. The following is a sample of what students appreciated. I quote, ‘We got to eat cakes and do lots of fun things’, Joseph Baronio, 6. ‘We blew up and tied balloons’, Rachel Williamson, 6. ‘I like blowing out birthday cake candles’, Jenny Hi, 5. ‘The bush dance’, Themelina Roditis, 5. ‘Making the clown face for our decorations’, Chase Ferguson, aged 5. ‘The performances were terrific’, Jessica Thornton, aged 12. ‘The cake’, Tom Maloney, 11. ‘Cutting our 21st birthday cake at the assembly’, Megan Phelps, 11. ‘All the classes getting up and performing during the day’, Tim Carlon, 12; and ‘the excitement of the various classes trying to outdo each other in classroom decorations’, Jake Newman, aged 13.
Looking to the school’s future, students offered the following comments: ‘We need to always be litter conscious’, Dylan Goodman, aged 8; ‘We need to place rubbish in bins, not into holes or trees’, Emily Ella-Tjung, 8; ‘We need to make sure there is no bullying’, Brodie Green, 9; ‘I would like to keep Gather ‘n Goss open all recess and lunchtimes’, Amy Perry, 8; ‘We need more assistance to help teachers’, Thean Hong Leng, 9; ‘We need to continue upgrading classroom furniture’, Sonia Viikyl, 10; ‘We need more shade development’, Christina Pachos, 10; and ‘I would like more play ground equipment’, Peter Roditis, 9.
Reading those testaments and statements from the children at Leanyer, the whole culture of the school involves the children wherever possible in the running of the school and taking responsibility for the school and its environment. The children having their say is taken seriously by the Student Representative Council, the teachers and Henry Gray, the Principal.
The milestone has passed; the school moves on. Happy 21st birthday to Leanyer Primary School. Congratulations to Principal, Henry Gray, and his staff and students for hosting such a wonderful celebration.
I am proud to be the local member for Wanguri, with Leanyer the primary school in its heart. The government delivered on our election commitment for a significant upgrade to the school earlier last year. We provided $60 000 and it is good to know the shade structure will go up later this year.
Motion agreed to; the Assembly adjourned.
Last updated: 04 Aug 2016