2002-08-13
- Madam Speaker Braham took the Chair at 10 am.
DISTINGUISHED VISITORS
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, I advise of the presence in the Speaker’s Gallery of Mrs Thea Toyne, wife of the member for Stuart, and Mrs Claire Toyne, his mother. I was pleased to hear him acknowledge his mother the other day and say he did have one, so it is pleasing to see you here. On behalf of all honourable members, I extend a warm welcome to our visitors.
Members: Hear, hear!
RESPONSES TO PETITIONS
The CLERK: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 100A, I inform honourable members that responses to petitions numbers 6, 8 and 14 have been received and circulated to honourable members. The text of the responses will be included in the Parliamentary Record.
Petition No 6
Moratorium on issue of taxi leases
Date Petition presented: 25 October 2001
Presented by: Mr Ah Kit
Referred to: Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Development
Date response received: 12 August 2002
Date response presented: 13 August 2002
Response:
a temporary numbers cap on taxi licences, minibus licences and private hire car
entitlements/licences was put into effect on 26 November 2001. It was introduced
to bring some stability to the industry while the government conducted a full review
of commercial passenger vehicle arrangements;
this means, in effect, that no more taxi, minibus, or private hire car licences can be
issued than the total number which were in operation at that date;
an exception was made for multi-purpose taxis (MPTs) which provide access for wheelchair
bound passengers. Because of concerns expressed by the disabled community, it was decided
that they should be exempt from the numbers cap until such time as it was evident that the needs
of this sector of the community were being properly met;
I am happy to advise that there are now sufficient disabled access vehicles available to meet
current community needs, and the government has now extended the cap to include this category
of vehicle;
in the meantime, a full review has been conducted of the regulatory arrangements for commercial
passenger vehicles which has involved extensive consultation with stakeholders. I anticipate that
Cabinet will make a decision on the outcomes and recommendations of the review in the near future;
the government has decided to leave the cap in place until December 2002, by which time it is
anticipated that recommendations coming out of the review will have been implemented; and
this government is determined to ensure that the Territory has a viable commercial passenger
vehicle industry which will meet the needs of all sectors of the community.
Petition No 8
Affordable, regular exercise for citizens of the northern suburbs
Date petition presented: 28 November 2001
Presented by: Mrs Aagaard
Referred to: Minister for Health and Community Services
Date response received: 9 August 2002
Date response presented: 13 August 2002
Response:
- The petition relates to the decision of the owner of Bodyzone Health and Fitness Centre in Malak to
close the facility. The petition states that the decision to close was due to a significant rental increase,
the impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and the collapse of HIH Insurance. In essence, the
petitioners called upon the Northern Territory government to ensure the continued operation of
Bodyzone Health and Fitness Centre.
The Northern Territory government recognises the beneficial effects of regular exercise in maintaining
good health and wellbeing. The government also recognises that introduction of the GST by the federal
government and the collapse of HIH has had serious repercussions for some small business. However,
the Northern Territory government cannot selectively support small businesses operating in the private
sector.
Petition No 14
Proposed development at entrance to Bayview
Date petition presented: 14 May 2002
Presented by: Mr Vatskalis
Referred to Minister for Lands and Planning
Date response received: 6 August 2002
Date response presented: 13 August 2002
Response:
- The petition was submitted to me by residents of the suburb of Bayview, to indicate their opposition to the
proposed construction of two eight storey residential buildings on Lot 6274, at the entrance to the
Bayview estate. Residents were concerned about possible loss of amenity and property value, and
petitioned me to intervene by directing the Development Consent Authority to refuse the application.
The development application attracted considerable media attention and was opposed by a well organised
campaign by the Bayview residents. The basis of the objection is that, while the land is zoned R4 under the
Darwin Town Plan, which allows development to eight storeys, sales advertising by the developers of Bayview
estate clearly described this site as having a four storey maximum.
The application was legitimately submitted to the Development Consent Authority but withdrawn by the
applicant before a hearing could take place.
I declined the residents’ request that I direct the authority to reject the application, as I believe the DCA
has to operate as an independent body, and that ministerial intervention is a mechanism to be used only
as a last resort.
The residents also submitted a proposal to amend the Planning Scheme, to rezone the property from R4 to R3,
which would allow up to four storeys only. While the Planning Act does allow for any individual to apply to
rezone any person’s land, this would be a most unusual occurrence and should be undertaken only with
extreme caution, particularly if the landowner objects to the rezoning.
I met with the residents group to discuss these issues. I did undertake to investigate the legal opinion through
my colleague, the Minister for Justice. I have not yet received this, but will advise the residents of the outcome
when I have received it.
In the meantime, I understand that the urgency of the matter has diminished as the applicant for the development
has requested that the Development Consent Authority defer the application until further notice.
MINISTERIAL REPORTS
Government Response to Insurance Crisis
Government Response to Insurance Crisis
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Madam Speaker, the increasing cost and reduced availability of public liability and medical indemnity insurance have had a serious impact on key sections of the community, not only here in the Territory but right across Australia. Today I wish to update the Assembly on the government’s response to the current crisis.
Because this is a national issue, the Territory government has been actively cooperating with the Commonwealth and other jurisdictions to develop a coordinated national response. On 30 May, Commonwealth, state and territory ministers agreed to a range of initiatives aimed at improving the availability and affordability of public liability insurance. Health ministers have also agreed on a coordinated response to medical indemnity insurance problems. Some of the measures agreed are being implemented at a national level, whereas others are been considered by each jurisdiction individually. Many of the measures will have benefits for both public liability and medical indemnity insurance. This applies particularly to tort law reform, changes to court processes, and the development of a workable model of long-term care for the catastrophically injured.
At a national level, the Commonwealth government has recently introduced legislation to remove barriers to structured settlements and to allow the self-assumption of risk by persons engaged in risky recreational activities. The states and territories have agreed to introduce complementary legislation where necessary. For public liability insurance, the Commonwealth government has requested the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to monitor market developments and premiums. It has also asked the Productivity Commission to benchmark the claims management practices of Australian insurers against world standards.
For medical indemnity insurance, the Commonwealth has guaranteed cover for doctors insured with UMP until the end of the year, and established a scheme to fund currently unfunded liabilities. It is also taking steps towards prudential supervision of medical defence organisations by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
Also underway nationally is an urgent review aimed at tightening the law of negligence, and it is to report by the end of September. Depending on the outcome, further reforms may be required.
The Territory government has already pursued a number of initiatives aimed at assisting businesses and community organisations specifically within the Territory. These have included a public liability insurance telephone hotline and web site to provide information and advice to Territory businesses and community organisations, a series of risk management seminars held in July right across the Territory, and changes to the standard insurance clauses in government contracts.
Territory not-for-profit organisations are also eligible to join Queensland’s group insurance scheme. As the Territory is too small to go it alone on such a scheme, I greatly appreciate the support from Queensland’s Deputy Premier and Treasurer Terry Mackenroth for the Territory to join Queensland’s scheme which is expected to commence in September.
In line with outcomes of the national meeting on 30 May, the government has been developing legislation to implement long-term reforms appropriate for the Territory. Other states are proceeding with similar legislation. As most of the proposed reforms relate to liability for personal injuries, they are expected to have benefits for both public liability and medical indemnity insurance. The government has commissioned national advisors Trowbridge Consulting to provide advice on specific details of the reforms and their likely effect in the Territory.
The Territory’s legislative package comprises four bills to be introduced between August and October by the Minister for Justice and Attorney-General. The first bill, to amend the Consumer Affairs and Fair Trading Act, will be introduced during the current sittings. The bill replicates changes being made by the Commonwealth to the Trades Practices Act. These changes facilitate self-assumption of risk by people who choose to undertake risky recreational activities such as adventure tourism and certain sporting activities.
The second bill will deal with various tort law and related reforms and is for introduction in the September sittings. The bill is to include:
- caps and thresholds on awards for general damages for pain and suffering and a cap on damages
for future economic loss;
contributory negligence;
work subject to confirmation that not-for-profit organisations would not be adversely impacted;
They are the first and second bills to be introduced. Unfortunately, time prohibits me talking about the third and fourth bills.
Mr BURKE (Opposition Leader): Madam Speaker, I thank the Chief Minister for her statement. I also take the opportunity to thank her officers and the CEO of TIO for the briefing they afforded me on public liability issues as they effect TIO, and the work the government is doing in collaboration with the Commonwealth and Queensland in moving through with not only legislative changes but other changes as forecast by the Chief Minister in her brief statement.
It is pleasing, from my point of view, to hear that the issue of protective legislation for volunteers and good samaratins is being picked up by the Territory government. That was one suggestion of many that the opposition made. With regards to the other suggestion of the opposition that we scope a Territory-wide scheme particularly for Territorians, I understand the government’s position on that now.
I remain unconvinced, based on the TIO briefing, that it is not feasible in the Northern Territory. However, I accept the fact that the government has made its own decision on this. I do believe it is constructive and right that the government moves in line with Commonwealth reforms some of which, though, we would need to see the legislation as it comes through into this House. For example, the amendments to the Trade Practices Act which essentially waive the rights of individuals to claim for damages for any sort of risky activity sound good, but there are real problems with that, as I understand it. For example, are minors scoped into this, where you might have parents who want to go on a bungy jump and sign a form that basically waives the rights of their children in the event of an accident? So, there are real difficulties. I understand that legal advice is being sought nationally on this issue. We look forward to see the legislation the government brings forward in the House.
The opposition will support any reform aimed at lowering the cost of public liability insurance so in that regard we support the government. But I ask the government to keep in mind the fact that there may be a requirement for special Territory schemes, particularly for Territorians, if those schemes are feasible.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, I thank the Chief Minister for her statement on public liability and perhaps just bring one issue to the attention of the House, and that is the case of schools and functions at schools.
The Howard Springs Fair is on this weekend, and it was in jeopardy because 30 stall holders could not get public liability insurance but for the help of your department, Chief Minister, with Don Parker and also Les Holden, from TIO who extended the public liability of the school council to cover the day’s events.
What it does highlight is some of the difficulties that schools are going to have with, not only school fairs, but even public liability in the playground. An easy solution was arranged for the school fete to continue, that was that TIO extended their public liability to cover this particular day and, although you have mentioned lots of things about the big picture, some of the solutions require a simple solution and can be done locally. I hope you do not miss out on an opportunity to look at things that might be staring us in the face instead of the bigger picture.
Ms MARTIN: I thank the member for Nelson for bringing that to our attention. Of course, those sensible responses to the issues of public liability are ones we are also pursuing. It is very concerning when you realise that organisations having events at a place where there is currently public liability cover cannot take advantage of that. It makes sense that they do take advantage of that.
It was put to me that something like Expo - which takes place at Darwin High which has its own public liability - has to take out its own, and then individual stall holders at the event have to take out their own. So we have to sort through those multi-layered public liability issues. I think that they can be sorted through. We have put in place mechanisms to help organisations deal with this and it is good to see for the Howard Springs school that it is actually working.
I mention again that there are four bills coming in. The third bill deals with the process of the court, and the fourth will be dealing with the Legal Practitioners Act, looking at things such as legal costs and advertising, so there is a comprehensive package coming in.
Madam SPEAKER: The honourable minister’s time has expired.
Alice Springs to Darwin Railway - Progress
Mr HENDERSON (AustralAsia Railway): Madam Speaker, I am pleased to inform the House on the progress of the Alice Springs to Darwin railway.
Currently, there is great public interest regarding passenger terminals for the railway. The government has commenced consultations on the development of railway platforms in Tennant Creek, Katherine and in the Darwin region, most likely in Palmerston. Initially, existing facilities can be used in Alice Springs.
The Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment is developing a railway stations master plan which will look at the cost and design options for the three new platforms. The master plan group within DIPE will consult with key stakeholders including relevant councils, Asia Pacific Transport, Great Southern Rail, the Northern Territory Tourist Commission and other interested parties such as the Palmerston Regional Business Association.
The group will also be investigating alternative funding contributions towards this work, including from local government and the private sector where appropriate.
The group will report back to the government by the end of this year and design work on the platforms are expected to commence by December, with construction to commence next Dry Season.
Great Southern Rail have indicated that they plan to run passenger services to Darwin from Alice Springs in 2004, which will, of course, be good news for tourism. GSR are expected to commence with a weekly service and, initially, would be the only passenger service on the line.
Since track laying began in April this year, over 304 km of track is now completed. Two crews have been laying track at an average of 1.8 km per day and the tracks north of Tennant Creek and south of Katherine are scheduled to meet in December this year. To date, 921 km of the total of 1420 km of earthworks is now complete. Five hundred and eighty-three thousand sleepers have been manufactured, 1.3m tonnes of ballast produced and 61 000 tonnes of rail delivered to Rowe Creek near Alice Springs from Whyalla in South Australia.
The first of the major bridges on the Katherine River is complete, as are 30 of the 97 minor bridges. The longest bridge, being over the Elizabeth River, is not due for completion until early 2003; it totals 510m in length and 3.5m in width, and to date 80% of the piling is completed.
It is also interesting to note that a great deal of the old NAR alignment is being utilised on the corridor between Katherine and Adelaide River. Fourteen bridges along that section are now completed.
The railway embankment construction work is now well advanced at the East Arm Port and I encourage Territorians to take the opportunity to view the progress on the open day being held in September this year. It should be noted at this point that although construction is going ahead at a rapid rate resulting in unofficial statements being made that the railway is ahead of schedule, it is prudent to remind all Territorians that there are now two Wet Seasons between the official completion of April 2004, therefore we should circumspect.
Employment and training has reached a peak of 1215 direct employees. Of those, 745 are from the Northern Territory. The total amount of direct contracts awarded to date is $732m. Of that amount, $409m has been awarded to Northern Territory business; that is 56% of the value of the project so far.
Whilst the railway has been positive for Northern Territory business, there have been some unfortunate impacts by the construction of the railway on the Territory environment. The recent incident with the Gouldian finches’ feeding habitat is a regrettable case in point. I would like to draw honourable members’ attention to a joint Department of Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment and ADrail press release and fact sheet that was sent to all media and is now available on the AustralAsia Railway Corporation web site. I urge honourable members to look at the facts of that incident and the ADrail response.
The size and complexity of this enormous project with seven construction sites along the corridor is not an excuse for environmental incidents. The Minister for the Environment, Minister Vatskalis, is immediately informed of any issues and is quick to put in place measures to address the cause and ensure the likelihood of repeat incidents such as these will not happen. Further, the independent Office of the Environment and Heritage has appointed a dedicated scientist to monitor major developments across the Territory such as the Alice to Darwin railway. This appointment is possible after an increase in funding provided to the office by the Northern Territory government.
An open day in Katherine, similar to that held recently in Tennant Creek, is planned for the second week of September 2002, and it will be a great opportunity for Katherine residents to see construction taking place. A bus will be used to ferry all participants on and off the corridor for approximately 2km.
The Northern Territory government’s obligations in the 2002-03 financial year in terms of work in relation to corridor acquisition amounts to approximately $13.5m, this being for the completion of fencing, delivery of crossings across the corridor, replacement housing, water sources and roads, up to $3m worth of works under the community development package and railway impact assessment study. The scope of these works is yet to be completed with indigenous communities and associations to make their input.
The Northern Territory government will also contribute $5m for debt investment in the railway project, this being the Northern Territory’s share of the total cost of $10m. The other $5m is to be contributed by the Commonwealth. The total spend by the consortium on the railway in the 2002-03 financial year will be $565m. Although this capital injection into the economy is significant, the long-term economic benefits which will be gained by positioning Darwin as Australia’s Asian gateway, and a major freight forwarding system will be even greater.
Mr BURKE (Opposition Leader): Madam Speaker, I have little to add. I thank the minister for his statement. With regards to the comment that unofficial statements with regards to the progress on the railway, may I just remind the minister that it was from his comments that the railway was 100 days ahead of schedule that we all went out there and promulgated that point of view. So I do agree with you that we always have to beware of what sort of Wet Season confronts us. Certainly, the overall story is particularly pleasing in every respect.
I was at Adelaide River only on the weekend and saw an old couple at the service station. They told me they had driven down just to see the railway, and his comment to me was ‘It makes me feel a proud Territorian’, and that is a great sense of the feeling that I believe is overwhelmingly there across the Northern Territory. For anyone to see the construction that is occurring across the Northern Territory, it seems to me that what stands out more than anything is the absolute simplicity in engineering excellence in the way those bridges, for example, are being constructed. The simplicity of the engineering in its actual appearance is quite dramatic and at some stage I believe that great accolades need to be given to the engineers who have been involved in the design of that railway.
I am very pleased to see that the idea of the railway station is going ahead and getting the emphasis it deserves. I did not quite catch the extent of the time line in terms of the review. The minister would be aware that Palmerston City Council is conducting - I think charette is the word - where they are getting architects to come up with what they would see as a design for an appropriate railway station in the precincts of Palmerston. I hope the government see that exercise in a constructive way. They are trying to look at some feature statement for when people first arrive in Darwin. It obviously involves costs, but I support the view that, particularly in Katherine and Darwin, we need to have some real entry statement that basically says: ‘You have now arrived in Darwin’, because first impressions are last impressions in many tourists’ minds.
With regard to the commitment for additional funding, I was intrigued to see the Chief Minister’s press release the other day which said the government is pleased to announce additional money being provided for railway funding this year of around about $20m-odd. What the press release did not say, of course, was that the government would be in breach of contract had it not provided that money. All those monies are set and …
Ms Martin: It was the budget allocation this year.
Mr BURKE: Let us stay truthful in terms of how the money is being committed to the railway throughout this project. Territorians know …
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable member, your time has expired.
Mr BURKE: … that there are no additional monies unforeseen that I am aware of in that project.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, in reply I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his generally supportive comments. It is a great project. Driving down the track to Katherine, it is just amazing to see the construction activity that is taking place.
Picking up on his comments on the 100 days; I knew the Leader of the Opposition would come back with that. It was a comment that I made at a function a couple of months ago. I also pointed out that, at that point in time, there had hardly been an incident on a project of this size. It was really quite significant and I gave a big rap to ADrail – and I still do give them a big rap. But I nearly choked on my cornflakes the following morning when the front page of the NT News had the photo of the train coming off the track near Alice Springs somewhere. You have to be careful with some of the public comments that you make.
It is a great project, a great Territory project, and it will be a fantastic day when it is delivered. We will be consulting with all parties in regard to the platforms and the stations.
Itinerants Strategy
Mr AH KIT (Assisting Chief Minister on Indigenous Affairs): Madam Speaker, a research study of indigenous itinerants in Darwin and Palmerston was completed in November 2001. The report recommends four key strategic areas to address itinerancy issues. These are the patrolling strategy, an education and regional strategy, an alcohol strategy, and an accommodation strategy.
The government has now allocated $500 00 for the implementation of the key strategies with priority given to the following initiatives: employment of a project coordinator; increased hours for the community patrol and sobering-up shelter; introduction of an information and referrals office; Larrakia education campaign; and further research and consultation with a new working party - that is, the Data Collection and Research Working Party.
Working parties on each of the key strategy areas have been established with representatives from more than 40 service providers. At a recent forum of working parties and key stakeholders, the work program was prioritised, including development of the terms of reference and strategic directions. I anticipate that with the implementation of some priority recommendations, there will be an immediate impact on behavioural issues. This will be done by providing extended community patrols, outreach services and exploring pathways to assist itinerants to either return home or lead more meaningful lives in the community. I hope all will agree it is an exciting strategy that will bring some real results to this problem.
I would like to turn now to comments I made during the launch of the strategy that have been generally misunderstood. When I talked about the role that certain non-Aboriginal people play in influencing Aboriginal itinerants, I was doing what I have always done. I have never walked away from telling the truth. Indeed, I have explicitly said that much of the antisocial behaviour by Aboriginal visitors to Darwin, Palmerston or any other town breaks Aboriginal law. I pointed out that caring for country is as much about caring for other people as it is about looking after the land for one simple reason: the well being of land is intimately tied up with people’s wellbeing.
I support Darwin’s Larrakia people in developing protocols for Aboriginal visitors to Darwin. Aboriginal law is about respect for others as well as self-respect, especially when you are on someone else’s country. The fact that some non-Aboriginal itinerants also contribute to antisocial behaviour is no secret, and I feel I have quite rightly drawn attention to these people. It is not a matter of blaming; it is a matter of telling the truth about life in Darwin and Palmerston. Anyone who has lived here for any length of time knows I am just telling it straight. I have not taken on the culture of blame and excuse-making. Rather, I am taking on a serious issue in concert with a bout 40 government and non-government agencies and seeking solutions to very complex social issues.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, I welcome the minister’s report on the Itinerant Study and initiatives that this government has commenced with a $500 000 allocation for the implementation of the programs. I welcome it. Being the minister who commissioned the study in the first place, I am pleased to see that the government has recognised the value of it and have commenced its implementation.
Although the minister also tried to weasel out of his rather racist comments about white itinerants teaching Aboriginal people how to spit and to generally have antisocial conduct in our communities – that is – you know, the minister has not been able to explain himself out of that situation and I think he should apologise to all Territorians for that very racist remark. It is really unfortunate that some ministers in this present government shoot off from the hip without putting their brain into gear first.
But having said all that, I believe it is also important for the government to consider a similar study in Alice Springs to look at the itinerant issues down there. We have just as much of a problem that you see in the Top End. We have been complaining for a long time now that Alice Springs should have a study and it was my intention following the Itinerant Study up here that it would happen down there.
Dr Toyne: We’ve just spent $2.1m down there.
Dr LIM: The Minister for Central Australia interjects, but I haven’t seen anything from him in terms of dealing with itinerants so it is important for this government to recognise that there is a similar issue in Alice Springs and the minister should conduct a further study in Alice Springs to bring about programs that could similarly be conducted down there.
Mr AH KIT: Madam Speaker, it is great to see the former minister get up and crow about their initiative. Look, I have no problems in telling people that it is a good initiative…
Dr Lim: Well, then recognise it.
Mr AH KIT: You had your say. Sit down and learn something because you never were a good minister, anyway. That’s all the feedback I get from people around the traps.
We have to get it right here. We are putting the dollars there; we’re going to have these strategies. We have it working really well. I had an excellent meeting last week with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and with the Katherine Main Street Committee. I have asked them to write to me. The local member was present at the meeting. It was a good meeting. We need to learn to walk before we can run. We want to get it right here first.
The member for Greatorex says: ‘What’s happening in Alice Springs?’ Well, he must be walking around blindfolded because my colleague has told us that there has been $2.1m injected into the community there. We will get on with doing what we believe is best with the Itinerant Strategy.
Reports noted pursuant to Sessional Order.
NORTHERN TERRITORY EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING
AUTHORITY AMENDMENT BILL
(Serial 71)
NORTHERN TERRITORY EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING AUTHORITY
(CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL
(Serial 72)
AUTHORITY AMENDMENT BILL
(Serial 71)
NORTHERN TERRITORY EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING AUTHORITY
(CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS) BILL
(Serial 72)
Continued from 20 June 2002.
Mr MILLS (Blain): Madam Speaker, the opposition does not intend to oppose the legislation, however it is our duty to draw attention to some aspects of the legislation on which we require some clarification.
Understanding the background to this, a significant factor being the demise or the under funding of ITABS - which I do not draw away from, acknowledging the role of the federal government in such a withdrawal of funding for the demise of ITABS - which I find personally disappointing. I am still endeavouring to understand what is the intention of the federal government with regards to this critical area of providing appropriate advice from industry to the training agenda, which does pose a challenge of course for the Northern Territory government because, as we understand, the clear and simple task that is endeavoured to be achieved by any agency in this field, in this regard NTETA, it is, in fact, when you strip it away, it is actually a very simple task that we are endeavouring to accomplish, that being understanding what the current needs of industry are and then being able to train appropriately to meet that need.
Very simply, it is almost like in the olden days where you would have someone in the village doing a task or working on some cottage industry or working on the farm or repairing something or making something, and you have a younger person observing what is going on. Then comes that magic moment when the craftsman would then ask or discern that the younger person is ready to take on the responsibility of having the knowledge imparted of how you actually begin the journey of learning how to enter this area of responsibility and employment and contribution to the wider community; at that magic moment then we are able to take that responsibility on.
We now have a far more complex economy, a far more diverse community and we have, sadly I think, those who are fundamentally involved in industry under the current pressures – but I guess if we’re real, the pressures have always been there - but the whole landscape is a complex one. It becomes very difficult for those in industry, anyway. I acknowledge this, no matter what position I be in, whether I be the minister or whether I am responding as opposition: we all know how difficult it is to garner that information and put it into the system so that the training is focussed and directed to meet the clear task.
Historically, if we were to look at, say, World War II, there was a clear community need. Everybody understood what needed to be done; we understood that there was a task. Every body in every sector of the community knew that there was a challenge. The challenge required some training. I guess farm workers, as the war kicked in, may not have ever built Owen guns, may not have known how to work in armaments, know how to build a plane. Australians built planes during that time. Why? Because the community understood very clearly what the need was, and in a climate like that, the communication flow is very clear, very direct, and it is not difficult to train once the need is clearly understood.
I am using those two examples to try for my own case - and I would have to say for many who are involved in this area today, and in recent times over the last few decades, it has become an incredibly complex area when in fact it should be quite a simple task that we are taking responsibility for. I am not going to stand here and say anything other than I acknowledge the current complexity of it and the causes for that complexity, we could debate for a long time. It is all bound up, I think, in the way that the whole community, work force and the aspirations of individuals are being brought to bear on this important area.
We see young people wandering around and they are of concern to us. We see them without any hope. At the very time when they have the most energy and the most to gain from being engaged in something that is going to tax them physically, emotionally, mentally - at that very moment, at that very juncture when they have gone through the schooling system which is supposed to prepare them for that magic moment when they go across the threshold into employment, there is this very sad situation where many of them are unsure or unclear. They make many false starts and then we have the compounding social problems. We have wheeled in these mechanisms to endeavour to reach out to try to address social issues at the same time as addressing the needs of industry. It has become very, very complex, as I am sure the minister will agree.
In specific response to this legislation, acknowledging that there has been a change in the landscape with regards to how the information from industry is provided to the board, which will be advising the minister, I think that is where I would like to spend some of my time to make sure that we have some way of being satisfied in industry, which is actually the driver of this. The engine is actually industry, the economy, the growth of real jobs, and what is the nature of the task out there in the workplace and how that information is being fed into the system.
Having been involved in education, and prior to that, having been involved in the agricultural industry - one is deemed to be a very practical occupation - the tasks are very clear. If someone lobbed on the farm and wanted to work on the farm, we would not really care too much about what knowledge they had brought. We want to actually show them what they have to do and guide them through it. It would be a fairly simple task. Yet you could have someone arrive on the farm who has perhaps been to agricultural college and has had all the boxes ticked and they have done everything, but once again, the old farmer is going to sort of discredit a lot of that and say: ‘That’s well and good, young fellow, but I want to actually show you how to fix this windmill here. I want to show you how this vehicle works. I want to show you how we manage our flocks and our herds’, and begrudgingly they may then gain some respect for the knowledge that this young tacker may bring.
Now, that is the problem we have. It is that interface between industry and the training that is provided to industry. Industry is so busy in industry, it does not understand education. There is a natural suspicion of what education can actually deliver. What would they really know about what my needs really are? They do not really know. And I know what I am talking about because I have been in both places, one being a farmer and one being a teacher. I can clearly understand when I walk around with, say, business associations and speak to those in industry, I am constantly having to get them to understand that trainers and educators do have some understanding of the other side of the equation.
But, nonetheless, I would have to agree with industry that the driver, the engine, the thing that should pull this whole thing and exert the greatest influence on training should be industry. It should be, has to be, otherwise the exercise becomes an exercise in itself to satisfy bureaucratic intent and then the whole thing gets lost. Industry loses faith in what is being provided to them. That is why I have to say that the orientation must be very strongly with industry; that must bear the strongest voice in this.
For that reason, I do have concerns. Acknowledging the under-funding of the ITABS, I would ask the minister to please reassure me and this constituency how this mechanism will improve the message or the information coming from industry. I am sure, minister, you would agree that it is industry that must drive this; that is the reason why this whole thing is in place.
I, for one, would be most concerned if this became an enterprise in itself and was self-fulfilling and filled with all kinds of endeavours and bureaucratic overlays. What if some poor young character goes into this thing, wanders around, gets boxes ticked, goes from level 1, 2, 3, 4 and is shot out the other end, and is wandering around aimlessly and wondering: ‘What was that I just went through?’. Well, that was called training, son, and you have some paperwork to prove it. You are wandering around the employment market and it does not match in any way – it is completely alien to what industry is requiring. Industry then has to take this person on with these boxes ticked and certificates and then try to add value to their own operation, as well as to take the responsibility for a young apprentice, taking them further down the track and adding to their own industry.
It is that specific area I want to know, because it looks like we have three representatives. One of them, I understand, is from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry. That is okay, but there is one problem: how are those three going to be represented? How are they going to be selected, I should ask. How are they going to be identified? What is the mechanism for identifying who will be those representatives from industry?
I would have to say there is one aspect of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry that needs to be identified, and that is that the Chamber of Commerce and Industry itself provides training. To a degree, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a trainer. So, in that advice it is being offered, not discrediting that they have the capacity to represent industry or commerce, but they also are providers of training.
As we go through the configuration of this advisory committee, we seem to have more weight in the training side than we have in the industry side. I want to make sure that that is really strong. I need to understand how that is going to be achieved, how they are going to be selected, and how industry will be represented. I understand how difficult it is, minister, because I have looked across at the configuration of other boards in other states, and I find they are faced with the same issue: you cannot have every person represented or every industry satisfied.
However, we must make sure that industry is driving this more than the concerns that the union or the special interest groups of a government may bring to bear on training issues. Industry issues must be No 1. Otherwise it does not make sense; we end up confusing those who are involved in training. Sadly, many people do not understand what is going on. The only meaning we will get in this landscape is when the need of the industry is understood; therefore the training makes sense. I go back to my earlier analogy, being World War II – everybody knew what the task was and therefore what the training was - not a good analogy but I have tried to simplify something that is quite complex. In this case, often it is difficult to even understand what the actual need of industry is; it changes and there are conflicting messages.
Another point I need clarified, minister, is that there seems to be some confusion in industry as to how this was arrived at. Really, this is the question: what level of consultation was entered into with business and industry with regard to this change? How many ITABs were actually involved in the consultation that was required to come up with this change? It appears to me that there was very little contribution from industry to this change of direction. Now, if that is the case, that strengthens my concern with regards to meaning in this whole enterprise. Meaning is given by understanding what the task is. What are you training? You are training for a purpose, and the purpose must be understood and you cannot understand that purpose unless industry’s voice is paramount.
I would like also, minister, in your closing reply, to have an understanding of how the members themselves will actually be selected. What is the mechanism? What would be the check list? What are the sort of things that you would be looking for, presuming that you would be the one selecting? I just want to get an understanding of the sorts of things that you are actually looking for. What is the task that you see this machine to be achieving?
Could you also, in reply, give an indication as to acknowledging the shortfall in funding of the ITABs and acknowledging the need for industry’s voice to be heard very strongly in this whole area, and how then will the shortfall in funding be addressed and responded to by the Territory government? With those comments, and seeking responses to those, minister, the opposition is prepared to support this legislation.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Speaker, first I would to thank the minister for the briefing I received on this amendment to the Northern Territory Employment and Training Authority Act. The member for Blain has put clearly certain concerns that one can legitimately put to the government about this act. I support the broadening of the board, but I have a couple of small points that I think the member for Blain has also raised.
The board has 13 members on it and when you do the additions in theory, eight of those members will come from industry. But that is only if, under (9)(f), the three persons, each of whom is resident in a regional centre or community outside the major centres of Darwin and Palmerston, come from industry. My question to the minister is: how could one be sure that those people will be representative of industry? In other words, can something be put into this act which ensures that that will actually happen? I believe what the member for Blain was trying to say, of course, that industry has to drive this because this is the very reason it exists. So that needs to be covered.
I had one other query, and there might be quite a simple answer to it. A number of these nominations have the clause written under them that: ‘…whose nomination is accepted by the minister’, and some do not have that. Take, for example, ‘9(d) One person with expertise as a vocational educational practitioner’. Why, for instance, shouldn’t that also be a nomination accepted by the minister, or could I have it in reverse? If that person doesn’t have to be a nomination accepted by the minister, then perhaps why should the person from the Trades and Labour Council or the Chamber of Commerce and Industry not just have their nomination accepted forthwith and not have to go through the minister?
So they are a couple of questions I had. Basically, I agree with it. Madam Speaker, I would like to make some more comments when the minister puts his ministerial statement through this afternoon on employment and training.
Mr McADAM (Barkly): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the amendments as proposed by the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, the Honourable Syd Stirling, in respect of the Northern Territory Employment and Training Authority Amendment Bill 2002 (Serial 71), and the Northern Territory Employment and Training Authority (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2002 (Serial 72).
Clearly the crux of the amendments proposed by the minister is to ensure that there is a broader and more equitable representation on the proposed Northern Territory Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training. For too long the previous CLP administration operated in a vacuum, ignoring the real aspirations of people living outside the two major centres in respect of training and employment opportunities. In doing so, many opportunities have been squandered at the expense of people’s hopes and aspirations in securing jobs - gainful jobs; jobs that provide security for all people in the Territory. I am particularly pleased that a representative from the Northern Territory Chamber of Commerce and Industry will be appointed as it is vital that the private sector and business provide a strategic input to the development of training outcomes leading to jobs. I trust also that favourable consideration will be given to the pastoral, mining and tourist industries in respect of, perhaps, some of the other appointments.
The indigenous community is a critical area where we must make real inroads in respect of jobs, particularly in the construction industry, essential services and, not least, the tourist, pastoral and mining industries. I am pleased to see provision for three representatives from the regions who reside outside of Darwin and Palmerston, a decision long overdue, and I congratulate the minister for this initiative.
We as a government also have a responsibility to ensure that we grow our local young people to secure jobs here in the Territory. Of course, in the short to medium term it will be difficult, but it is incumbent upon all of us in this House to encourage and support the new members of the Northern Territory Ministerial Board for Employment and Training. Madam Speaker, I support and commend the bills to the House.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Arafura): Madam Speaker, the crisis in Aboriginal education in the Northern Territory outlined in Bob Collins’ Learning Lessons report extends to vocational training and …
Ms Carter: A great CLP initiative.
Ms SCRYMGOUR: Sorry? Gee, she’s awake!
… vocational training and adult community education. The problem is twofold. First, there is the difficulty of identifying industries in which vocational training and adult community education can constitute a meaningful and viable path to real employment for young people in bush communities. Old skills such as those acquired by previous generations in the pastoral industry have, in most areas, become a dead end. Remote and often poorly resourced communities have few economic opportunities available to them.
The other problem is that even when an economic enterprise is found that is culturally and environmentally appropriate and capable of paying its own way without perpetual government grant assistance, young Aboriginal people from bush communities frequently do not have a sufficient education foundation on which to create long term local jobs. This crisis requires urgent government action and input.
The former training system was not capable of addressing the crisis for a number of reasons. By contrast, I would expect that the new Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training will have a significant focus on indigenous vocational training and adult community education, and will be able to provide the minister with direct and unhedged advice. This should hopefully translate into relevant training programs and large scale increases in employment for remote area Aboriginal people.
To put it simply, it is a proven fact that if we improve literacy rates we will see, over time, improvements in health outcomes. Madam Speaker, I commend the minister’s development and establishment of a Ministerial Advisory Board whose membership will consist of a nominated representative of ATSIC, and regional representation and goes beyond Darwin and Palmerston, the Trades and Labour Council, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Commonwealth.
The makeup of the board is ensuring that all stakeholders critical to successful outcomes in the employment and education sector will be able to advise and recommend directly to the minister on proposals and strategies to create the basis for a sustainable future for the Territory. I commend the bills to the House.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, I thank the members for Blain, Nelson, Barkly and Arafura for their supportive input on this debate. I cannot let the contribution from the member for Port Darwin go unnoticed when she has the temerity to suggest that Collins was a CLP initiative, warmly received by the former Chief Minister, one Denis Burke, when it was received, never be heard of again in this House.
The only time Collins got on the floor of this Chamber was when my colleague, the member for Stuart, Question Time after Question Time, drilled the then Minister for Education, Lugg, about what he was doing with Collins and what we learned Question Time after Question Time, sittings after sittings, the answer was: very little indeed. You have the temerity to come in here and say this was a CLP initiative. Shame on you because you know better!
Ms Carter interjecting.
Mr STIRLING: You know better than to mislead people with nonsense, absolute nonsense like that. You are a hypocrite of the first order. We have put Collins in place despite the fact you left it on the shelf gathering cobwebs for two and a half years. It is a disgrace to you all, to you and your colleagues, that that was the case. I do not want to be dissuaded from the positives that came out of this debate, but I will not accept hypocrisy from people like the member for Port Darwin in relation to fact and history. The member for Stuart well knows because he was the one - and credit to him – who, sittings after sittings, kept the dream of Collins alive when all you people wanted to do was bury it and forget it because it was going to cost you money and it was about blackfellas and that is why you were not interested. That is why you guys did not get into it, because it was about Aborigines.
Madam Speaker, going to some of the issues the member for Blain raised. I thank him for his contribution because it was considered and he roamed around a little bit but I want to pick up on some of the points he made because I think they were interesting and it was a genuine contribution to this debate. He is a person in this Chamber who has a real and professional interest in matters education and training generally. But I just want to straighten him out on the first point. The bill in itself has nothing to do with the - he referred to the Industry Training Advisory Boards, the Training Advisory Councils, and whether or not the Commonwealth is continuing to fund. We are down the tubes for about $947 000-odd as a result of a Commonwealth decision to continue to fund these Training Advisory Councils. I certainly have a difficult task, and a series of options yet to come before me, so I cannot answer your question to what happens beyond December at this stage. But we have a view, we treasure the system as it is and the role that the Training Advisory Councils play in gathering advice and information from the business world, from industry and feeding it in to the Employment and Training division of the Department of Employment, Education and Training, and that will not change. Well, I hope it will not change. We have to look at ways, we have to look at clever ways of how we continue that role in the wake of the Commonwealth withdrawal of their funding. So, in that sense the bill is not related.
If I go to the heart of the bill, it is this: the former board or council of the Employment and Training Board was in fact a policy and directional body not even to advise the minister, but to set the policy direction for government. Now, that was a position that the former government had and maintained; it is a very different position from the one we have. We say that myself as minister in this government will set policy and set direction in relation to employment and training matters. But we see the value, and want to continue the role of the Employment and Training Board in an advisory capacity, in addition, of course, to the role that the Training Advisory Councils make.
I accept the points that the member for Blain has to make about business and industry and how they have input, but it is not the sole level of input that you can rely on because often small business, and I think you made the point, are busy in their day-to-day role and are not the best people to advise. If you go to a small business person and ask: ‘Where do you think your business is going to be in five years time?’, they will probably have - three, four, or five years time - a fairly clear picture and be able to explain that. ‘Where do you think your industry is going to be in three, four, or five years time?’, not so clear. That is no criticism; that is a role and a function of small business.
So there need to be other ways that you can tap what direction things are heading in, how industries are shaping up and try to get a picture of what the needs will be, not just now, in six months, but for the longer term ahead because you need that valuable lead time in order to get in place the strategies you are going to need to meet the emerging needs in this whole training area.
Let us take this bill and what it is doing away from the question of the Training Advisory Councils because they are not related.
In answer to a couple of points that the shadow minister made in relation to World War II, I agree with him in the sense of community expectation, and understanding and knowledge of where Australia was headed and what it needed to do as a country. But if we go to pre- and during World War II - and certainly pre- World War - Australia was one of the innovators, and one of the first in the movie industry; not a fact well recognised. Some of the first movies ever made were made in Australia pre-war - well before World War II.
During World War II, we had a very strong aircraft manufacturing industry. We were one of the very early innovators in the first moves in the computer industry. Again, not well known. I think it is a tragedy that Australia, under the Menzies government, let all that expertise and innovation that was occurring in Australia up until then, be lost to the point where, when we tried to re-introduce an aircraft industry with the infamous Nomad, it was disaster. Yet, some 40 years earlier, we were world leaders in all of those areas.
In relation to where training sat in that, I think the classic post-World War II example is the Snowy River Scheme. It was a magnificent scheme, but no training. They scoured Europe and it was all immigrant labour - and highly skilled immigrant labour - that came and performed that work. They, of course, stayed on and contributed to Australia in so many ways as we know they did. However, it was not through vision and training and skilling Australia at that time; it was all immigration. They were years of sadly lost opportunities when Australia relied on wool, iron ore and coal and did not look beyond those primary industries and export industries that could keep Australia going, even though we had made a mark in so many areas.
In relation to the point of the consultative process: about October, November last year, we began that process. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Training Advisory Councils themselves are talking to industry and business about what we wanted to do and how it should shape up. So, there was considerable consultation and I have met with each of the Training Advisory Councils over the time I have been minister responsible. We collapsed the department; I brought the department into being, and this has always been an issue of where we were going in this sense. So there has been plenty of talk about it.
I agree with the shadow minister when he made the point that there is not a lot of understanding about employment and training in terms of what it can do and what it cannot do, what the rules are, and how the division can assist. To that end, we will be looking at regional seminars or forums to take place in Business Month, October of this year. They will be held in each Territory centre and we would encourage, support and facilitate where we can, representation from the regions supported by those centres. The first part of those forums will be a straight-up explanation of what Employment and Training Division can do in terms of support for trainees and apprentices, and the programs that it runs. That is straight-up marketing, but directed to the users.
Of course, they are there to listen to the voice of industry, where the shortfalls and deficiencies are because often it is a lack of understanding of what the department can do, rather than actual. I am not convinced that the system is perfect; it never is. There will always be room for improvement. So it is essentially a two-way exchange of information. The department will be out there saying: ‘This is what we can do’, and industry will be saying: ‘What about this?’, or ‘Why can’t you do this?’, or whatever.
I would expect that coming out of that - because that is really just a first touch-base face to face in the regions - we would look to an ongoing form of marketing and advertising because I think there are real problems in terms of understanding just what they can do.
The process of nomination: once this bill has been signed off by the Administrator, we will advertise for nominations against all of the 13 positions. I have had direct representation from industry – the Cattlemen’s Association, for one - who came to see me and say: ‘Well, where do we fit in? How do we get a voice because the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t cover us?’
I pick up on what the member for Nelson was saying in relation to ensuring the broadest possible representation because it is not in the bill. Well, if you put it in the bill, you are locked in, and you are certain then to miss out on other sectors depending on what you put in the bill and what is left out. I think that myself as minister has to be most mindful because it is ministerial nomination. We call for nominations, and then it is a ministerial appointment to the advisory board. Foremost in my mind, when I work through with advice from the department, will be that question of the broadest possible representation within the 13 positions. I give you that assurance.
The reason it is not in the bill is because it would then be so prescriptive - you know, with only 13 positions, some sectors are going to be left out. They will still of course have their Training Advisory Council to which to make representation; they will still, surely, have access with 13 members of the Advisory Board across the Territory, to either the Training Advisory Council or access to an Advisory Board member directly. I will be particularly careful, I would suggest, in making those nominations to ensure that the broadest possible industry and business representation is there.
I thank the members for Arafura and Barkly for their supportive comments. There is a lot of work to do in terms of the regions because generally the urban areas, because of their proximity and the ease that they have in access to the division and the department, it is those outlying areas that sometimes suffer more from the lack of understanding and the inability to get direct answers. That is why we see, again, the representation question as important, but we also see the marketing and the regional forums that will take place in October as critically important. I thank members for their support.
Motion agreed to; bills read a second time.
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that the bills be now read a third time.
Motion agreed to; bills read a third time.
LEGAL PRACTITIONERS AMENDMENT (MORTGAGE PRACTICES) BILL
(Serial 70)
(Serial 70)
Continued from 20 June 2002
Mr MALEY (Goyder): Madam Speaker, the opposition, having considered the bill and discussed the proposed amendment and some of the consequential amendments with members of the Northern Territory Law Society as well as practitioners, will support the proposed amendment.
Access to justice is crucial to the health of a vibrant community. The services which the Darwin Community Legal Service provide should be commended and supported. The legal profession provides an enormous amount of support to the service at no cost to the community and at the very least, we as a community or representatives of that community should do all that we can to create a more certain framework within which these volunteers can operate.
As the Attorney-General quite properly said in his second reading speech on Thursday 20 June 2002, the aim of the bill is really to provide a more certain legal framework covering the operations of community legal centres and the legal practitioners who provide legal services from those centres. Having regard to the content of the legislation and the very beneficial way it will assist the community, the opposition will support the amendment.
Mr McADAM (Barkly): Madam Speaker, I will be reasonably brief. I speak in support of the Legal Practitioners Amendment (Mortgage Practices) Bill 2002 (Serial 70). As the Justice minister has already outlined, these amendments protect the consumer from entering into arrangements with legal practitioners who are conducting mortgage broking and/or investment purposes. Equally, it gives protection the legal practitioner in respect of the same.
One of the important components of this bill is that it requires solicitors to take out fidelity insurance in the evident of a rort perpetrated upon the client, and also effectively follows that the solicitor is required to insure on the open market as opposed to the call on the Legal Practitioners Fidelity Fund of the Northern Territory by the client. This proposed bill makes it mandatory for the practicing solicitor to inform the Northern Territory Law Society of their attempt to conduct a mortgage practice and/or investment scheme, and for the consumer or client to be fully aware of their rights and obligations.
These amendments are a further sign of our maturing as a territory, and I applaud the Minister for Justice and Attorney-General for responding to the requests of the Northern Territory Law Society in respect of these amendments.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, I commend the innovative approach of the shadow Attorney-General over there speaking to the bill we are not doing. However, I am assuming that you also support the Mortgage Practices Bill, which is the one before us at the moment. We all have our bad days.
The purpose of this bill, as was stated in the second reading speech, is simply to provide that the increasing practice of legal practitioners handling mortgage investments on behalf of clients does not spill into an undue call on our fidelity fund arrangements in the Northern Territory. There have been cases interstate where quite substantial claims have been made against legal practitioners for either fraudulent or incompetent investments being made on behalf of their clients.
The Legal Practitioners Act makes it very clear as to what the scope of a legal practitioner’s practice is and, in cases where a legal practitioner either based in the Northern Territory or a nationally based law firm operating in the Territory, choose to offer mortgage advice and services to clients, they will be required to take out a separate fidelity fund arrangement to vouch against any claims by their clients for investment that has had a very detrimental effect on the client. It is very important to protect our fidelity fund. It stands roughly at around $5m with a $50 000 cap on claims by clients against legal practitioners. That fund has served us well. We do not want to see a sudden large claim being brought against that fund to destabilise or even render it insolvent. That is the purpose of these amendments.
Madam Speaker, with those few comments in reply, and thanking the member for Barkly for his support, I conclude.
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.
Madam SPEAKER: I will ask the member for Goyder does he wish to make his remarks now?
Mr MALEY (Goyder): Madam Speaker, I apologise for that mix up. If I could perhaps walk through the comments I anticipated originally before that confusion.
The opposition supports this bill. The operation of and the claims that have occurred against the fidelity fund in other jurisdictions has caused some real concern. Lawyers conducting financial services, though it is not a big issue in the Northern Territory, these proposed amendments will be bring the Territory back into line and in accord with what is occurring interstate.
The Law Society effectively requested that the amendments be made to the Legal Practitioners Act and the government of the day is quite properly enshrining into legislation that quite reasonable request. The opposition supports the legislation.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
LEGAL PRACTITIONERS AMENDMENT (COMMUNITY LEGAL CENTRES) BILL
(Serial 78)
(Serial 78)
Continued from 20 June 2002.
Dr Toyne: Have another go.
Mr MALEY (Goyder): Take two, Madam Speaker.
Rather than just relying on what I said a few moments ago, I repeat that the opposition does support this bill. We have spoken to legal practitioners and some of the lawyers who work at the Darwin Community Legal Service. The bill, as the Attorney-General quite rightly said, I think it was also on 20 June, the bill creates a more certain legal framework covering the operations of community legal centres and the legal practitioners who provide those legal services.
The Darwin Community Legal Service should be commended for the work that it has done, and supported in such a way. Anything that the community can do through its representatives in parliament to assist them in providing that service should be supported and commended. The opposition supports the bill.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Arafura): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the Legal Practitioners Amendment (Community Legal Centres) Bill 2002.
Community legal centres in the Territory, like elsewhere in Australia, were an urban phenomenon that did not mean much for my constituents out bush. There were other bodies that were, and still are, playing their own roles, those being Aboriginal organisations that, out of habit, I would not class as community legal centres, although they may now be covered by the definition of that term in the new section 135XB that is to be inserted into the Legal Practitioners Act by the bill we are discussing.
The established Aboriginal Legal Service, NAALAS, appeared for individuals charged with criminal offences and provided some civil law assistance and advice. The Northern Land Council gave some limited legal advice/support to bush community based organisations, at least when there was some link to land business. A problem that had emerged over time was that victims of crime who suffered an injury as a result of an offence committed in their remote communities of residence were not able to seek advice from NAALAS in relation to an application under the Crimes (Victims Assistance) Act. This was because NAALAS would already be acting for the person charged with the offence and would have a conflict in trying to act for the victim as well.
The Top End Women’s Legal Service was established in the second half of the 1990s and has attempted to represent Aboriginal women injured as a result of their being the victim of crime in remote communities, in the Arafura electorate as well as a lot of bush electorates. Representing bush clients in relation to CVA applications is not an attractive proposition for most private legal firms owing to a combination of factors, the first being the cultural and language barriers and the difficulties of geographical remoteness and poor communications facilities that in most cases require the lawyer to spend more time obtaining information and instructions than would be required in relation to an application pursued for an non-Aboriginal client in town. Second, the inability of most bush Aboriginal clients to pay or contribute to the payment of disbursements. Third, in CVA application cases the lawyer can only be paid a court-approved amount and can only be paid this money at the end of the case.
The provisions in the bill relating to practicing certificates, professional indemnity insurance and the supervising legal practitioners will provide some welcome flexibility that will assist such organisations to maintain their crucial day-to-day operations during times when the availability of senior, more experienced legal practitioners is limited.
Another welcome feature of the bill is that it confirms the ability of community legal centres like the Top End Women’s Legal Service to recover costs when it has successfully represented Aboriginal women in relation to CVA applications. The general law in Australia is that legal costs will not be awarded unless it can be established that the successful party is legally obligated to pay legal fees to his or her lawyer. That obligation is usually a fiction when it comes to poor people represented by non-profit legal organisations.
However, there are some good reasons why organisations like the Top End Women’s Legal Service should be allowed to recover the usual amount of legal costs at the completion of successful CVA applications. One of those plausible reasons is that the money awarded constitutes a useful and well-earned supplement to the grant funding which maintains the organisation, and enables it to secure at least some measure of financial independence. The additional funds will, of course, be applied in furtherance of the organisation’s non-profit objectives.
I commend the bill to the House.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, I thank both the opposition and my own side for the support for this legislation. The central issue in these amendments is: how do you acknowledge and support the operation of our community legal centres which, as the member for Arafura has quite rightly pointed out, do take legal services out to people who would find the conventional form of seeking legal advice probably out of reach financially, if not out of reach geographically because in many cases there is not ready access to legal services in the more remote areas of the Territory. Community legal centres do play a very important role in broadening the support base for people in the Northern Territory to access legal advice and support.
On the other hand, the bill has struck a balance between the extension of the context in which legal practitioners can carry out their work and the need to maintain the professional standards of practice. Both of these are embodied in the amendments we are bringing forward today. They provide for legal practitioners involved in community legal centres to be bound to the same standards of legal practice as a lawyer would be in any other context of practice in the Northern Territory.
I think this is an overdue reform. I was quite surprised that the Legal Practitioners Act did not have an existing set of provisions specifically referring to community legal centres and their particular aims and objectives in terms of legal practice. That will now be fixed; we will now have a system which allows us to support such bodies at the same time as maintaining their professional standard of practice.
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.
MOTION –
Note Statement - Economic Development Strategy: Building a Better Territory
Note Statement - Economic Development Strategy: Building a Better Territory
Continued from 18 June 2002.
Mr HENDERSON (Business, Industry and Resource Development): Madam Speaker, I rise today to make a statement on the importance to the Northern Territory of the government’s economic development strategy, Building a Better Territory.
The economic development strategy which this government released in June is the Territory’s blueprint for building a dynamic, innovative and attractive economy. This should be an economy characterised by government working in partnership with business and industry, and one in which each person shares in the prosperity of the Territory.
In announcing this strategy, the Chief Minister made reference to the enormous achievements of the Territory since self-government and acknowledged the previous government’s role. This strategy is looking forward and aims to build upon the success of the past to achieve a central outcome that I believe every member of this Assembly seeks. That outcome is a prosperous Northern Territory which will be seen as a more attractive place in which to work and live, and a place that can provide long term employment opportunities for our children far into the future.
The strategy evolved from the Economic Development Summit held in October last year. This summit was in itself a watershed event for the Territory, where government brought together representatives from the various sectors of the economy to debate and start designing our future. It is worth noting the broad representation of the summit by people attending from the regions, from employer and employee groups, from the business and not-for-profit sectors and also from cultural and indigenous groups.
We all have concern for our future. It is fitting that the government ensures that we all have an opportunity to participate in its design. The summit proved an invaluable event from which government received the views and ideas of the community and those views and ideas were used to construct the cornerstones of the strategy. Other collaborative initiatives such as the Business Round Table have also contributed to the content of this strategy.
The strategy was born out of cooperation and consultation. Its development represents a partnership involving government, business, defence, unions, academics, indigenous Territorians and other important elements of our community. The way in which this strategy was prepared and is being implemented is a good working example of this government’s commitment to working in partnership with the various sectors of our community, particularly those in business and industry, to grow the Territory’s economy.
The government recognises how important the business and industry sectors are in relation to the strategy. The strategy acknowledges the core industries of mining, minerals processing, tourism, primary industries and fisheries that have for some time delivered prosperity to the Territory and which offer great promise for future development. It also identifies the emerging industries that we wish to nurture in order to diversify our economy. Industry such as gas manufacturing, trade and investment, information technology and innovation will all greatly contribute to our future growth.
The strategy provides a focus on the Territory’s economic drivers: transport, infrastructure and land use which are crucial elements of our economic and social development. The government’s commitment to regional development and to strong indigenous economic development, which are every bit as important as our economic diversification, is underscored by this strategy. It sets out the commitment that the government has to make over forthcoming years to create an environment which is conducive to job creation and business growth.
The agencies for which I am responsible will be catalysts for achieving some of the economic development outcomes that we seek. The Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development has prime carriage of providing support to the core industries of mining and minerals processing, primary industries and fisheries, and to the emerging industries engaged in investment and trade. This agency will also undertake a number of the priority actions set out in the Business Environment and Growth segment of the strategy which seeks to position the Northern Territory as Australia’s Asian Gateway. My department has included within its business planning processes the priority actions set out in the strategy for which it is responsible.
Progress can be seen in a number of areas already and in some areas, outcomes have been achieved, even in this short period. For example, sectoral plans for each primary industry have been drafted for my consideration following consultation with industry and other stakeholders. I have recently approved a submission to put in place the Northern Territory Fisheries Forum which will address stakeholder interests and access to fisheries resources. The work of the Indigenous Mining and Enterprise Task Force is now seen as the national model in this area. The review of the Territory Business Centre model to ensure its continuing relevance and usefulness to small business has been completed and I look forward to receiving the report from that review in the near future.
A business case manager approach to small business is currently being introduced that will reduce red tape and significantly improve the way business does business with the government. An International Trade Strategy Discussion Paper has been released for comment and further input from NT business, industry and the wider community.
Turning to other of my portfolio responsibilities, tourism is the largest employing industry. In 2001, it contributed $1.9bn directly and indirectly to the Territory economy. As such it is rightly acknowledged as a core industry in the EDS. It is important that tourism continues to grow to assist Territory development. A key approach that this government will take is to refine and refocus tourism for this growth. For the first time, the Northern Territory Tourist Commission is developing an extensive strategic plan in consultation with the local tourism industry.
The Northern Territory Tourism Five Year Strategic Plan to be released next October will provide a framework for increasing visitor yield and length of stay. It will highlight key strategies that will assist us to meet these aims including an analysis of markets where we should concentrate our marketing activity for maximum benefits in the long term.
Over 40 written submissions were received during the recent consultation process, with many more comments being made directly to the steering committee. I take this opportunity to thank all of those members, industry and community individuals who have contributed to the process. The development of the NT tourism plan dovetails with the work being undertaken at the federal level in developing a 10 year strategic plan for the Australian tourism industry.
This work, both at a federal level and in the Northern Territory, is essential to ensure that this important industry continues to be managed in a structured and sustainable fashion for our future. Madam Speaker, I had the privilege of hosting a function for Joe Hockey, the federal Tourism Minister, in Parliament House last week. I have met Joe Hockey on a number of occasions and commend the federal government for putting in place their review and Minister Hockey’s personal commitment to the strategy the Commonwealth has developed.
We are working closely together, it is a bipartisan push. We do not see politics in this at all. Minister Hockey is doing a great job at the federal level. We are complementing that here and we are working well together as a team. It was great to have him in the Territory for a whole week, so the federal minister is really putting in, and I think that review will bode well for the Northern Territory.
Product and infrastructure development are key areas for this government. The Territory has achieved much in terms of tourism over the past 10 years. Our international visitor numbers continue to trend upwards over the longer term. However, we must continue to expand our product range. We must provide alternatives to key iconic destinations. We must develop new products to suit new consumer groups. We must focus our activities on areas in which the Northern Territory has a competitive advantage, a point of difference, and which offer opportunity that tie in with our key strategies of increasing yield and length of stay.
We have recently seen the return of responsibility for tourism business development and Aboriginal tourism development to the Northern Territory Tourist Commission. This means that one department now has functional responsibility for all tourism development related issues and will allow for greater integration across these areas.
There is exciting work being undertaken in this area including, for the first time, a linkage between infrastructure development and consumer research. This will assist the government to ensure that development that occurs matches visitors’ needs. It assists the government to prioritise development opportunities. Over the past eight months, I have spoken to many operators in the tourism industry. Almost without exception they have raised visitor access as a critical issue and this is a priority area for the government.
I note that this was one of the key outcomes of the Economic Development Summit held last November and features strongly in Building a Better Territory. We are under no misconceptions that it will be a long, hard task to restore aviation capacity lost with the collapse of Ansett Australia, and the rationalisation of the aviation industry globally. However, we will not shirk from this task because it is difficult. A key priority for this government is the development of sustainable aviation services to the Territory.
A second priority is increasing competition in the market place. Considerable work is being undertaken in this area. Building visitor access to the Territory has meant delivering business cases to airlines, both on how they can work with the Northern Territory to build their business and to deliver the economic rationale for introducing new services to this destination. Developing aviation linkages to and from the Territory is a bigger issue than its impact on the tourism industry. It impacts on other key areas of the economic development strategy including freight, defence support and general business traffic including logistics and support for oil and gas projects. Aviation linkages will tap into new opportunities such as the new AustralAsia Railway, providing an integrated transport framework for northern Australia.
Members will be aware of my recent announcement regarding the public-private partnership between the Northern Territory government and the Northern Territory airports. I am pleased to announce that advertising for an Aviation Business Executive position will occur next weekend in the Financial Review on 16 August and the NT News on 17 August. We intend to have our Aviation Business Executive on board by October. This dedicated position will be responsible for implementing the work plan of the Northern Territory Aviation Committee. This partnership is very exciting and indicative of the can-do attitude of this government. It has been well received by the tourism industry.
We have outlined our plans to support development of the tourism industry itself. This involves working in partnership with Northern Territory operators to develop a more professional industry with higher standards. We will continue to make available key tourism trend information and to educate industry on what this information means for them and how it can be used in their business planning.
The government will promote the benefits of accreditation to operators, those being:
- documentation of formal operational and management procedures which can add value and
direction to a tourism business, or any business;
The Northern Territory Tourist Commission supports this aim of government by offering accredited operators expanded opportunities and financial incentives to access its marketing programs and to ensure accredited operators are clearly differentiated in marketing collateral.
Moving on to gas and oil: the Martin government’s vision is that Darwin will be Australia’s fourth gas hub; we are determined to see gas onshore and will not stop until it is achieved. In that regard, the Sunrise joint venture is currently undertaking an evaluation of domestic gas, the domgas option –v- floating LNG, and this review is due by October this year.
There has been significant action by the Martin government in furthering the national interest campaign to bring Sunrise gas to shore, including meetings with the Prime Minister, the Federal Minister for Resources, Ian Macfarlane, and a number of other key ministers as well as meetings with the CEOs of joint venture partners Shell, Woodside and Phillips Petroleum.
Team NT was established as a bipartisan group of supporters which includes the government, opposition, business, indigenous and community groups. I take this opportunity to commend the business community which has worked hard to open doors in Canberra and enhance awareness amongst key industry groups around Australia. In particular, I again pay tribute to the work of Bruce Fadelli and Dave Malone for the enormous effort that they have put in. I believe that their effort has certainly complemented the work the government has been doing. From media reports that we are reading now in terms of the level of activity and lobbying by the business community in Australia, industry groups and associations are certainly paying testament to the work that our community has done here in the Northern Territory to advance the national interest argument.
Meetings have also been held in July with 16 potential domestic gas customers in Sydney, and with 18 national industry associations in Canberra, eliciting strong support for the Territory’s campaign from organisations such as the Australian Pipeline Industry and MIM. Negotiations with Phillips Petroleum are underway for the provision of infrastructure at Wickham Point. Port and associated infrastructure studies have commenced with KPMG for the Glyde Point industrial estate. I note also that a Territory government representative is on the negotiating team for a new Timor Sea Treaty.
Moving on to the AustralAsia trade route: railway completion is now expected in late 2003, some months ahead of schedule. However, as I said this morning, we still have a couple of Wet Seasons to go, with full operations commencing in early 2004 once commissioning is completed. Leveraging off this leading edge infrastructure, opportunities exist for Darwin to develop as a significant supply, service and distribution centre in the region, creating new employment and business opportunities.
The government has been, and is continuing to build a strategic alliance with Freightlink, the operating arm of the rail consortium. As evidence of this partnership, Freightlink and officials from the Office of Territory Development and the Darwin Port Corporation jointly interviewed major Australian and Asian importers and exporters at a logistic summit held in Perth in June this year. These face to face interviews highlighted opportunities for some of these importers and exporters to move their trade via Darwin and, importantly, for some of these companies to establish value-adding operations in Darwin. These value-added initiatives include pre-retail preparation centres for garments and footwear importers, computer assembly operations, timber fumigation operations, and food processing and repackaging operations for selected Australian exporters.
Opportunities also exist for the movement of substantial quantities of processed mineral products from South Australia to Darwin for export by sea north to Asia and elsewhere. Companies interviewed include large metal exporters, the major automotive companies, national footwear and clothing importers, multinational chemical companies, and global food suppliers. Freightlink is working closely with the Territory’s major freight forwarders for the transfer of significant amounts of domestic freight from road to rail. The Territory is also working closely with South Australia on increasing the volumes of freight along the corridor that are of interest to both governments and the railway operator. This includes an examination of South Australian exports that could be shipped via Darwin, and possibly value-added to in Darwin.
The Office of Territory Development is also addressing another commitment in Building a Better Territory by developing an Investment Attraction Strategy in conjunction with the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development. A working party is looking at Darwin’s competitive advantage, key sectors to target, and marketing and promotional opportunities.
In conclusion, sustainable economic growth and the quality of life and employment it generates will assure the Territory’s prosperity, and this strategy, Building a Better Territory, is the blueprint for that outcome.
Mr MALEY (Goyder): Madam Speaker, the development of a strategy is, of course, a fundamental first step. The strategy will form the basis upon which real development and change can occur. However, at the end of the day, it is about doing more than just talking. If an objective observer was to look at what the strategy of this Labor government is, they would not only look at the written words as contained in the economic development strategy as articulated by the member for Fannie Bay, they may listen to the transcript of what the member for Wanguri said. Ultimately, however, the objective observer would also look at what has occurred, and really the proof is in what has occurred over the last year. If you ask business …
Mr Henderson: 4500 new jobs is not bad.
Mr MALEY: I will pick up on that interjection. If you ask business how this strategy which the member for Wanguri has harped upon, is helping on a practical level, the only objective things that have occurred in terms of government strategy is that we have had the introduction of two new taxes. There is the new registration tax, the HIH levy. There were a number of recommendations …
Mr Ah Kit: Stop talking business down.
Mr MALEY: So these are real practical things which the new government has done. There was an Economic Development Summit and the government should be commended for listening to business. It was certainly supported by the opposition. But I recall that one of the important recommendations from that Economic Development Summit was to fast-track the development of the Wharf Precinct to fill this gap between the railway and the construction of this gas infrastructure.
The response to that quite reasonable recommendation was to postpone the whole project for 12 months. This is the minister for industry and business’ response to the recommendations by business. We have heard about all the usual feel-good and motherhood statements. We have comments about developing Aboriginal land by Aboriginal people and organisations; all these things should be commended and encouraged. However, there is no serious commitment from this government to review the Aboriginal Land Rights Act; there is no serious commitment by this government to look at putting in place structures to allow these Territorians the rights to develop their land, their prosperity.
An objective observer could not be criticised for saying that the Labor government simply has no vision. An example of that, and I will pick up on what the member for Wanguri said. He talked about hosting Joe Hockey. This is an example of how they conduct themselves …
Mr Ah Kit: You don’t like Joe Hockey? He’s on your side.
Mr MALEY: Here we have the no-vision, no-substance Labor government inviting the federal minister to a cocktail function. The member for Wanguri says he made …
Members: Minister! Minister!
Mr MALEY: The member for Wanguri has invited the minister to this cocktail function and comes before this House and articulates what fantastic progress he made. Members of the opposition on that day took that same federal minister out to some Territory tours and sights, we introduced him to tourism operators. We showed him and let him speak to people on the ground, not just the hollow words and a cocktail party put on by the champagne socialists sitting opposite, but for a real practical effect. There was some important feedback …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! The member for Goyder has the floor.
Mr MALEY: Madam Speaker, the contribution by the member for Wanguri is of very little substance. Apart from reading a prepared speech by a third party, there was no real attempt to set out a strategy to address some of the issues which are affecting business in the Northern Territory.
Well might he talk about the can-do attitude which Territorians certainly do have and what business certainly has, but the only attitude that seems to be coming from this government is a we-wouldn’t-mind-talking-about-it type attitude. Many of these summits and round table conferences might afford fantastic opportunities for the media, and the government can release the usual numbers of press releases, but ultimately, this government is simply not delivering on the feedback and the recommendations which business is giving the government.
Madam Speaker, if you walk down Cavenagh Street, if you walk down the Mall, you will see that there are empty shops and people are genuinely doing it tough. Territorians are entitled to expect this government to do a little more than just talking.
Mr AH KIT (Community Development): Madam Speaker, I rise to support the statement of the Treasurer, Building a Better Territory, with a sense of real satisfaction that we now have a strategy that is not only far sighted and visionary, but will lead to sustainable and sensible growth as well.
There have been other strategies, but this one for me is unique; this one takes proper account of the needs of the indigenous population and its value to the growth of the Territory not as a sideline, an added extra, but as a part of the whole community.
The primary strategy will be to ensure that indigenous Territorians have the option of participation in economic development through better social infrastructure and services, and that they are also assisted to utilise their considerable land resource as a base for a sustainable future independent of welfare. This will involve working with land owners, the Indigenous Land Corporation, ATSIC and, most importantly, the land councils to open up the possibilities that exist for development on land owned by indigenous people. Considerable progress has already been made in this area.
In just a year, we have put behind us the legacy of 27 years of antagonism, conflict and distrust. We have changed the environment from the obstructive and destructive culture of the past to one which is constructive; where partnerships are the name of the game and where there is a recognition that all Territorians have a legitimate stake in the future.
There is a long way to go. Fundamental and sustainable change in this area does not happen overnight. Work at the moment is concentrated on reaching agreements with the land councils, traditional owners and other Aboriginal representative organisations on issues that the government considers to be pivotal in opening the way for sustainable development on Aboriginal land.
This work will come to fruition over time in the settlement of Native Title claims. The settlement of Kenbi, the development of a land use interest register along with continuing facilitation and extension of activity to encourage the growth of the fishing, tourism, pastoral and horticultural industries on Aboriginal land.
In a statement to this House on 7 March, I talked about the need for a new approach to the relationship between the Northern Territory government and indigenous people based on the negotiation of whole-of-government, whole-of-community partnerships, particularly at the regional level. The economic development strategy builds on the approach that is being adopted in our relations with indigenous people and takes it further to provide for the development of the same negotiated partnership approach with regional organisations.
Sustainable regional development occurs when there is a strong level of agreement between important stakeholders about what should be the focus of development. This agreement needs to be based on a realistic view of the strengths and weaknesses of the region, but must also be able to make an innovative approach, searching out areas where the region’s unique factors can achieve best value through utilising regional competitive advantages.
There has been a process of regional development planning in the Territory for some time. It has resulted in the Alice in 10 and Barkly Blueprint regional plans. It is to the credit of those who developed these plans that they are documents of real and lasting value. Alice in 10 will continue to be implemented, and there is a considerable amount of community and government momentum behind its initiatives. The Barkly Blueprint will also be implemented, and the government has already signed off on key initiatives.
We are very keen to ensure there is added impetus and that no opportunity slips through our fingers. To this end, I have approved the allocation of money from the Regional Development Fund to employ a senior officer in Tennant Creek for at least 12 months who will be charged with coordinating and facilitating the implementation of the Blueprint initiatives. The implementation of the Barkly Blueprint will provide an example of the way in which this government will be approaching regional development.
Regional development is not just about the economy. It must also take proper account of the social and environmental needs of the region. In the Barkly, this approach makes a great deal of sense for the coordination of effort and the development of a spirit of cooperation.
I have also provided funding to both the Julalikari Aboriginal Corporation and the Tennant Creek Town Council to assist them to find ways of working more closely together for the people of the Barkly. I am hopeful that the Yapakurlangu ATSIC Regional Council will also be working with these organisations to find innovative ways in which cooperation and coordinated efforts can provide value for everyone in the region.
This approach will also be fostered in other regions. In East Arnhem and Katherine, a start has been made. Work that is specific to economic development approaches will be expanded in a wider range of issues. The planning process has commenced in the Gulf region with a steering committee of community and government stakeholders being formed to oversee the development of a plan, but we will not necessarily wait until formal plans are developed to move on sensible initiatives. In the Gulf, I have allocated resources to ensure that as such initiatives are proposed and developed, action is taken to give them proper consideration within government. There should be no delay in pursuing initiatives that can build more powerful regions.
The approach being taken in this area is one of cooperation and partnership. Partnerships are not simply delivered or subject to government decree, but rather are founded in a negotiated agreement between parties. Just as regional development needs a clear focus for activity, negotiated useful partnerships require the existence of organisations with a legitimate representative role and the capacity and power to speak for the community or region as a whole.
For many regional communities, the first priority is to develop structures that can properly speak for communities and regions, and they must be properly representative. This is the case for the people of Wadeye, or the Port Keats area, where the Thamurrurr local governing body is being developed. Thamurrurr will be incorporated as a new local governing body to represent all land-owning clans at Wadeye. Once established, it will be the vehicle for the negotiation of a partnership agreement with government that will implement, in part at least, a regional development strategy.
I would like to provide a little more detail about the Thamurrurr process and how we are working through it with the community. The Wadeye community, following a long process of discussions culminating in a major meeting in November 2001, decided that its highest priority is its children. The outcome that was identified and has become a motto is: ‘Give every kid a chance’. Working from the central outcome and motto, there are a number of issues that have been identified: governance; housing; land use; land servicing; education, employment and training; economic development; health; law and order; and Centrelink services. These issues will form a key focus of the partnership agreement. It is anticipated that other responsible agencies including Commonwealth agencies are also intended to be partners. It is the intention of the community to have the partnership agreement agreed at a whole-of-community level. This is in response to the government policy thrust towards whole-of-government, whole-of-community approaches.
An agreement on a way of working together is now being discussed throughout the community. Meetings are also being held with outstation groups so that every land-owning group has ownership of the process. An important element of partnership agreements is the continued development of community capacity to negotiate agreements relating to its needs. A grant of $110 000 has been approved to assist in achieving this purpose.
A new government structure is being formed. It will be known as the Thamurrurr Community Council and will take over many responsibilities from the recognised local governing body, Kardu Numida Incorporated and the Murin Association, which is the outstation resource provider. Thamurrurr will be incorporated pursuant to the Northern Territory Local Government Act, and its philosophy is based in Aboriginal law and way of decision making. The scheme is currently being formally prepared by Parliamentary Counsel, and I am told the process should be formalised by November 2002.
The new structure will be based on areas that will be structured on the agreed areas of identified land owner groups. The intention is that the power under the constitution to make such decisions within the power of the new organisation on any matter relating to land or culture will be formally delegated to land owner groups.
There is a recognition amongst some in the community that economic development needs to be a priority. A Regional Economic Development Strategy is currently being developed with funding of $53 000 from the Regional Development Fund. The facilitators are Street Ryan. An additional $42 000 has been provided to this project by the Northern Territory Area Consultative Committee. I hope that this community driven approach is supported by all in this House, and I congratulate officers in my department and the people of the Wadeye region for their approach.
Similar strategies are being pursued in the West Macdonnells through the Wullarra Wolka Proposal, and in Katherine East in the Nyirranggulung-Madrulk-Gadberre Proposal. Progressively, this approach will be expanded. There are barriers to that expansion at the moment. One of these is the capacity of communities and regions to effectively negotiate their needs. It is vitally important to the process that there be the capacity in regions and communities to effectively negotiate. We spent $600 000 last year on capacity building. In the next two years, a further $1.2m is earmarked for building the capacity of communities and regions to allow people to take greater control over their lives and their future.
We are looking towards regional partnership agreements between local governments and the Territory government that give effect to and implement regional development plans which will provide a powerful vehicle for driving regional and indigenous economic development initiatives.
We are charting a new way forward for the Territory’s development that harnesses the power of our indigenous and regional communities. I am deeply committed to seeing that we succeed, but this is just one area of endeavour being undertaken with my portfolio of Community Development.
Other very important work is also underway, from developing Indigenous Knowledge Centres to providing employment incentives to public housing tenants. It is to these other areas of activity that I now wish to turn.
One strategic approach under the economic development strategy is to make affordable and reliable ICT services accessible through promoting innovative technology solutions to address the tyranny of distance. Among the ways that this will be achieved is through promoting the routine use of innovative facilities in remote communities and supporting initiatives to extend such services.
It is with considerable satisfaction that I am able to inform the House about the ongoing development of the indigenous knowledge centres concept in remote communities in the Northern Territory. This government is committed to pursuing Indigenous Knowledge Centres as an alternative to the traditional free-standing public library for remote indigenous communities. More traditional libraries have been important in raising levels of awareness and providing basic service levels to remote communities. However, the phenomenal development of communications networks and information technology together with a gradual defining of the emerging information needs of indigenous communities means that it is the ideal time to look at a new approach. The move toward community-defined services has been triggered by recognition that the developing needs of indigenous communities for information services are unique.
Case studies have shown that libraries form part of a continuum for indigenous communities which includes information and knowledge management. The continuum is important in terms of cultural integrity, economic development and long-term community sustainability. Communities where there is low English literacy, a desire for self-directed governance and a need for accessibility to information which supports the development of culture and economy, are hot houses for the knowledge centres. Just under half of remote communities in the Northern Territory are serviced by a traditional library, and a number of these communities have approached my department looking to explore alternative arrangements to these services.
From the developmental work carried out by my department with communities, the first Indigenous Knowledge Centre is now being funded at Galiwinku, and feasibility studies are extending the concept to other communities and regional centres. The concept of a knowledge centre will vary with different communities placing emphasis on different aspects. However, the concept generally embraces the idea of community access to accumulated knowledge through a variety of technologies including the Internet at a centre for the maintenance of culture. Extensive consultation negotiation with stakeholders is very important in defining the community needs and guiding the nature of knowledge centre development.
The concept moves library services away from the predominantly western concept which is print-based, to indigenous knowledge based on oral/visual traditions. We envisage that knowledge centres will use a range of multimedia technology in the delivery of training information and content creation. The advantage of that technology is it has the potential to deliver traditional library services interactively accommodating some cultural differences.
In addition, the ability to create online content and the provision of materials to remote locations has the potential to build e-commerce through the sharing of indigenous knowledge. $172 700 has been provided for stage one in Galiwinku which will blend the new and old ways of learning by developing special computer touch screen technologies and e-commerce platforms. The community wants to ensure safe transfer for special ceremonial objects so that they can continue teaching Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in ways that ensure that the information is meaningful.
Community members see multimedia technology as helping the knowledge process. By helping to build the capacity of indigenous communities to access information, and by allowing them to take advantage of new opportunities such as e-commerce, knowledge centres will help communities to overcome the tyranny of distance and harness the opportunities for development that the information age will bring.
One of the inherent strengths of this government’s economic development strategy is that not only does it recognise the importance of embracing new technology and the opportunities it presents, it balances this with a need to maintain and build our physical infrastructure also. It recognises that both ends of the spectrum are essential to developing the Territory community and building our economic prosperity.
To ensure high quality client service and maximum efficiency in the use of taxpayer funds, my department, through Territory Housing, is currently looking at ways to improve the maintenance and management of its housing assets. The Maintenance Improvement Project aims to revise maintenance policy, revise service and delivery strategy, improve contract management, develop regional asset management plans, and introduce new asset standards and condition-based assessment for dwellings. The project represents the start of a process that ultimately will see a shift from a predominantly reactive approach to repairs and maintenance on our dwellings to a more planned …
Madam SPEAKER: Minister, your time has expired.
Mr HENDERSON: Madam Speaker, I move an extension of time to allow the minister to conclude his remarks.
Motion agreed to.
Mr AH KIT: Madam Speaker, I won’t be too long.
…a more planned and strategic process that will deliver better outcomes for both clients and government. The project has been underway for some time and key achievements so far include the recruitment of property managers to audit housing maintenance contractors and provide technical advice to tenancy staff and management, and the introduction of new maintenance policies and procedures.
Access to affordable housing is one of the critical factors that supports people functioning effectively in society, but it involves more than just a roof over your head. Access to social support and policies that encourage people to take control of their lives are also a vital part of a public housing program.
Our recently introduced employment incentive scheme for public housing tenants is one such program. The scheme was introduced in February 2002 to make the transition to employment or increasing hours of employment easier and more attractive to public housing tenants. This is done by replacing an immediate step-up in rent when a tenant’s income rises with a gradual increase in rent from the rebated level to market rent where applicable over a six month period. This provides a mechanism to moderate disincentives associated with job seeking, increasing the ability of tenants to become economically independent, in turn contributing to the growth of the Territory.
Growing the Territory is a key aim of our economic development strategy: supporting and developing our tourism industry, building our expertise in tropical living technologies and lifting the profile of the Territory both nationally and internationally are just some of the ways that we can develop new opportunities.
The Territory regularly plays host to a couple of very successful major sporting events that significantly contribute to our economic and social life. The Alice Springs Masters Games and the Arafura Games both bring in large numbers of visitors and provide a vehicle for the promotion of the Territory within Australia and overseas. The Masters Games have become an integral part of the sporting and community life of Central Australia and will continue to be strongly supported by the Martin Labor government. The Arafura Games attract up to 5000 athletes and officials from across Australia and from countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. It creates an economic boost to the local Darwin economy with a conservative economic estimate being that more than $5m was injected into the economy during the eight days of competition during the last games.
The Arafura Games provides an excellent forum for business relationships to be developed and fostered with other countries, and in conjunction with the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development, my department will work to continue to work to maximise these opportunities. This government recognises the value of both the Arafura Games and the Masters Games to the Territory, and will continue to support and build on the opportunities they provide to develop our community, build stronger economic, cultural and sporting ties with our neighbours and showcase the Territory to a wider national and international audience.
Madam Speaker, the Building a Better Territory strategy is not just about the nuts and bolts of economic growth. It recognises the critical importance of social and cultural development in building a more just and equitable society here in the Northern Territory. I commend the Treasurer’s statement to this House.
Members: Hear, hear!
MOTION –
Note Statement - Economic Development Strategy: Building a Better Territory
Note Statement - Economic Development Strategy: Building a Better Territory
Continued from earlier this day.
Mr VATSKALIS (Transport and Infrastructure): Madam Speaker, I rise today to continue the debate on the government’s economic development strategy.
The development of this strategy is unique in the Territory’s history of policy development. Rather than the government and public sector writing a policy that would then be brought down, this policy was written in conjunction with private industry and the people who will be most affected by the policy. I attended a number of workshops with different industries in my particular area. I am aware that every minister of the government did likewise. It is an approach that members opposite should take some heed of. This policy not only reflects the priorities which this government came to power with, but also reflects the desires and needs of the private sector as they themselves see it. It gets in to place real goals and it establishes time lines against which the government can be measured for achievement.
I congratulate the Chief Minister for this initiative which arose from the highly successful Economic Development Summit held late last year. It set into place an approach which will benefit the broader community. This government recognises that it is crucial for the continued prosperity of our citizens that the economy continues to grow.
The Chief Minister has outlined the government’s continued push for gas onshore as the key plan in that core strategy but, by releasing this policy position, she is strongly indicating to the community that economic growth must continue on a range of fronts. That means better planning, more infrastructure and an expansion of the basic building blocks of development – power, water, transport and capital works.
The Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment combines planning and development of the Territory’s economic infrastructure with the need to protect and preserve our natural environment and heritage values for the future of all Territorians. As the providers of infrastructure, transport, planning and environment, my department plays a key role in this government’s vision to build a better Territory. Using the economic development strategy as a road map to direct the future progress on the services I have just mentioned, it is my pleasure to now outline some of my department’s priorities in the coming year.
The department supports public safety through regulation of building construction, provision of public transport facilities, road, rail and marine safety and motor vehicle licensing and registration. The Transport Planning Branch, in collaboration with other transport divisions and branches within my department, is developing a Territory Transport Plan which will be completed in March next year. The timing for completion of this plan fits with major changes of transport in the Territory as a result of the construction of the railway and the completion of the new port infrastructure at East Arm Wharf. The transport plan will be developed in three stages using information gathered from a comprehensive transport review that covers all aspects of transport in the Northern Territory, and a discussion paper that will invite public comment on the overview.
The transport overview will be the most comprehensive document ever prepared on transport in the Territory and will cover aviation, railroad and marine - basically all modes of transport. The overview will consider legislation, the role of its transport mode in regards to transporting people and freight, and the key issues facing transport in the future. The transport overview will also examine multi-modal and regional and urban issues. It is expected that the first draft will completed by the end of this month.
In light of this massive transport overhaul, my department is currently in the process of reviewing the services and systems of the public bus service. In line with this improvement of public transport, improved private hire car, taxi and minibus arrangements will commence from December this year. Regulatory arrangements will be put in place to ensure the Territory has a high quality commercial passenger vehicle industry that provides a good service to all sectors of the community, and to visitors.
With regard to development, in partnership with the private sector, the department carries out major infrastructure developments, including subdivision works, roads and other infrastructure, public buildings and port facilities. In consultation with major industry, community organisations and project proponents, my department is working to develop a long-term Territory infrastructure plan by June 2003. These will be coordinated with social infrastructure needs by developing five year service delivery plans.
Completion of stage two of the East Arm Port is important to meet the needs of the railway and relocation of the fuel terminals. Construction of the new bulk liquids berth at East Arm has commenced. Negotiations on the location of the joint user terminal are proceeding. Programming is in place to provide roads, water and power to the LNG site at Wickham Point to meet Phillips’ requirements for access and commencement of construction. The government’s commitment to establishing the Industrial Land Corporation has been extended to the development of a Land Development Corporation that will also cover commercial and residential development.
This government made an undertaking in the economic development strategy to have the Land Development Corporation operational by June 2003. The land development corporation’s activities are Territory wide and its main aim is to develop and manage industrial, commercial and residential land. The corporation has the responsibility to develop and manage the East Arm development area, including the Trade Development Zone and the proposed industrial estates on the Middle Arm Peninsula and at Glyde Point.
My department is currently working on a consolidated and simplified Territory wide planning scheme that will be introduced by July next year. This is an important underlying building block for the sensible and planned development of the Territory. The amendments to the Planning Act will consolidate and integrate the variety of land use controls into a single, coherent Territory-wide scheme.
The Litchfield Land Use Objectives and planning concepts were placed on public exhibition this year, and the Development Consent Authority received 54 submissions in response. My department is now preparing a report for government’s consideration. The Northern Territory Planning Scheme, as it applies to the city of Palmerston, Litchfield and Coomalie Shires and the wider region will be reviewed and amended to provide for infrastructure development, development assessment and land use control activities within the framework of the Planning Act. Regional land use plans will also be developed for Alice Springs, the Daly Basin and Ti Tree regions next year.
Amendments will be made to the Building Act to include a requirement for builder registration and warranties for home building by June 2003. This will ensure that appropriate buildings are undertaken safely and reliably by reputable builders and developers. Sub-contractors in the building industry will benefit from increased security from amendments to the act. Introduction of indemnity insurance will provide protection to home buyers from unreasonable financial loss due to the non-completion of a residential building project because of the builder’s death, disappearance or insolvency. The development of this proposal with follow a lengthy consultative process and it will impact significantly on the building industry, lenders, insurers and home buyers. Guidelines will be introduced to encourage more energy efficient and environmentally appropriate building design. The Northern Territory has been participating in the development of proposals for the incorporation of energy efficiency measures in the Building Code of Australia. The Australian Building Codes Board released a regulatory proposal and a regulatory assessment that outlines a proposal for incorporation of energy efficient measures in housing. Information sessions were held by my department to promote this change to the building industry and to Territorians.
The department’s functions include responsibility for land use planning and control functions across all urban, rural and remote areas of the Territory. These extend to the consideration of land and water resource assessment, planning and sustainable management.
The Territory is currently working with the Commonwealth government on environmental impact assessments of the Phillips LNG Plant, Sunrise Gas Project, Sunrise FLNG, Tassie Shoal Methanol plant and Brown’s mine proposal at Batchelor. Detailed studies of shoals, water, flora and fauna in key areas of the Territory continue for the development of integrated land use plans.
These activities include mapping and analysing water availability in the Daly River catchment, Sturt Plateau and Darwin regions. In assessing prospective horticultural areas, mapping land resources in the Finniss/Dundee area and the Mary River catchment, and work continues with indigenous land owners to identify opportunities to better utilise natural resources on their land. These include mapping Arnhem Land water resources to help determine availability and use of water supplies, mapping the Tiwi Island land and water resources to aid sustainable use, and mapping the Daly River/ Port Keats area for water use.
In cooperation with all land owners, a more integrated approach to management of bushfires, weeds and feral animals is being developed. The Weed Management Branch and Bushfire Council have been grouped together in my department as part of the Natural Resource Management Division. This will facilitate their role in helping landholders manage fires and weeds as part of holistic best practice natural resource management. The responsibility for feral animal control lies with the Wildlife Management Branch and opportunities to improve the integrated management of these threatening processes are still being explored.
However, a number of immediate actions have been taken, including the integration of extensions and equipment support services between bushfires and weed management, and cross-membership between the Weeds Advisory Committee, Bushfire Council, statutory authorities and the Landcare Council.
To ensure that development does operate within the context of sensible environmental protection, the government is working to strike an important balance that both preserves and conserves our natural resources and allows the growth of sustainable industries. No government wants to pillage the natural resources in our land without any eye to the future health of our community and the world as a whole. The government is moving forward on matters that set that important balance into place.
The Plan of Management for the Darwin Harbour catchment area and a Coastal Management Policy for the Northern Territory is under development. These documents will manage and monitor activities conducted in Darwin Harbour, and provide strategic direction and advice on management of water and land based activities that would affect conservation and recreation. A Plan of Management for Darwin Harbour will be published, and a key element of the plan will be the establishment of a community-based reference group to oversee and report on the development and implementation of the Plan of Management.
An integrated Coastal and Marine Management Policy for the Northern Territory and a Mangrove Protection Policy will be developed to provide protection of our coast, specifically for mangroves in our harbour. The Northern Territory’s coastline contains areas of pristine wilderness and unique pockets of rare ecology. We must protect these areas for future generations and as our contribution to continued improvement of the world’s environment.
I am not a minister who will allow development at all costs. I am well aware that an issue that has been of some concern to people over many years is the development, planning and conservation of areas that are on Aboriginal freehold title land. Unlike the previous government, this government will not be using these issues as a political football. Those days are over.
Over recent weeks, my department and my office have been involved in intense discussion with both the Central Land Council and the Northern Land Council. The substance of these discussion has included economic growth and development for Aboriginal Territorians and the community as a whole. I feel confident in standing here today to say I believe a significant change is occurring in the Territory. Aboriginal people, like every other Territorian, want their kids to have a good education, be healthy and grow up to participate in society. They understand that the land they own is both an important cultural anchor for them, but also a significant economic resource.
My department is attempting to ensure that Aboriginal people are included in the economic action. We will ensure that Aboriginal people have the opportunity to participate in economic growth of the community through land and industry. I feel confident that the negotiations we have been involved in and the change in approach by this government will spell a significant economic step forward for Aboriginal Territorians over the course of this government. This is a step forward for the whole community.
Madam Speaker, the economic development strategy contains a large number of areas relevant to my portfolio. Today I have highlighted only some of those. All the goals we have set ourselves will be achieved. I believe at the point where the policies are implemented, the Northern Territory will be a better and a stronger place.
Mr BALDWIN (Daly): Madam Speaker, I, too, would like to take the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I welcome this strategy Building a Better Territory and acknowledge that, as the Treasurer has, it builds on past successes of business and government in the Northern Territory. Certainly, a lot of this has come out of previous documents such as Foundations for Our Future. That is to be commended because a lot of work is put into those documents with a lot of consultation with all sorts of groups and individuals who had an integral part to play in developing the previous documentation, as I said, Foundations.
There are a whole heap of issues in here, as has been noted by various ministers and my colleagues on this side. I would just like to go through some of them. The minister for infrastructure and planning has said that there are time lines in here and that every one of them will be met. That is good to hear. I would like to run through a few of them during my contribution to the debate and see where they are at and perhaps get an undertaking in the summing-up of this debate from the Treasurer. I will be referring across the document to some of those time lines.
There are a number of big planks to this strategy outlined at the beginning of the document and how it is to be read and all of those sorts of things with a graph there showing how the five major planks blend into Building a Better Territory and that is a reasonable sort of structure to follow. One of those planks deals strongly and at length with improving economic outcomes for indigenous Territorians and I am glad to see that because a lot of work was being done in that area. I want to refer to a specific area of very good work that has been done with very little accolade on the part of those who were doing the work, but it was something that was very dear to my heart because when I was the minister responsible for that department, Aboriginal Development, it was something I implemented that seems to have now been dropped - perhaps the current Minister for Community Development and assisting on Indigenous Affairs might like to make comment to the Chief Minister so that she can follow up on it - and that is the unit that was within OAD that was working on developing enterprises with indigenous communities and individuals.
It was started quite some years ago, probably about four years ago from memory. It was started with a very small group of people within OAD working on it. It was going to be a slow process. There was a model developed for going out to those who requested some help, and it happens right across the Northern Territory, as we know, for people and communities with ideas who need assistance to get through the minefield of bureaucracy and procedure to implement and raise enterprises.
At last count somewhere prior to the election, it is my understanding - and I am only going from memory here - that the unit was working on about 120 business cases, and they were in various stages of progress, obviously, from ones that had just been recent contacts to ones that had been worked on for a number of years. Now, the way it happened was not in isolation of all of the other agencies that are involved in these things, whether they be federal agencies, statutory authorities like land councils and even ATSIC and the Territory agencies. It was a coordinated approach.
From memory, in that period to this day, there have been something like 18 successful businesses that have come out of that program. It appears to me that the program has been dropped or at least deferred or delayed or something. It would be a shame to let all those years of work go. I see the minister shaking his head as if saying: ‘No, that is not right’. Well, I am glad to hear it if that is the case, but….
Mr Ah Kit: We will get the Chief to explain in her wrap up.
Mr BALDWIN: I know that there is no one currently working specifically on those cases, following up on all the work that has been done. It would be a shame to see that work go by the wayside and those people who were in progress in developing enterprises - and these are real enterprises that create real jobs - to be dropped. That is something I would like to see answered in the reply at some future date so that I can satisfy myself that that work is still going on.
I would like to go through a number of questions in here as to time lines and what have you. I would like to highlight a few of these. I notice under the Primary Industry and Fisheries section - and we are getting into the bulk of the document here with time frames - there are all sorts of time lines. The one I am looking at here is to encourage horticultural industry development through management of knowledge, improved industry skills, and land, water and infrastructure availability. The priority actions relating to that strategic approach go like this:
- With industry, prepare and begin to implement strategic plans.
It has for the mango industry and the citrus industry and so on. For the citrus industry, it says July 2002. It also says for the cut flower industry, June 2002. That was to prepare and begin to implement strategic plans which obviously indicates that those plans are finished. There is a question for a start, and one that I would like answered: are those plans done? Are they out there with industry? If they are, that is great; I certainly have not seen it. I have asked around a bit. Perhaps I am asking the wrong people. There is an area that certainly needs looking at.
Likewise:
- Establish best practice for grower groups as a way to increase efficiency with which industry adopts
new technology and information …
and to do that with table grapes by June 2002; the mango industry by August 2002; and the cut flower industry by June 2002. That is obviously very much related.
- Develop new varieties and products to continue growth of existing industries ...
We see that that has to be done for the cut flower industry by July 2002, which obviously has passed. I would be interested to know, in the reply, what varieties that pertains to. Has it happened? Have we developed those new varieties and new products? Particularly in the case of heliconias, which I have had some past dealings with, I know the current collection that was out at the Berrimah Farm is no more. That has been scrapped apparently. There are some quarantine problems with bringing new rhizome material in to this country, so that would be an interesting one to find out: whether we are talking about those sorts of heliconia and ginger varieties and how that is going, and was that completed by July 2002?
Also in the area of primary industries, we are looking at
- Increasing the sustainable production capacity of the Northern Territory pastoral industry…
something that we are all interested in doing and that is paramount to the development of the Northern Territory. The priority action in this case is to encourage more intensive development of land in the Katherine/Daly Basin and Sturt Plateau region for cattle production. The last speaker, the minister, spoke of this briefly, and some of it is to negotiate sub-division options for development with landowners and lessees and native title interests. That is great. But to encourage more intensive development, it would be interesting to know what the government has in mind there. Are we talking about, in the case of the Douglas/Daly Basin, promoting the continuation of the Katherine/Daly Basin concept and the road infrastructure between the Douglas/Daly and the Ferguson River in Katherine to open up that land? Is that going to be part of the strategy? That would be interesting to know. I hope it is because that strategy is fully supported by all in that industry and something that has been begun with the development of the Stray Creek blocks and should continue similarly with the Sturt Plateau. A road network system has been designed for that area, part of which has been developed, more to be developed, of course, and it would be nice to know that that is going to continue.
Power obviously is a big concern for those areas. They are the income producing areas of the Northern Territory, and one of the major attractions to people coming into my office from down south looking for land. I can tell you there are many of them and that is not new. It has been going on for quite some years. Not only are they looking for reasonably priced land, but they are also looking at the type of infrastructure that is available, roads being the first priority, and then power, certainly education facilities and those sorts of things are always a high priority for families moving into those areas. It is all very well putting down ‘to encourage more intensive development’, but it is the how that I am interested in there.
There are many other things in there that are all ongoing, have been for quite some time and they are articulated as priority actions, so they have not been dropped and that is great. One of them is to retain the Pastoral Water Enhancement Scheme which is a great initiative and should be continued if we are to attract development into our rural regions.
I see there is work with lessees to complete the subdivision of at least one pastoral lease in the Katherine/Daly Basin into intensive mixed farms. That is good and I assume there, because it has not been mentioned, that the document is talking here about Douglas Station. But no time line against it, and that was the big plug by the Treasurer: that all of these things have time lines against them and when you read through it very carefully there are obviously - not everything can have a time line, but there are a lot of time lines missing. The Douglas Station proposal has been ongoing for some time. It was held up with native title issues which were resolved a bit over a year ago now with the lifting of native title with the traditional owners on the Stray Creek block. Douglas Station was also lifted – well, it wasn’t quite lifted. The idea was that the acquisition would go through and it would not be contested which is finalised now and there is probably no impediment to government to now come to an arrangement with the owners of Douglas Station for the appropriate subdivision of that which would provide a lot of land in the Douglas/Daly region for future development – good land, as well.
- Establish a Northern Territory Fisheries Forum to address stakeholder interests and access to fisheries
resources by June 2002
and that was probably done. They are about to meet, so it is good to see that that is happening. Hopefully, we will get some progress on what the CLP has been calling for there, and that is at least a 10 year strategy on commercial recreational fishing, particularly in relation to the barramundi sector.
Moving on to tourism. I see by July 2002 - which has obviously past:
Conduct consumer research on infrastructure requirements, identify potential private public sector
investments.
- Build the business case for the federal government to adopt policy positions which lift cabotage
restrictions to allow international airlines to carry domestic passengers.
This is something that has been discussed quite often by my colleague, the shadow Minister for Tourism, but we have not heard a thing about that. We certainly haven’t heard about the business case that has been built by August - which is now - and what the federal government thinks of it from the government side. We know, through our own discussions, what is happening in that area, but we would certainly like to see the business case that has been developed.
In terms of transport development:
- Present business cases to airlines to urgently increase services between Singapore and Darwin
and increase domestic flights to Alice Springs.
I note that is an urgent priority, and so it should be. Once again, it would be nice to see those urgent business cases being articulated.
Encourage the extension of the rail tourist services to Tennant Creek, Katherine and Darwin by 2004.
Well, that is almost a given; hopefully there are no deal-breakers in that passenger service which is being well progressed at this time. It is good to see that in there.
Moving on to infrastructure and utilities:
Complete stage 2 of the East Arm Port to meet railway and relocate fuel terminal needs by August 2003.
As far as the fuel terminal relocation time line goes, even though they are talking about August 2003, this time next year, which has always been the time line, I would like to know whether that is still on track. It was on track the last I had to do with it, and I would be very interested to know whether all of the stakeholders involved in that, the fuel companies, obviously are still committed to that, and whether it is definitely on track and will meet that time line.
There are a number of double-ups throughout this, and I guess they could fit into any category, particularly the establishment of an Industrial Land Corporation by June 2003 to develop industrial estates at East Arm, Middle Arm and Glyde Point, so that has some time to go, but it is reflected through the document about three times.
By 2003, spend $5m on upgrading beef roads.
Putting the amount of $5m in there is a little bit ordinary; $5m doesn’t go anywhere on roads. It is about 5 km. It might be a bit more. I know, through the work I did on the Daly Road, the 20 km for the bituminising was around $3m, so $5m is certainly not going to go a long way for that very important infrastructure need. It would be nice to see that being beefed up somewhat.
Land use:
Introduce a consolidated and simplified Territory wide planning scheme by July 2003.
That is great; that has been in the pipeline under my management in the previous government. For some time it was out there for stakeholder views and consultation …
Madam SPEAKER: Order. The member’s time has expired.
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, I move that the member be granted an extension of time to conclude his remarks.
Motion agreed to.
Ms Lawrie: See how gracious we are?
Mr BALDWIN: And so you should be, because you should hear all of this. So that has been a process that has been in the pipeline. It is good to see a completion date on that because it is a very important process for future planning of the Northern Territory and it is one that needs to be fully consultative and progressed to its full implementation.
I see we have:
- … amend the Planning Act to maximise community confidence and participation in the planning
and development process by June 2003.
I know there is an internal review going on, and has been since last year. I haven’t heard anything of it. It would be nice to know how that is going to be articulated to meet that commitment. It will be interesting to see.
Another thing in there is:
- Negotiate a settlement of Kenbi and other Aboriginal Land Rights Act claims.
No time line on that, unfortunately, which is a bit disturbing. The other part of that is that it would be nice to know in the negotiation of that - the local government said they would negotiate that - the starting point and the parameters by which the government is going to sit down with the trustees and traditional owners to start negotiating on all of that, particularly in terms of the future growth of Darwin. We would be looking for an amount of land for the future growth of Darwin. The ownership is not really the question. The question is really about the tenure of the land and how that will be dealt with for future ownership, and all the other cases that have been put forward over many, many years regarding access to not only transport corridors, but water corridors and servicing corridors and all those sorts of things. It would be nice to get some sort of articulation some time in the future regarding those parameters because it is very important to know where the government is going to start from in all of these things.
We have another thing here:
- Establish an Industrial Land Corporation.
I have said that is a repeat throughout this document.
- Establish new management arrangements to oversee the preparation of concepts for the development
of the Darwin Wharf Precinct.
That was something that was done in the Central Darwin LUOs. Expressions of interest closed for those in March. We are now in August. We have still not heard anything. The government put those documents out again, even though they had been through a formal public process, for public comment and at the same time expressions of interest for anyone wanting to develop that area. We haven’t heard a thing, so that needs some clarification. The original documents had no residential land being proposed down on the wharf precinct proper. It will be interesting to know whether the government is proposing any changes to those concepts which were, as I said, put through a public process.
A number of things there:
- Purchase Commonwealth land at Lee Point for future urban development.
Good to see that that is being continued. That was an issue that was being dealt with by the previous government. It is very important that we secure the land at Lee Point for the future of Darwin’s growth.
Under Investment and Trade:
- By June 30, 2002 release an International Trade Strategy discussion paper.
I would be interested to know whether that was released and what was the feedback on that. I would like to see a copy which would be easy enough to table in this House.
- By August 2002 convene an industry seminar involving the airlines and their Territory freight
and passenger customers to address air freight impediments faced by Territory producers.
I am not sure that that has happened. I haven’t heard about it, but perhaps it has and if it has, great! But what were the outcomes? Let us know the outcomes of that and what action was undertaken in response to that industry seminar.
Another one:
- By June 2002, prepare a business case to assist ministers and other Territorians to market the Territory
and its strengths, capabilities and prospects internationally and throughout Australia.
Likewise, for the one I previously mentioned: has that been done? Is there a documented business case to assist ministers and other Territorians? If there has, perhaps you could table it so we could all have use of it. We are all concerned with promoting the Territory.
Also:
- By June 2002, start using our community and cultural links to promote the NT and its capabilities,
prospects and projects.
Perhaps we could have some feedback on how that is happening and what have been the initial outcomes there.
Given that I am running out of time, I will skip through a few others. Under Knowledge and Innovation, it is good to see the establishment of Desert Knowledge Australia is still well on track. That is a great initiative and should be pursued with much fanfare by all involved.
Under the heading Promoting Tropical Knowledge, we have:
- Research and identify tropical knowledge initiatives in the Territory and prepare a discussion paper by July 2002.
That would be a very important paper in terms of those who live in the rural region and deal with people working and living in the rural area. It would be interesting to know whether that discussion paper has been released. I have not heard anything of that one. May I have a copy, please? That would be great. I certainly undertake to distribute it around my constituency because I am sure they will be very interested.
Mr Henderson: A copy of what?
Mr BALDWIN: You might have to read the Hansard to go through all of these things.
Mr Henderson: Yes, I will go through it.
Mr BALDWIN: There are a lot of things I would like to see on the table, because they might be good; they might not be.
If I could have a copy of that which was to be released in July 2002. Following on from that, in the next paragraph under it, is:
- Utilising that discussion paper, conduct a forum of research and development participants in tropical
knowledge in the Territory involving the research industry and government sectors by September 2002.
September is not very far away, the discussion paper has apparently been out since July, so it would be great to catch up on all of that if I could have that paper.
Skipping along, leave out that. Yes, there has been talk by the various ministers responsible about:
- Negotiate a regional agreement with communities in West MacDonnell Ranges, Port Keats region
and Katherine East region.
That is great. Once again, though, like the Kenbi situation, I would like to know what the parameters are that they are going to start out, particularly with Port Keats, obviously. I am sure that Port Keats people would be most interested in that.
Ms Lawrie: Rest assured we will do a better job than your government.
Mr BALDWIN: Yes, we will see. Time will tell.
Moving to Business Environment and Growth.
- Progressively review stamp duty and payroll tax.
That is good, and great to see that this government has reduced the stamp duty on hiring arrangements, something that I called for and had a briefing on after concerns were raised with me by ADrail contractors. Following that call, the Chief Minister and Treasurer announced they were changing the requirements of the stamp duty on hiring arrangements, and that is great. However, the tax that has been paid by those contractors has not been retrospectively paid back. Apparently, they have been told it would be too hard to go and work it out. Well, it is quite simple, really. You would write a similar letter the contractors were given by Treasury saying that they may have to pay this tax. You would write back to those same recipients of that letter and say: ‘If you have paid any tax leading up to this point in time, can you give us your documentation and we will pay you back?’. It is a very simple arrangement and I think retrospectivity should be a part of that agreement.
Madam Speaker, I am going to have to pull up there. There are that many pages with that many notes against them that have time lines against them that I do not think have been met yet. If I could maybe pursue them at a later stage one day, but I would certainly like answers to the ones that I have raised here today.
Debate adjourned.
MINISTERIAL STATEMENT
Northern Territory Employment and Training Strategy to 2005
Northern Territory Employment and Training Strategy to 2005
Mr STIRLING (Employment, Education and Training): Madam Speaker, I rise to make a statement about the progress already made by this government in relation to employment and training and to outline key elements of the government’s Northern Territory Employment and Training Strategy to 2005. The strategy will be a work in progress and it will reflect the ongoing and rapid changes in our economy because as the economy grows and matures, there will be a need to adjust the strategy to meet likely areas of growth and employment opportunities.
In the private sector these include the development of gas onshore and offshore; the development of our light industrial and resource sectors; the further diversification of our services sector to meet changes in our housing, tourism and transport industries; and our steadily increasing agriculture and aquaculture industries. Likewise, in the public sector, we must prepare for such initiatives as the roll-out of community controlled health services and the development of communications systems in the bush, and the need for increased infrastructure and capital works throughout the Territory.
Our training systems and strategies must be flexible enough to respond to the changes in the economy on a ‘just-in-time’ basis. Skills developed and not utilised are quickly lost. Work-ready individuals will move on to find jobs elsewhere or, alternatively, lose incentive to work if meaningful employment is not available in the Territory. There are obvious links between training and employment. To get a job, you need to be work-ready. To keep that job and to ensure ongoing employability, skills need to be continually re-evaluated, updated and enhanced. At the same time we need to recognise that the availability is an essential element of building a sustainable community and economy. You cannot have healthy and viable communities without a commitment to community capacity building. You cannot continue with a ‘field of dreams’ approach where somehow training - and any training - is miraculously supposed to lead to employment.
The government has developed and started implementing a far reaching strategy to maximise the employment potential of Territorians. In the past, often where training has taken place there was not enough analysis of need nor listening nor engagement with industry nor the community, and nor was there sufficient accountability for, or outcomes from, the training resources provided by government.
As promised in the House in November last year, the management and advisory arrangements of the NTETA Board, the Training Advisory Council and Territory and Commonwealth funding requirements have been and are being reviewed. As a consequence, the government has introduced legislation to ensure a broader range of representation on the new Northern Territory Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training. Once legislation is passed, the board will have increased membership and broader representation from across the Territory including regional areas. We also intend to streamline the nature of the advice from the Training Advisory Councils, procure improved labour market analysis and forecast information to better utilise Territory and Commonwealth funds, and re-establish the necessary checks and balances to ensure that our flexible and responsive training market has due regard for the special employment nature of trainees and apprentices.
I take the opportunity to acknowledge the efforts made by the previous Northern Territory Employment and Training Board and the authority to reduce the number of Industry Training Advisory Boards from 11 to six Training Advisory Councils. It was a sound decision at the time, and with the recent outrageous decision by the Commonwealth to unilaterally cease funding for state and territory industry advice bodies, we must all accept now that there will be no going back to a multiplicity of Industry Training Advisory Boards. Nevertheless, Training Advisory Councils remain a key component in providing this government with training advice. New arrangements are being developed to enable the Training Advisory Councils to better engage industry, ensure advice for industry on employment and training matters is useful and readily available, and to streamline the services the Training Advisory Councils provide to both government and industry.
These arrangements will enable the Training Advisory Councils to concentrate on providing better service to industry, better training-related advice to government, and remove the need for the collection of labour market data and forecasting.
In future, the collection of labour market data will be done independently by experienced economists and professionals. By employing independent professionals, skilled and dedicated to the task of labour market data collection, analysis and forecasting, the government will fulfil its commitment to conduct skill audits regularly to identify the skills required by existing and emerging industries. Government has already achieved a number of important outcomes in the training field. We have implemented a trial competitive tender program, which directly links training to jobs with over 100 training places in industries as diverse as roof plumbing and hospitality.
We have expanded the Darwin Futures Expo to all major regional centres, consistent with our commitment to take a Territory wide approach rather than focussing on special interest groups at preferred locations. Youth across the Territory, not just in Darwin, now have the opportunity to explore employment and training pathways before the end of the school year.
We have transferred the administration of the Driver Training and Licensing Program to Employment and Training division, a million dollar program that is now available to Territorians between the ages of 16 to 18, and it has been expanded to include youth in remote communities and trainees and other youth no longer at school.
We have also implemented a $1.8m Training Remote Youth program, known as TRY, aimed at getting remote school aged youth on the path for future employment through the provision of vocational education and training as part of this government’s commitment to offer vocational education and training down to Year 9 and, significantly, to young people no longer at school.
The TRY program has increased specific funding for vocational education and training to rural and remote areas from $2.6m to a minimum of $4.4m, and requires schools, communities and registered training organisations to come together to develop cohesive partnerships. I am delighted to announce that the first phase of the TRY program augurs well for success, with over 300 young Territorians having already participated, and phase two being implemented. Anecdotal evidence and the response from remote communities is very positive at this early stage.
These are some of the achievements since this government came to office. It is, however, early days and there is much more to do to create an employment and training environment in the Territory that meets the needs of our developing community.
Before I outline the government’s employment and training objectives for the next three years, it is necessary to put them into context. The South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, which has been assisting the Department of Employment, Education and Training in reviewing and setting employment and training priorities and directions for the future, says:
- The competitive advantage of the Territory as a location for investment depends on more than its
geographical location, proximity to Asia and Asian markets, or natural resource endowments.
The stock of human capital, the knowledge and skills base of the work force, creativity and capacity for
innovation and use of technology determine the international competitiveness of the Northern Territory
economy, and each of these in turn is dependent on the quality of the education and training system.
What this means is that if the Northern Territory is to be nationally and internationally competitive, we have to ensure that our population, particularly our young people and our existing work force, have the knowledge and skills to carry the Territory forward. And herein lies one of the fundamental education and training issues that this government is working to address and that was sadly neglected for 26 years by the Country Liberal Party. As pointed out in the same report by the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, labour market programs cannot be expected to overcome educational deficits or compensate for those who leave school early without basic qualifications or a poor grounding in literacy and numeracy.
It is clear that measures to improve English literacy and numeracy standards in the Territory are gathering momentum and several strategies are now in place to ensure that improvements occur. The Northern Territory Literacy and Numeracy Strategy requires all schools to develop a literacy and numeracy plan for their school and to engage in explicit teaching of literacy and numeracy skills for a minimum of two hours per day. The strategy is being supported in schools by staff in the Curriculum Services Branch. After two years of development, trialling and consultation, a new Northern Territory curriculum framework has been introduced to schools and will enter full implementation phase in 2003. The 2002 testing program currently taking place in Territory schools has been designed to assess a broad range of student literacy and numeracy outcomes contained within the framework, including the national benchmarks. The work of the Learning Lessons committee will also escalate efforts to address the challenges of improving English literacy and numeracy achievement for indigenous students.
This government is committed to indigenous vocational education and training. The participation of the Northern Territory’s indigenous population in vocational education and training systems amounts to 15.7% of the national figure for indigenous participation. In the Northern Territory, indigenous participation is as high as 40.3% of overall vocational education and training. The majority of indigenous people participating in vocational education and training system, 74.7%, live in remote communities.
However, there is much more to be done. We must further increase the total number of indigenous participants in training and education and also increase the number of participants who achieve qualifications at Certificate 3 and 4 levels. Currently, indigenous people make up 24% of all Territory trainees and apprentices but of these, 56% are in traineeships at the Certificate 1 or 2 level; 40% are at Certificate 3; and just 4% at Certificate 4 level or higher.
The equivalent whole-of-Territory figures are 29% at Certificate 1 or 2, 64% at Certificate 3 and 7% at Certificate 4 or higher. To be clear, this means indigenous people are participating in the vocational education and training system at a higher level, however that participation declines in relation to formal traineeships and apprenticeships. It also means that participation in traineeships and apprenticeships is at lower qualification levels than for the community as a whole.
Most importantly, there is a need to increase the number of real jobs. The Territory has a younger age profile than the other states and territories and our large indigenous population substantially contributes to the high birth rate. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has estimated as many as 40% of our young people under the age of 14 are indigenous Territorians and yet, in the past, it is a group that seems to have been the least likely to secure training that led to employment.
If the Northern Territory does not address the barriers experienced by many indigenous Territorians to education, employment and training over the next 10 years, the social and economic impact for all Territorians will be significant. As a community, we cannot afford to see a dire socio-economic situation continue. In terms of being a relatively small economy, the Northern Territory cannot afford to have one-third of our potential work force unemployable through lack of education and job skills.
So, it is in this context that the Learning Lessons Steering Committee established by the government has selected four remote school communities to take part in the trial of a self-managing school program. The program is aimed at providing school communities with the flexibility to find local solutions to local educational issues based on the advice of local education boards.
The four school communities to take part are the Alyawarra/Anmatjere cluster south-west of Tennant Creek; the Warlpiri triangle of Lajamanu, Yuendumu, Willowra and Nyirripi schools; Maningrida Community Education Centre; and the Tiwi Islands. This is just one of the number of initiatives in this area designed to address educational standards and outcomes in remote communities.
In relation to employment and training, we will continue to increase the involvement of indigenous people in decision making associated with policy development and planning. We have commenced this process by allowing for the appointment of an ATSIC nominated person on the Northern Territory Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training. We shall also work to increase the level and range of culturally appropriate, flexible training and employment initiatives in regional and remote areas as evidenced by the introduction of the TRY program mentioned earlier.
We will also build closer links between indigenous people in industry in the Northern Territory through the sponsorship of appropriate events and forums, and the extension of NT Futures Expo to regional centres is a good example of this practice.
For our part, we shall also take steps to ensure that government contracts and expenditure will lever regional and remote employment outcomes by setting training and local employment requirements on substantial projects.
As I have mentioned, this government recognises the role that employers must play in the creation of jobs and the provision of training for Territorians. With well over 7000 small businesses in the Territory, we recognise the small business sector is an integral part of the Northern Territory economy, and collectively the largest private employer. In order to grow small business and increase the employment opportunities for Territorians, the Department of Employment, Education and Training will work more closely with the Department of Business, Industry and Research Development and will conduct a review of small business training and employment needs. Also in conjunction with the Department of Business and Industry, the Department of Employment, Education and Training will identify and promote employment and training initiatives that small business can access.
We recognise that the Northern Territory Public Service is the largest single employer in the Territory. It is our intention to enhance public sector recruitment and training practices to increase the uptake of school leaver trainees, graduate recruitment positions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cadetships, and the use of accredited national training throughout the Northern Territory Public Service. Progressive implementation of these priorities is now occurring. We have in the relatively new Public Service Commissioner, Mr John Kirwan, a great fan and advocate of programs such as these with which he has had experience elsewhere. I think he brings considerable strengths to our initiatives in that area.
I again reiterate the comments I made in the Assembly in November last year. That is, within the new Department of Employment, Education and Training, the CEO and management team is required to ensure that the department is itself a leader and a role model in the fields of employment, training, staff development, communication, occupational health and service delivery. The make-up of our public service and its cultural values must be more representative of the community it serves, and the Commissioner for Public Employment is actively working in this regard, on a new indigenous Northern Territory Public Sector Employment Strategy to ensure that this occurs. Similarly, work is being undertaken to increase access and employment in the Northern Territory public sector for other disadvantaged labour market groups.
There are a number of key initiatives which I want to briefly outline. Discussions with small business and other vocational education and training users appears to demonstrate somewhat of a lack of understanding about vocational education and training and the new apprenticeship system. It is not peculiar to the Territory, and is a national issue for the vocational training system which can appear, at times at least, to be confusing and bureaucratic. The Department of Employment, Education and Training has been directed to simplify and demystify vocational education and training by implementing a strategic marketing campaign to ensure that all current and potential participants in the vocational education and training system understand the benefits and the value that it provides. Part of this campaign will be to encourage employers to reskill and upskill employees as part of their normal business processes so that training is viewed more as a business investment decision than as a cost factor to be reduced.
Group training companies can play a greater role in the Territory. Group training companies enable small businesses to share the cost and responsibility of hiring apprentices. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research released information last year that quite clearly showed there is room for improvement and in an increase of group training apprenticeship numbers in the Territory.
The group training companies will therefore be encouraged to step up their marketing efforts, develop strategies to increase indigenous apprenticeships, and strengthen awareness levels of group training apprenticeships among school-aged students, their parents, their guardians and the career counsellors.
At the same time, DEET is charged with the responsibility of establishing and implementing a quality framework, consistent with national standards, for group training companies to ensure excellent outcomes and standards.
The success of our vocational education training system and the employment success of Territorians is reliant on quality training programs and training delivery. It is for this reason that DEET will build on the work already undertaken to develop our vocational educational training system to comply and exceed national standards through:
- an increase in the frequency and amount of Australian quality training framework;
training providers to meet agreed targets for delivery in both urban and remote settings and to maximise
the usage of publicly funded infrastructure.
I have already mentioned the labour market analysis and forecasting which, combined with a new initiative of monitoring of labour force statistics from a range of different sources as of next year, will better enable DEET to plan employment initiatives and link training to employment in the future. This also has the added benefit of assisting government to set training priorities for reskilling workers who are unemployed, retrenched, and to meet industry need as well as upskilling workers to make sure the Northern Territory can match the skill demands of emerging industries.
Under training infrastructure, we take this role of providing training for employment very seriously but it can only be achieved if the appropriate infrastructure is in place across the Territory and can be used in a flexible way by communities and industry. The government, therefore, intends to:
- turn existing training centres, particularly those in regional and remote areas, into community
managed learning centres, complete with new IT and video technology to engage a broad
community base;
increase availability of training infrastructure in remote and regional areas including accommodation
for visiting trainers; and
build industry skill centres and school skill centres to meet the training and employment needs of the
regions as identified by the labour market analysis and forecasting program.
Under Northern Territory government and Commonwealth relations, another key initiative is the development of stronger linkages between the NT government and Commonwealth government agencies and bodies including:
- the Northern Territory Area Consultative Committee;
local government; and
Improvement in these linkages is a fundamental precondition for increased employment outcomes and the development of better employment and training services to all Territorians.
The protection of apprentices and trainees - and this is the last matter that I would like to outline today, but it goes back to the most important people in the training picture: the trainees and apprentices themselves. I know no-one in this House, no parent, no decent employer or fellow worker wants to see these young people exploited or taken advantage of. We must ensure that there is no scope for exploitation in the apprenticeship system.
Apprentices are employed to learn, to develop their skills, their self respect and good work practices so that they can earn good money and make a valuable contribution to our society in the future. Apprentices should not be seen nor treated as a source of cheap labour.
To ensure that apprentices and trainees are properly protected, I have recently made new appointments to the Appeals and Review Tribunal establishment under the Northern Territory Employment and Training Act. Further arrangements have been made within the Department of Employment, Education and Training to ensure that the focus of its activities deliver a fair go to trainees and apprentices including quality training to agreed national standards. I also intend to explore, in conjunction with employers and unions, the development of a comprehensive common rule award for apprentices and trainees with the precise aim of providing fairness and certainty to trainees, apprentices and employers who ultimately are the key customers and participants in our training and employment system.
I am sure you, by now, have gathered this government is committed to employment and training. We are not looking for quick-fix solutions and we will change and amend our strategies and approaches as our economy develops and expands. I should be pleased to provide further information to the Assembly as elements of these strategies take effect.
Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the statement.
Mr MILLS (Blain): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, the position of opposition affords you a certain liberty to be able to think outside the square. I must say I am approaching this whole issue, as the minister has already articulated, as one of serious, abiding concern with all of us when we are dealing with our young and industry and how we marry up the need to prepare our young people to have a meaningful future, a contribution to the wider community. How we do that really is the challenge. If we constantly respond to the paradigm that we are operating within, I wonder whether we are going to find the move forward and the satisfaction and the easing of the confusion if we stay within the paradigm. That is what I have referred to in terms of being in opposition; you are able to stand outside and wonder if there is another way of dealing with these matters.
My comments are not in any way critical. I will make some comments that I would like some clarification on. But generally, I will be responding as one who is also embarking on a learning journey of how best to respond to this abiding issue of employment and training and how we actually drive the whole thing forward.
I sense that there is a philosophical position and it is always to do with whether industry or the bureaucracy: the suppliers of training over the recipients of the trained over the public providers of training versus the private providers of training. I sense there is a dividing line that does occur in our own thinking that under-girds the way we respond to this issue. I would have to say, perhaps from a liberal position, that the reduction of government is probably the path that I would sense has the greater solutions and the greater hope. Because the other path is the increase in government, the increase in bureaucracy, the layer upon layer of bureaucratic levels that as a community we are responding to. This needs to be looked after. We need to take responsibility for this, that and the other. We end up loading up this machine with so much that it becomes incredibly inefficient. Yet it has a life and energy of its own, and it gets its mind off the central business, which is simply the needs of young people and matching their preparation to be able to go and to add to the wealth of the community and make a meaningful contribution to a whole range of enterprises.
I really think that there is a lot of discussion that our community does need to have in this whole area, and I will not accept the current paradigm as being the only space we have in which to operate because as I look around the different states, and even internationally, it seems to me we are all largely confined to existing space and responding and moving structures that already exist. Perhaps there may be a more radical path that we can go down. I believe that the whole community needs to be engaged in discussion and in dialogue, and to accept one simple premise: we have a responsibility to understand, we can have a say, and we can start thinking about this whole issue.
I often that find business people respond to it in a sort of a dismissive, and usually an unsupported way; they are not appreciative of what is happening. But if you press it further, many of them simply do not understand training and what is required in training – this is largely small business I am referring to here.
I do appreciate the reference in the minister’s statement with regards to marketing. That whole area is something that I welcome in terms of putting some effort into the communication of this whole area so that people can start to develop a responsible dialogue with regards to the preparing of the trained for industry.
One thing that caught my attention was the reference to the ‘field of dreams’ being the idea that this whole bureaucracy could sort of get to work, get busy with training and we can tick off all our objectives and feel that we have trained, but for what? We are absorbed in this whole enterprise of we have this dream that we will train them for jobs. Then we realise that one we have done that, they turn out the other side and there are no jobs, but don’t worry, the jobs will come. That is why this area requires the right kind of construct because it is so easy for a bureaucracy to become so consumed with its own activities that the essential driver is diminished, just turned down. It is too easy for the public providers of training and the machinery that is meant to be driving this to turn down the volume of the actual objectives, the real need for this. I know that that can happen in any endeavour in education at any stage. Sometimes teachers become offended if they are asked just how relevant is this. Sadly, the first response often is one that feel sensitive that they have been questioned, but really, we do need to have these dialogues. It is an issue that is a community issue. Nobody is having a go at anybody; we just need to rise our minds up a little higher and start to ask questions.
That is why I believe that undergirding this is a philosophical position. Understanding the paradigm that we are currently working in, I am happy to support the direction that this statement indicates that the minister intends to drive this. I have to say, and I know the minister has already acknowledged, that this is just the beginning. It is an indication of things to be done, initiatives have been announced, and a sense of direction. Of course, my role with my colleagues in opposition and those who are stakeholders, will be to ensure that, once we have embarked on this grand journey, we will be able to measure the progress of the journey not for any reason other than what this is really all about. It is about training our young people and those who are in need of upskilling, and to adding to the real wealth of our Territory. That is what it is really about.
Just a few points that I do need to make. I would like to know - and I am going to keep an eye on this - the actual apprentice numbers in the Northern Territory. I am seeking, by way of my contribution, to inquire of this so that can be actually tracked. It is a way of measuring how we are progressing in terms of trade apprenticeships and different forms of apprenticeships and how many there are so that we can keep track of this. It is a way of measuring. There is no good getting into these activities without knowing how things are going.
I am also particularly concerned, maybe because of my background in private enterprise and in non-government schooling, that often the private provider is one who is actually far closer to the engine, the driver, the purpose, the end product, than the public provider. The minister is probably aware - I hope he is - that the private providers of training, of which there are many, often fit specific niche markets that the larger public provider is unable to respond to. I sense - it may be difficult to quantify in terms of a debate - there is perhaps a greater level of efficiency with the private provider, though very small. The problem is that they feel that they are competing against a bureaucracy which makes it very difficult for them to represent their concerns and the competition for funding. They often feel that they are really in a disadvantaged position.
I will speak up for the private providers and I will be keeping in touch with private providers because I do believe from my philosophical position that they are probably travelling more efficiently in terms of that essential idea of understanding the market.
Comments were made this morning, too, with regards to the mechanics of getting a sense of industry with the new advisory committee. That is where I started thinking outside the square. I wonder if we should have an advisory committee that does not have any other representative other than industry on it and have mechanisms outside of that that could moderate so that we have a clear emphasis on the voice and the need of industry and have that discussion and have that fight - it would not be easy - to make sure that we enlarge that mechanism so that the minister is apprised more comprehensively and directly of the needs of industry. I have no other model to work on other than my own instinct because I have looked at other models and they seem to be engines that are really geared away from the voice of industry, though there is of course industry representation. But I thought that it might be an idea to drive it completely the other way because there would be those moderating influences within each of the sectors, and there are other ways of engaging the concerns that might be expressed, say the unions or ATSIC or Work Health. It is a line that I say is worth further thought.
As politicians, we are constantly reminded that we can be consumed by the importance of our own occupation and our own ideas and responding to things. It only takes a bit of door knocking to realise that sometimes we are out of touch and we need to visit the people that we are representing or are endeavouring to represent.
I really do hope - and I know that it was addressed this morning - that there is rather than a sense that consultation is occurring through this committee, there is a drive to actually visit the industry and industry workplaces and so on. That sort of common touch stuff really needs to be built into the culture of this. I do acknowledge this morning that the minister has acknowledged and given a report that he has visited the different Training Advisory Council chairs and so on. That is good and that really must continue. I indicate that I will be doing the same, too, so that I know what is going on, on the ground, because that is really the acid test.
The labour market projections: that sounds fantastic to have this very important data pumped into the system so we know exactly what is going on at any point in time. It would probably make us feel good in here - or government, anyway - to know that we have this up-to-date information. Unfortunately, that up-to-date information of labour market projections could have a downside because I am sure it will indicate that the need of industry is never going to matched by the training capacity. So, it may be a concern to discover how far short we are falling. It may then promote a whole round of debate about how much resourcing needs to go into this area. The tone of the minister’s statement indicates that there would be that response. It may not be the godsend that it appears on first reading, because does sound good and you do need that data, I do not argue against that. But it is never going to allow us to cover the job, in a sense; it may actually compound the issue. Once again, it goes back to the driver of this; that is, it is coming through industry and that would temper it and help us to focus and to make a more accurate judgement on the data.
There is one aspect I must comment on. I am personally growing tired - I do not want to get into this business, but there seems to be this need to constantly bring out the line of ‘the sadly neglected 26 years of the CLP’. It is always inserted in there, which means that I am going to go into the same line and do the counter to that, and say …
Dr Burns: You can be your own person.
Mr Kiely: Yes, come on, Terry. Do it. Be your own.
Mr MILLS: Just keep listening because for me, it is falling flat. We had the tirade earlier on about comments being made and whose initiative it is, and blame and complimenting each other individually.
The issue here is that literacy and numeracy is an ongoing concern and there are strategies in place. This problem will not go away with a change of government, and previous governments were responding to it, and now it is a challenge for the current government to be able to stake their claim on it. I am looking forward to getting past the rhetoric and on to the next stage of the game.
I do not feel any way slighted by the fact - in fact, I feel proud in a sense - that Learning Lessons was commissioned by the CLP government. I am not playing any games with that; it has its origins there. I have a particular interest in the development of it to the next stage and I am not wanting to play games with it. I am interested to see the development at the next stage. There seems to be this staking claims and claiming ownership over things. We should get rid of that because the issue here is young people and training and industry. It goes on in the minister’s comments, with his trumpeting of this terrible, terrible thing that happened over the 26 years, and then there is this: ‘After two years of development, trialling and consultation, the new Northern Territory curriculum framework has been introduced’. Now, ‘over two years’, let us have it fair, hey? I think there was someone else in government two years ago. I will give this support in terms of what it is designed for. The curriculum framework has a part to play in this and let us get our eye on what this whole thing is about. It is more about what it is endeavouring to achieve than about who is doing it.
An issue of concern I indicate to the minister I will be paying particular attention to because I do support the current construct of the agency, the Department of Employment, Education and Training, in that we have all that which pertains to this whole enterprise in one. When we come to the training remote youth program, we have here really where we are going to have our challenges and I mean challenges that we will have to respond to positively and they will be significant challenges. It is not just remote youth, and I am not just talking about indigenous youth, but that would be foremost in our minds, and the literacy and numeracy. That is where our challenges are going to be.
I am particularly interested in seeing how the lowering of the age for VET programs in remote areas is going to track. How much it is going to cost of course is an interest and concern - I will be following that - but how this actually goes to the next stage because once it matures we are going to discover that this partnership which is alluded to here between the training providers and the local school is going to be one that will have to be closely monitored because as a student moves through the levels, the demands for increased levels in literacy and numeracy are going to kick in.
Now, the provider of that will be the local school and these students perhaps in Year 9 may not actually be enrolled at the school, but have been attracted into the education system through the VET program and will require assistance with their literacy and numeracy which is then going to place an additional responsibility and burden upon the local school. This will be a resourcing problem. That is an area that I am sure the minister will be aware of. I will be watching because it is one where this whole thing can be made or will fall because we are dealing with kids - and I will just generalise a little here; urban students, too, who do have literacy and numeracy difficulties.
If we herald a new opportunity for them in terms of ‘let’s get in to a VET program’, they get in to the VET program, then it is brought to their attention that they are significantly deficient in literacy and numeracy. They could be in a situation where their hopes have been raised and then they end up in a lower spot than when they first started because we have a short-term sense that they are going to go in to something but as it unfolds, and perhaps they get a taste of what lies ahead, they become increasingly aware - and I am thinking of young boys here who become aware that they are actually failing. They have failed and they have reached an age where it is almost too hard to go back, for points of shame, and realise that they are starting to move in circles where they are acutely aware that they cannot read very well or cannot count very well.
They may be good at sport and they may have a sense of bravado, but with the inflated sense that they get through the initial flush of confidence through being brought in to a VET program and then to be brought face to face with their serious inadequacies, that is something that really does need to be managed, and managed with great care, because we will end up in a situation which is worse than the former. There is nothing worse than raising expectations and having them dashed.
I need to make reference to the situation in Tennant Creek at this moment - not to gain political points - but I would have to say that issue there with a certain number, in the 40s, of students departing and going to Queensland, which has been reported in the media, to a non-government school is one of very serious concern. I was pleased to hear the member for Barkly’s comments today.
There were certain things that I am sure would have upset and caused some concerns to the local school because teachers work in an environment that is incredibly intense and endeavouring to do as much as they can, and to have this thing happen in the face of their own community where 40-odd students depart not only the local school, if they were enrolled there - I understand not all were enrolled there - but depart and go to Queensland in one fell swoop, is one that, as the member rightly says, provoke a number of questions that need honest answers. They are answers that, at this point, lie with the government. I would advise the member to get close to the local school at this point, because I did notice in the transcript this morning that he was unaware of how the school is feeling with regards to this. I understand Tennant Creek High School has a good record with attendance levels and so on, but the broader issues …
Mr McAdam: I have been in contact with the Tennant Creek School since Friday morning - constant.
Mr MILLS: I heard your report this morning.
Mr McAdam: I beg your pardon?
Mr MILLS: I heard the report this morning.
Mr McAdam: I said that I have been in constant contact with the Tennant Creek School since Friday morning.
Mr MILLS: Okay, that is good. The issue here is a broader one in the context of this statement. That, to me, demonstrates - and it is no slight on the member - just how complex, particularly we who live in urban communities and I did once live in a town similar to Tennant Creek and I know how those sort of things can work. It does demonstrate how complex the issues are that we are dealing with. I offer any support that I can to ensure that we can respond to this. I do understand the broader context in which this is operating in terms of the private school that’s at work here in Queensland, and I may even make a call myself. That demonstrates, as I say, the complexity of this whole area and I offer any support that I can to see that we can move forward in this area that is of great complexity and sensitivity.
Once again, we have encapsulated the situation where young kids have probably been sold the line that it is some great adventure that they are going to be embarking on, and hopefully, for their sake, it works out okay. Once again, it is a bit like the VET program and kids at risk, and I hope we are not embarking them on an adventure that doesn’t work.
Please do not mistake my comments as being critical. This is my sense that I want to bring to this equation, that we do not satisfy ourselves with a lot of initiatives that have been announced, that we are going to stay here and see how they are tracking for the sake of those who are involved in this, those who are being trained.
With those comments, I give the minister my support for the statement. I commend the statement and I wish the minister and his department all the very best.
Dr BURNS (Johnston): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the minister’s statement on NT Employment and Training Strategy 2002-2005. This is a crucial issue, as it details this government’s plan to develop employment and training strategies that will meet the emerging needs of a Territory economy that is already showing extremely strong growth and is, indeed, on the threshold of even stronger growth.
I believe every member here appreciates the central importance of employment and training strategies to underpin this development and provide maximum employment opportunities for our Territory people.
Nevertheless, it is instructive to look at the recent policy history in this area. Prior to the last election, we as an opposition put forward a number of position papers in this area including Jobs for Territorians which was basically an employment paper, and Skilling our Youth, Skilling our Economy. I would like to quote briefly from these papers to illustrate the relative neglect by the previous government to develop an effective strategic employment and training strategy framework and contrast this with the clearly stated policy intent of this government both prior to the election and now in government.
First, from our employment paper. I am quoting from page 15 here. We talk about the CLP’s position.
- The CLP has long seen employment and unemployment as a Commonwealth responsibility …
remembering that this was written prior to the election last year.
- There is no portfolio responsible for employment and there is no employment strategy in place
The CLP have only concerned themselves occasionally with public sector employment issues.
I go on with the quote:
- Despite the substantial cut to labour market programs and training by the Commonwealth since 1996,
the CLP has neither criticised these cuts nor stepped in to reduce the burden on Territory communities.
Just prior to that, it gives a little fact and figure, which is instructive, about the federal government’s attitudes since 1996 about employment and training. It says: ‘Since 1996’ - talking about the Canberra government:
- … have slashed funding for labour market programs. John Howard’s deficit reduction program in 1997-98
took $575m from labour market programs. In four years, $1.8bn has been cut in labour market assistance
to job seekers.
I saw this very clearly at the time I was doing research work with the Menzies School in various remote communities, and a number of those remote communities had very innovative employment and training strategies in place. With the change of government and the virtual dismantling of DEETYA, these fell on their face.
Subsequently, I saw the results in that many young people then turned to chronic substance abuse. They lost hope. They felt like they were on the road to somewhere - they were on the road to somewhere. Some of them were working. Then in one fell swoop at a Commonwealth government dictate, these programs were dismantled and these young people were left nowhere. Little wonder that many of them turned to fairly harmful behaviours including substance abuse. So the dismantling of these initiatives have a very human cost to them.
The paper that I just quoted from also goes on to outline the main areas of Labor’s directions that we proposed that we would follow in government as follows:
- New directions for government; New directions to promote employment by businesses; New directions
for training; and
New directions for indigenous communities.
I believe the minister’s statement has done this in trumps. Here we have a progression of policy development and policy implementation. I will return to the training paper later. Nevertheless, I believe that some of the legislation introduced previously today and the minister’s statement clearly demonstrate that this government has comprehensive strategies for employment and training in the Territory and we are implementing them.
These strategies were developed in opposition with extensive consultation with relevant sectors. I am trying to be a little instructive here, and I am hoping the member for Blain will take this message on board. By contrast, when the current opposition was in government, they did not have an employment strategy. The challenge for them now in opposition is to develop their own policies to place before the electorate at the next election.
Now, over the last couple of days we have seen television advertisements. Warm and fuzzy. ‘Here we are; we are still here. We are the Territory party’. Fair enough. You can put that on the TV ads, but what you really need to do is develop policy. We worked hard in opposition developing policy, putting it before the people in all its forms and now, in government, we are implementing them. So that is the challenge for you. That is the challenge for you. You have had your talkfest down in Katherine, you have had the soul searching. Now get down to work. Develop the policies, put them before the people, and let the people decide. That is the challenge for you as opposition instead of having warm and fuzzy TV ads, and all these nefarious labyrinthine mysterious plots against your leadership and against other people in the party. Pull together, come together, develop policies, consult with the community. We did it, and we are in government.
I turn now to the content of the minister’s statement. The central theme is flexibility to meet the changing nature of our economy and employment opportunities. The statement also identifies the various sectors of our economy that will form a basis to provide significant employment and training opportunities for Territorians. These include the oil and gas sector; light industry; the resource sectors; service sectors including tourism, housing, transport and human services, especially health; agriculture and aquaculture.
This employment strategy also dovetails and complements our economic development strategies. In that, we talked about how we were going to build on what was already existing with an eye to the future. So we are strategic, we are not losing sight of what forms the basis of our economy, but we are looking to the future for the strategic development of the Northern Territory economy and the skilling of the Northern Territory work force.
The minister mentioned the need for training to correlate with industry development, just as the provision of the components when building a boat or a house must synchronise with the stages of fabrication. I am not suggesting for a moment that training should be simply mechanistic; there are many other important elements such as enjoyment in learning new skills and the satisfaction of accomplishing goals. Nonetheless, unless training anticipates major developments such as oil and gas and the railway, opportunities for local people are wasted. Unfortunately, I believe that this was the case with the construction of the railway to some extent. Whilst in opposition, we called for a job strategy to maximise training opportunities for Territorians. We believe that the CLP failed to act in this important area. This government does not intend to squander such opportunities. That is why the minister has announced that labour market analyses will be an integral part of our forward thinking approach.
The minister has also flagged significant changes to government structures within the employment and training sectors. These include the Northern Territory Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training which will have increased membership and a reformed membership that is broadly representative of regions and sectors. Similarly, Training Advisory Councils have been streamlined to provide better input on training needs, particularly to industry as well as government.
Amongst the numerous achievements described by the minister, one in particular caught my attention; namely, the implementation of a trial competitive tender program which directly links jobs and training to approximately 100 training places.
Another praiseworthy initiative is the TRY program, the Training Remote Youth program, which aims to support remote youth on the pathway from school to employment. My own experience with indigenous youths in remote areas is that they will jump at the chance to work in challenging, fulfilling programs where they feel they are making a worthwhile contribution back to their community, and that their efforts are valued by the community. This is a potent weapon against the destructive effects of chronic substance abuse, and I congratulate the minister for this initiative and for his detailed commitment to indigenous vocational education and training. This is a very important area.
While the statement clearly articulates our direction in supporting young people to make the transition from school to work, it also addresses important issues of literacy and numeracy within schools, and the development of literary and numeracy plans within our Northern Territory schools. Without literacy and numeracy, employment possibilities for young people are extremely limited.
The Northern Territory Public Service remains the single largest employer in the Northern Territory, and the minister has foreshadowed strategies to increase the uptake of school leaver trainees, especially through recruitment and training programs.
In his statement, the minister also rightly acknowledged the importance role of group training companies in the training sector in the Territory. We are all aware of the role they play in the urban centres and in remote regions in regards to training both adults and young people. I would like to take the opportunity to commend Geoff Forsyth, someone I have known for quite some time, you see him in all sorts of out of the way places. He has been involved in group sector training for some time. I have seen some of the things Geoff has done, particularly in remote communities. I have seen him support people to learn how to build roads that are very durable and I am talking about bitumen roads, teaching Aboriginal people how to use heavy equipment in the most effective way, and to construct things that are very useful and important in their communities. I know he is involved in Industry Services Training in Darwin, and they do a good job in training people in a whole range of skills and apprenticeships. That sector is very important. The group training company sector is very important in the training sector in the Territory and it is great that we acknowledge that.
The minister’s statement also comprehensively covered the strategies this government will adopt to build training infrastructure throughout the Territory, both flexible and effective training infrastructure. The minister has also spoken a number of times in this House about the need to foster better relationships with the Commonwealth. In particular, he has talked about the hope that we have that Dr Brendan Nelson, who is the federal minister, and some of the positive statements he has made, which hopefully signal a change in terms of the Commonwealth government and their attitude, particularly to indigenous education and training, and Dr Nelson’s statements in support of education and training needs in the Territory.
I commend the minister for building this relationship with Dr Nelson and the Commonwealth. We also realise there are many other Commonwealth agencies which can constructively contribute to improving employment and training outcomes in the Territory. I am sure our minister is constructively involved with those agencies as well. All we want are positive outcomes, particularly for young people in the Territory.
I highly commend the statement made by our minister. It sets out the path by which this government is setting out to improve those outcomes. I will come back to the point I made: the ground work for this was laid in opposition. There was policy development, and as a government now, we are implementing it. I am proud to be part of this government.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I thank the minister for his statement on employment, education and training. With the advent of rail, the gas and the new air wing at Robertson Barracks, then, as you say, our training systems and strategies must be flexible enough to respond to the changes in our economy. A number of things nevertheless concern me and I am willing to be counselled or corrected if others think me wrong about matters raised. I certainly do not come with an educational background.
I noticed in your statement you mentioned the past. On the NTETA web page, there is a reference to the past as well which says:
- Twenty years ago Australia had an inflexible and rigid apprenticeship system. This system covered
the traditional trade areas such as motor mechanics, plumbers, electricians and carpenters.
I know much of this training is now done at the Northern Territory University. I would like to ask the minister if he still believes that the old apprenticeship system still has a place in the NT where technical schools were built out in the suburbs, where young kids who did not want to head off and do other forms of education could instead take on apprenticeships in their own area. I specifically refer here to places like Palmerston, and include the rural area, where there is a large population of youth, and one would presume a proportion of those who would rather be a carpenter or mechanic or have some other trade, rather than continue on in high school. I use the example of Taminmin High School where students can not only study, you might say, the normal subjects in school, but they can also take on subjects in agriculture. Perhaps there is room for a technical school attached to a high school where the students are not separate from the other students; they can undertake mainstream education and then take on some of their trade training as well.
Some will say that having this sort of training at the university as it is now makes the Northern Territory University unique, but is uniqueness the important thing?
Another question I have is: why is the system so bureaucratic? For apprenticeships, there was the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training, then we have the employment agencies, we have the National Apprenticeship Centre and the registered training organisations. Then you have all the boards and advisory councils thrown in as well, although I do note that the training authority is made up of one person which I think is at least a start to streamline the process.
I probably speak a little differently than the member for Blain. I wonder why, in a place as small as the Northern Territory with only 200 000 people, we can’t just have an apprenticeship board which receives its money directly from the Commonwealth and organises the rest as well. Maybe I am just an outsider looking in, but every time I have looked in, it is an awfully complex mechanism we have for training people. It would also be interesting to see what outsourcing of all these training scheme packages costs, compared with a government run system.
Minister, you also spoke about training, especially indigenous training. Naturally, this is a very important area, especially if we combine it with literacy and numeracy strategies. But on remote communities, is it any good training people if there are no jobs? Yes, we have CDEP programs, but as I have seen on recent trips out bush, it seems in some cases to have little effect on people actually working. Most communities have little outside employment such as mining or tourism. Shouldn’t our training be aimed at internal employment?
When I worked at Nguiu about 25 years ago, just before unemployment benefits came in, we were able to have employment for all people. Part of the problem we have is that governments allowed unemployment benefits to come in when there was actually plenty of employment for people in the first place. So instead of CDEP, I wonder whether the Northern Territory government would ask the Commonwealth government to fund employment, as jobs, but not as an unemployment substitute and make sure that there is employment for all those who want it, but have no unemployment benefits.
I am not wiping out normal pensions or allowances or that sort of thing; I am just saying that we have around about 8000 people on CDEP in the Northern Territory. Why can’t we turn those in to 8000 jobs, real jobs - not working for the dole jobs, real jobs - and call them that?
Jobs can surely involve training in fencing, building, repairs, gardening, stock work, rubbish management, road construction. If that training and jobs went together, then when other opportunities come along to those communities, there are people who are used to being part of the work force. That is just as important as training in a particular trade. People also have to learn how to work in a work force. If you have been out of work for a long time, it is very hard to get back in to knowing how to work. I believe that having unemployment benefits is counter productive. The Commonwealth would be better served by producing 8000 jobs and not only indigenous communities, but anywhere people are working for the dole or CDEP, would be a lot better off.
Minister, I also applaud your comments about the protection of apprentices and trainees. You and I know of a particular lady living in the rural area whose son was sacked from his apprenticeship without any proper cause, and it was through her strong belief in her son as an honest and hard working boy, and her belief that he had been the victim of exploitation and a failing of the system, that she fought to see that the system was improved so that it couldn’t happen again. Your statement that apprentices should not be seen or treated as a source of cheap labour, and that they are properly protected, is a timely one and testament to this lady’s determination to fix a wrong that had been put upon her son. I hope that the changes you have put in place will now protect young people who are at a very important stage in their lives, especially when they begin their first job. I know from my contact with this lady that when something like this happens to a young person, they can become quite depressed and lose confidence and lose their enthusiasm to go out and look for another job.
Finally, may I say a few words of praise for a lady who works for the public service - her name is Joyce Vandermaas - and her team at NTETA. Now, I do not know this lady very well, but I do know people that say a lot of good things about her. I would just like to put something on record. This team has done loads of hard work over many years creating a system which allows providers to accurately audit and report on the real numbers going through our training courses. They have designed a computer program which makes it easier for providers to report, with one set of books only required for themselves and the Commonwealth. All this is done through the Australian Vocational Education Training Management Information Statistical Centre – what a mouthful! – called AVETMISC for short. The reports I have, from a reliable source, say it is because of the accuracy of this data compiled by this team that we not only satisfy the reporting requirements of the NT, but we receive the best funding outcomes from the Commonwealth as well. They deserve recognition for their hard work. They are dedicated public servants.
Once again, minister, thank you for your statement. It is timely. But let’s hope that with all the job opportunities coming up, Territorians will not only be skilled, but will be able to fill many of the jobs that will become available in the near future.
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Distinguished Visitors
Madam SPEAKER: I draw the attention of honourable members to the presence in the gallery of Mr James V. Hanson, Chairman, and delegates from the United States House of Representatives Resource Committee and other members of the United States House of Representatives. On behalf of all honourable members, I extend a warm welcome to our guests.
Members: Hear, hear!
Madam SPEAKER: Last year, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Speaker Hastert was also a visitor in our House and he brought along some delegates as well. We are very pleased to see United States House of Representatives members in the Northern Territory.
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Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, I rise to comment on the ministerial statement on employment and training. I congratulate, first of all, the minister for bringing a far ranging statement that looks positively at education, particularly amongst Aboriginal Territorians.
What does concern me is that the ongoing anti-CLP mantra by the member for Johnston. It really is a bit of a problem. He continues to blame the CLP for past injustices, whatever they may be. But let me say this: I believe sincerely that all governments of all persuasions all over the world want to see their citizens achieve the highest level they possibly can. We all put in mechanisms to assist in any way we possibly can. But what happens? The difference is that perhaps our way might be slightly different from their way, but neither way is particularly wrong.
Ms Lawrie: You didn’t have a way.
Dr Burns: It was no way.
Dr LIM: Well, the backbenchers opposite interject and they think it is very funny. Let me just draw some examples of the comments made by the minister himself and then ask these interjecting backbenchers - who are a bunch of empty vessels, anyway, most of the time - to tell me whether the CLP has achieved some reasonable targets. The minister said on page nine of his paper:
- In the Northern Territory, indigenous participation is as high as 40.3% of overall vocational
education and training.
Hey, I don’t think that’s too bad, 40.3%. He also said:
- Currently, indigenous people make up 24% of all Territory trainees and apprentices.
Of these, 56% are in traineeships at Certificate 1 or Certificate 2 level. 40% are at
Certificate 3 level and 4% at Certificate 4 level.
In other words, these students have been pursuing post-school education for several years under the CLP government. We have encouraged, we have put in processes where indigenous students can achieve education. The tragedy of some of the education is that some of our educational institutions have not provided honest education and honest assessment of the students’ achievements. That is the problem. I have said many times in this Chamber that, in my experience, having come from a country overseas where I lived among Malays, Indians, Chinese and Europeans, that indigenous trained doctors do not receive the same level of patronage from the citizenry as compared to Chinese or Indian graduates from medical schools. The question was asked in the country: why aren’t the locals visiting Malay doctors? It was very publicly admitted that the people were concerned about the level of qualifications of these doctors. Why? Because the universities, the educational institutions, had provided a fast-track for these students, compared with non-indigenous students.
Members interjecting.
Dr LIM: The backbenchers, there you go again. They continue to rattle away as if there is nothing in their heads.
Mr Kiely: Yes, that is because you are being racist.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Dr LIM: You are the racist, member for Sanderson, and I think you should desist while you can.
The issue is that many institutions, in attempting to have affirmative action, in attempting to lift the level of education among one race of people have fast-tracked to such a degree that the students going through the training have not received adequate training so that when they receive their graduation they are not truly well trained.
A day will come when we will have a truly, very bright indigenous student who would achieve the best result ever. And you know what? That student will receive a piece of paper that will be undervalued or devalued by our society. That would be the greatest travesty where this student, who is so very capable, will be looked upon as having received a mickey mouse certificate or award from some educational institution. It would be such a pity that this student who could achieve so much in his graduate life would not be allowed to - because industry and business refuse to recognise the award because of the past experience that they have had with others who have not truly achieved the level that they are supposed to have when they have undertaken the education.
Members interjecting.
Dr LIM: I am very concerned about that. Obviously, members opposite do not seem to be particularly concerned about it. Madam Speaker, you know that I was the Chairman of Centralian College for many years, and I was very proud that I was able to bring into Alice Springs the vocational education and training system in Centralian College, where we were able to meld vocational training in high school, in TAFE, and also allow some of the students to mingle with higher education students, all within the one campus of Centralian College. That was a very proud achievement on my part and I also believe that it was a great achievement for the Northern Territory, the Department of Education and the Northern Territory University. It was something that has not been able to be mimicked by any other educational institution in Australia. It remains the light house of cooperation between high schools and vocational education and higher education. Today it continues to provide across the board education in Alice Springs to many people, including a very high percentage of indigenous students - very high. They will tell you that they provide education for more indigenous students in Alice Springs than any other educational institution there is in the town.
Mr Ah Kit: Your government sat on the report for two-and-a-half years. Now you are the expert in education.
Dr LIM: I cannot hear the Minister for Sport and Recreation. I wish he would speak a bit louder so I can respond to his interjections, if he wants to.
Mr Ah Kit: Well, your government sat on the Learning Lessons report for two-and-a-half years and now you are an expert on indigenous education.
Dr LIM: I think the minister in his…
Members interjecting
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Dr LIM: The members opposite love to interject, Madam Speaker, as you know, especially when I am on my feet. They have never allowed me to speak in silence at any stage. I wonder why.
The minister in his statement spoke about employment outcomes for indigenous students, and I support that thoroughly. I believe it is important that not only do we provide education and training for everybody in the Territory, but there would have to be some sort of employment outcomes. Without it, what is the point in education? India is one country that comes to my mind. There are thousands of university graduates, many of whom are unable to find real employment. Many Bachelor of Arts and Science graduates are currently doing labouring jobs because there are no jobs available in that country.
It is important that we have good employment outcomes in the Territory, especially for our indigenous students who we have tried so hard to convince that education is important, a means of getting out of the current difficulties that they have.
In Alice Springs a few years ago, you will recall that Minister Herron came to help launch Employment Alice. It was a cooperative program between the federal government, the Territory government and private businesses in Alice Springs to encourage indigenous students in Alice Springs to take up traineeships and employment. The federal government provided funding assistance to offset the costs for employers to put on indigenous trainees. That went on for a while and for the life of me, I do not understand why the program could not be maintained. Unfortunately, for the last year or so, the program has not been running.
However, the group training company has continued and that has been a very successful program that has been able to employ young trainees in apprenticeship schemes and to provide them with a continuing program of training, whether an employer is able to maintain the full program of training for that one particular student. In the event that the employer cannot do so, the group training company can relocate the student to another employer of the same or like trade to allow the student to continue to the end of the training. That is a great innovation of ours that has been continued and, as the minister said, it was a good thing for the group training company to do and to continue.
You know, I look at indigenous training very much as a time that I spent in a missionary school back in Malaysia a long time ago. I grew up speaking another language; English is my second language, although right now it is my primary language of use. Interestingly, as I grow older, I find the phenomenon of language regression occurs and English seems to become a bit harder as I grow older. But with education back in the missionary schools, English was the medium of teaching. My own mother tongue and my own culture was kept at home where I learned to speak and learn about the culture of my forebears from my great grandfather to my grandparents and my parents. I continue to speak my language today while, in the mainstream of Australia, I use English and, hopefully, I use it well.
I believe indigenous education in Australia has to somehow parallel that as well because after all, our indigenous population in Australia has to live in mainstream, has to understand our commerce, has to understand the conduct of business and law in the main language.
Ms Lawrie: Here we go; dominant culture again.
Dr LIM: I hear the member for Karama say here I go again. Obviously, she has heard me speak about this before but she does not seem to understand what I am driving at.
Mr Kiely: No one does.
Dr LIM The member for Sanderson, as I said before, not only is he an empty vessel, he has the intellect, the depth of the puddle of piddle that was created by the member for Millner. That is how deep an intellect that he has.
Mr KIELY: A point of order, Madam Speaker! Surely there is a point of order in being called …
Dr Lim: What? That you are a puddle of piddle?
Mr KIELY: Madam Speaker, unparliamentary language. It is a personal insult upon my integrity.
Dr LIM: I am talking about intellect. I did not compare what the member for Sanderson looked like. I just said that his intellect is about as deep as the puddle.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Greatorex, I think you should withdraw. It is unparliamentary. I think you should withdraw it.
Dr LIM: The puddle or the piddle? Which one do you want me to withdraw?
Madam SPEAKER: Just withdraw it.
Dr LIM: Well, if you call the member for Sanderson to order, maybe then I can continue my presentation without any interruption.
Madam SPEAKER: Would you just withdraw unconditionally.
Dr LIM: I withdraw the word piddle, Madam Speaker.
Madam SPEAKER: Members of government, you are being very provocative with your interjections.
Dr Lim: They sure have been provocative.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Allow the member for Greatorex to talk.
Dr LIM: I have lost my train of thought, Madam Speaker.
Be that as it may - now I do recall. I was talking about my youth and growing up in another country and going through missionary school and the type of education that I went through. I believe that likewise for many of our indigenous students, they need to learn to conduct business, to conduct commerce, to conduct law, to understand mainstream society. For that, they need to have good literacy skills and good numeracy skills. That is of utmost importance. Education has to go down that path.
Mr Ah Kit: Allan McAlister. Go on, say it. They need to be like a white man.
Dr LIM: The Minister for Sport and Recreation says: ‘Does he have to be a white man?’ I trust he does not have to do that. I trust he doesn’t have to do that, just like I do not have to be that either.
Mr Ah Kit: That is what the racist Collingwood President said: Aborigines have to be like a white man. If you agree with him, say it.
Dr LIM: I am Australian of Chinese ethnic origin, and I trust that the Minister for Sport and Recreation is also an Australian in the first instance, above all things. If he is not, then he has a problem. For a long time he has ignored his Chinese heritage, and every so often when it is convenient he brings it up, but otherwise, he is nothing but an Aboriginal person, and I think it is a tragedy that he denies his own heritage.
Madam Speaker, I know I digress a fair bit owing to the interjections by members opposite. I do welcome the minister’s statement. There are a few things that he has chosen to ignore and to glide over. He blames the CLP government, the former government, for many things that he says were not done, yet quotes statistics that praise the government for things that we have been doing for many years.
My children were educated in the Northern Territory, and I am proud that they had the beginnings of their education in Alice Springs at the schools that were opened under the CLP government. They did very well and they continue to do well, and one of them continues to study in Alice Springs as a working adult, and I wish her a continuing good education in the Territory.
I welcome the minister’s statement, as I said, and I look forward to a cooperative environment where the government and the CLP can work together for the benefit of all Territorians.
Mr McADAM (Barkly): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the ministerial statement by the Minister for Employment, Education and Training in respect of our government’s key elements of the Northern Territory Employment Strategy to 2005.
Minister Stirling has made it very clear that our task is enormous, that we are not looking to quick fix solutions, and that we must be prepared to be innovative and flexible and to change our strategies as the job market demands. Clearly, the private sector, small business, the mining industry, the pastoral industry, tourist industry and the emerging horticultural industry will all play a vital role in providing jobs as long as we get our training strategies right.
To this extent, we have come a long way with the formation of the new Northern Territory Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training. As mentioned previously in this House this morning, it is critical that representatives from the mining, tourism and pastoral industries be represented on this forum. Obviously not all industries can be represented, but the advisory body must be flexible and open and be prepared to engage and, where necessary, invite input from a broad range of industry bodies and expertise.
The formation of this new board allows us the opportunity to develop training and jobs in a sustainable and strategic manner by working with the secondary schools and registered training providers, and preparing our young people for jobs coming on stream. A real focus of the new advisory board should be visiting regional centres and communities in the bush to ensure that reforms to the training systems have to be accompanied or even preceded by a major upgrading of the adult education process in the Northern Territory. This approach has to include the creation of a culture of education among at least some families in each community and an analysis of training needs, rationalisation of training services and the proper planning and coordination of adult training in each community and/or region.
Competent and experienced locally based educators must also be employed and retained to carry out these tasks in each region where possible. It is virtually useless to provide training in most skills unless there is a reliable education infrastructure process available in the communities to support that training program. Work readiness in virtually every vocation means possessing a certain level of education, and that is our challenge.
Another significant challenge for us as a government is to have a look at the training needs of CDEP or at least to have a look at training reforms in the context of changes needed to enable CDEP to become more effective and productive. The reform of CDEP in the Territory is urgently needed in the employment field. It is our responsibility to facilitate a framework that encourages CDEP to be more productive, perhaps by integrating existing CDEP workers into the provision of services and the development of businesses in remote communities. It would in the long term deliver enormous benefits to the Northern Territory economy and savings to government. It would create training and employment opportunities that presently appear unlikely, unrealistic and in some cases, even impossible.
Quite apart from the challenge to integrate CDEP as part of our training and employment strategy, it is important to challenge the federal government and ATSIC to acknowledge the worth and the potential of CDEP as an employment program, and to acknowledge that CDEP should not be just seen as a stepping stone to private sector or government sector jobs, but CDEP participants can have worth in themselves by working with communities to develop hybrid CDEP jobs, CDEP private sector jobs and CDEP public service or associated government jobs.
It is also important to develop training strategies that are linked to individuals and small family groups on outstations in terms of developing small enterprises that might supplement people’s incomes. Far too often we work through community organisations and community councils and forget about the aspirations of individuals and families, and I believe, again, CDEP allows us to develop this particular approach. Perhaps some members will not be enamoured with CDEP as an employment program, but where you link a CDEP participant to a job with a decent wage, it makes the world of difference to an individual and their families.
The Training Remote Youth program which allows for schools, communities and registered training providers to come together and develop partnerships, is a good initiative as it now applies to young people who are no longer at school, although I would like to add a word of caution: we must not allow the training providers to dictate the training need to the clients and the community; it is imperative that all these initiatives be community driven. Such partnerships will not be sustainable unless they are resourced and supported properly at a community level by other stakeholders including the provision of other government services and other stakeholders.
An article which appeared in the Australian this morning refers to a number of children being bussed to Townsville to attend Shalom College from Tennant Creek. Clearly, it is a very emotive issue, one which demands a close look. But we need to step back and take an honest look at what is happening in our educational system. We can no longer apply the pan approach, or the broad brush approach. We need to look at developing real partnerships with the local communities and specifically the indigenous community in a very real and meaningful way. The majority of our teachers, and I include the teachers in Tennant Creek, are committed to providing the very best of educational outcomes. Equally, we need to engage and support them as much as possible. The complexities of this issue in Tennant Creek cannot be underestimated, nor should it.
I applaud the Minister for Employment, Education and Training for his dedication and determination in this very difficult area, and on his ministerial statement.
Ms LAWRIE (Karama): Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak on a subject that is very dear to the hearts of Labor. Indeed, the pillars outlined in employment and training are pillars that workers have tried to achieve through the ages. The ministerial statement spells out very sound, stimulating employment and training opportunities and through this provides lifelong learning. Lifelong learning is crucial to the enjoyment of workers, and retaining workers in the workplace which leads to efficiencies for employers. Industries flourish when we get this mix of sound employment strategies with effective training right. This underpins the sustainability of jobs and jobs growth. The better trained, the more efficient; the better trained, the greater the job satisfaction.
The Deputy Chief Minister deserves hearty congratulations in pursuing necessary reviews, prompting progressive reforms in these crucial areas of employment and training. I also extend my thanks to the articulate and insightful staff of the Department of Education, Employment and Training who have been, with renewed vigour, driving these changes along with the minister - long overdue, long needed changes.
Minister Stirling has today taken us through the key factors of our new direction: I believe, crucially, a broader range of industry and stakeholder representation on the new Northern Territory Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training. Of course, the prompt reorganisation was needed following the contemptuous actions of the Commonwealth in unilaterally axing the funding for state and territory Industry Training Advisory Boards, previously known as ITABs. Despite these adverse developments, the Northern Territory government is committed to Training Advisory Councils to provide our government with training advice from the experts from the industry - the representatives of the industries.
The new arrangements for the Training Advisory Councils are to be commended. I believe they are very workable and will be effective. Minister Stirling has also explained that in future, labour market data will be collected by experienced economists and professionals. That is the role that the TACs had difficulty in grasping with previously, finding the data to identify statistically the trends that were going to be needed to meet future job requirements. That role quite properly now is going to be separated off from the TACs and provided by experts and professionals in data collection. Woven into this new direction are industry skills audits to identify the skills required by both existing and emerging industries.
This, indeed, is very welcome news to industry. I have had the pleasure to spend the majority of 36 years in the Territory. I have moved through small business, through large business in the Territory. I have a very wide range of contacts in the sector, both training contacts, people who are delivering training programs both in remote areas as well as urban areas. I spent a fair amount of time with my colleague, the member for Johnston, getting out to the university, listening to people out there about there views on education and training. I can wholeheartedly commend the Deputy Chief Minister for the initiatives outlined today. I believe they are for the benefit of all Territorians.
School leavers will more accurately be able to make informed decisions on growth industries and career options while, for the first time, we begin to really properly focus on building the skills of traditionally disadvantaged Territorians. In this instance, I refer to our indigenous Territorians. Picking up on what the member for Greatorex said, I know that we all often laugh at his expense when he is giving a speech in the House. I understand what he is saying in terms of the nation having to recognise the skills and training acquired by our migrants that they bring to the country. I certainly have had a lot of experience in that sector. People from multicultural and linguistically diverse backgrounds are often overlooked, their skills are overlooked, their skills are devalued. They either have to undertake completely new courses in the area that they have acquired skills, or take often very expensive bridging courses which create barriers to them because they do not necessarily come here with a lot of funds to spend.
So just picking up on what you said, member for Greatorex, your issues are accurate, however they are in the realms of the Commonwealth government and really need to be tackled as part of a whole immigration and population policy at that Commonwealth level. I urge you to write to Minister Ruddock. The Commonwealth has undergone, just recently, a major view into this sector. If you have not got hold of that discussion paper, I urge you to do that. I certainly have. I have become well aware and briefed on the subject. I urge you to take the time, do the research, and put your ideas forward to the Commonwealth.
I also pick up on what we heard today from the member for Blain, who earlier was calling for greater industry involvement in the tailoring of training. That is, the direction our government is pursuing. Rather than bogging the industry advisory councils, the trade advisory councils, down into the research roles, the important shift to labour market data collection by professionals will free up the industry representatives to provide the necessary advice to government on training needs.
What I can say about the concerns I have heard raised by the other side here today, if they delve into the contents of the ministerial statement, if they take the time to find out, they will find that their concerns have already been met by the new initiatives of this government.
It is pleasing to hear in the minister’s statement that the South Australian Centre for Economic Studies believes that the Territory has a competitive advantage due to its geographical proximity to Asia. This is not news to many of us. Indeed, I have spent most of my life wondering why we have not become the training hub for our Asian neighbours. I see great potential for future training. It will boost our economy if we can develop our employment and training strategies to the stage where we have met the need domestically and we are starting to, if you like, export our training expertise. I believe we have great capacity for building our economy in that direction in the future.
I have spent a lot of time in the Asian region. I have an in-depth knowledge of the region and its needs and spent some four and a half years living in the region, and being an expert on regional issues, primarily around politics, employment and trade. I believe that there is enormous scope for training packages.
We have, through the neglect of our indigenous Territorians, had to by nature now be quite innovative in our training modules. So we have akin to Third World conditions in terms of literacy and numeracy as well as the added disadvantage of large geographical distances to cover without up to date infrastructure. A lot of those models and barriers exist in Asia which is why, for example, the work done by the Open Learning Education Centre based in Rapid Creek has already drawn the attention of major nations, our near neighbours such as China. They have come over. They are very interested in how we provide our long distance learning and training models.
However, I believe, sadly, this potential, the opportunity to move forward, really was never fully grasped by previous governments. I am really pleased to be part of a government that is heading in a very positive direction. It is a tremendous shame, and I know the member for Blain hates to hear it, but it is one of those things: if we cannot accept and acknowledge our past, we are not well placed to move forward. So we do have to acknowledge that successive previous governments completely failed to deliver appropriate education and training standards across the Territory. We have to accept and acknowledge that because we have to do the work now to ensure that that occurs.
Mr Mills interjecting.
Ms LAWRIE: I will continue. I am really pleased …
Mr Mills interjecting.
Ms LAWRIE: As I was saying, the really good thing about the government we are in, with the talent we have, is that we are actually working hard to turn around this long standing deficiency. Crucially, and we have heard previously, we have heard again today in the statement and speeches made in the debate today on this ministerial statement, it is the implementation of the Collins report, Learning Lessons, that is well underway that will deliver fortuitously, finally, some of the outcomes we needed to see in terms of remote education and training opportunities.
Minister Stirling has also outlined that while there has been an increase in indigenous traineeships, and that indeed is a positive trend, the challenge remains to be seen that these are translated into real jobs.
I pick up on what the member for Nelson was saying in this direction, CDEP has improved the day to day lives of many people in remote communities. It has certainly improved the remote communities in terms of the outcome of CDEP programs, but the next step has to be taken. The next step is translating the skills acquired through CDEP programs into very real jobs. That is a challenge for our government and a challenge that I believe that this ministerial statement lays down and is ready to take up.
Indeed, our government is driven towards driving the job market. We are already in excess of 4000 jobs created since we came to government just under a year ago. We have turned around zero growth. We are in positive growth; we are providing jobs. It is a positive and welcome step to have a nominee of ATSIC on a Ministerial Advisory Board for Employment and Training.
I will now talk about small business because it is crucial in the provision of jobs as the largest employer in the Territory. It is very welcome news to hear the Department of Employment, Education and Training will work more closely with the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development. They will be undertaking a review of small business training and employment needs. This review will provide very real long term benefits to both small businesses and, crucially, to job seekers. I thank the minister for his support of small business through this initiative.
I also welcome the initiative to streamline access to vocational education and training through a marketing campaign designed to simplify and demystify vocational education and training. Through this campaign, the move to encourage employers to re-skill and upskill employees is a terrific initiative. Lifelong learning, as I stated earlier, is crucial to workers’ job satisfaction. It also reaps efficiency and productivity rewards for businesses, improving their financial viability, a very rare win-win indeed.
The contents of this ministerial statement are refreshing, the new direction, the employment and training aspects of the department is crucial to the medium and long term development of the Territory. This is a fair, reasonable and equitable direction. It is inclusive of industry, embracing of the existing expertise through the Training Advisory Councils, and a tremendous blueprint for the future. I congratulate the Deputy Chief Minister and his staff for this ministerial statement.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Mr Deputy Speaker, I will take up where my colleague the member Blain would like to take up, but the fact that he has spoken before prohibits him doing so. I have never seen such an air-headed shallow contribution as we have just heard. It is full of rhetoric; it is doing a lot of chest-beating about the wonderful capacities and knowledge, repertoire of those opposite, and making some very scurrilous accusations about the deficiencies of the past. In fact, it went on to say something like we have to acknowledge our past if you want to get on with the future. Well, let’s do a little excursion into the past.
The Labor party did not support the Northern Territory University. Fact. Did not support it. I can remember Bob Collins at the time saying something like: ‘Look, there’s only about a dozen kids going south to uni, why would we have a uni? It’s going to be a mickey mouse show’. It is now probably in about its 12th year. In its 10th year, it had put out something like about 10 000 degrees and diplomas. When I went to school at Katherine High and Primary Schools. We did not know much about university and it was not something that people really saw as one of the options in their career because it was just too far away.
Our NTU competes more than successfully with any other university in terms of Aboriginal participation, right through. So let’s get that straight. The university was built out of our policies, it was built in the face of a federal government that did not want it and did not fund it. The CLP stoically forced that issue and funded it and built that university. The degrees it has turned out, the access by Aboriginal people to that university is something that should be acknowledged.
Asia. The member for Karama said - and I hope I do not misquote her, but it is something like this: that she has a very in-depth knowledge of the South-East Asia region. Well, that is a big call, and that is the sort of trite stuff we get. I would not even claim to have a very in-depth knowledge of the Northern Territory. But here is somebody who claims that she can stand up and speak on behalf of two billion people, many different countries and languages and customs and religions, and tell this House she has a very in-depth knowledge of South-East Asia. What pap! What a patronising, neo-colonialist attitude.
Let’s stay with Asia. Not only are we probably the first government, the CLP government, to have an Asian-born member of Cabinet, not only were we the first government to have a ministry of Asian Relations, not only were our various Chief Ministers, going right back to Paul Everingham, very welcome in different Asian countries, and in some of the countries that had some animus towards other countries, but we had forged very strong relationships which were the envy of any other Australian jurisdiction including the Commonwealth. Not only were our ministers sometimes the first in to meet newly elected leaders in Asian places, but many times they diffused situations, they put the Australian interests first in terms of trade and other issues.
It is all very well to talk about all these jobs. Live cattle came out of the Northern Territory CLP government’s initiatives into this place. Our horticulture potential, our sister city relationships, our training exchanges, our school exchanges. When the member for Karama says that we should acknowledge our past, she shouldn’t acknowledge it in such a way to pretend it was a wasteland for all that period, and she should start to look at some of the things that were there.
The wonderful 4000 jobs that we have created. We heard this morning the Minister for the AustralAsia Railway talk about some of those jobs. Everybody welcomes job creation and everybody welcomes the fact that the railway has been a contributor to it. But don’t start trying to over-brand this little cow. I mean, this beast well and truly has been branded CLP on the rump. We know where the railway came from. We know the duplicitous actions from those opposite when they talked it down out of the sides of their mouths, and we know the sort of stuff they did when they went around bagging it.
If you look at the vast pool of effort and if you look at the diversity - not just Batchelor College, not just the Katherine Rural College, but the schools that have been built in this place, the NT University - I, myself, went to school up here in the Northern Territory …
A member interjecting.
Mr DUNHAM: And, by interjection, yes, I went to school in another place as well. My immediate family has something like - I did a quick add up then - 58 years of schooling experience between my kids and myself in this place. Something like 13 schools. My kids have gone to school in Tennant Creek, Katherine, Alice Springs and Darwin. There are four university students in my family at the moment, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Dr Burns: At NTU? At NTU?
Mr DUNHAM: Two of them are there.
Dr Burns: Two?
Mr DUNHAM: Two are there at NTU, and I am very proud of that. Two of my family are attending NTU at this moment. If this is a matter of great pride with you, the Attorney-General when he paraded that he had a doctorate, which he did not have I might add, he obtained that doctorate at a place other than NTU. So don’t start this little ‘Nah-nah, where did you go to school?’ stuff because I will say that I believe that my bona fides are as good as anybody else, including the member for Karama, when it comes to talking about local education. So that trite statement that she made, I hope she reads back over it. It is stupid and boorish. The comments about her great, great capacity to understand Asia, her comments that she has this wonderful crowd of people here who are going to march off and all of a sudden turn out great educative outcomes belies the fact that you are merely contributors to it.
You cannot give people education. You can give them opportunities to obtain education, and you can give them more opportunities and you can make more gateways for people to enter it, but at the end of the day, if people do not want to go to school or universities or whatever - and this is the big problem: attendance - that is not something that you as a government are going to fix overnight. So let us stop pretending that because you have a policy, a theory, a paper, a report, kids are going to go to school. Stop doing it. Be frank about this.
The passion of my colleague, the member for Blain, is such that I know he will do this in a bipartisan way. I know you yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker, will also help any initiative that will secure better outcomes for Territory kids - and particularly Aboriginal kids - that will get a better educational product here, that will get a better deal in terms of our job opportunities, particularly with our near northern neighbours. For anybody to draw a fence around it and say: ‘Well, that is our idea, and we came up with it, and you gave us 27 - or 25 or whatever you come up with - years of pain’, is just a nonsense. It should not even be on the Parliamentary Record.
I am dismayed that my comments are in such a negative vein, but I believe I have been pushed into it …
Dr Burns: What about policy development from the CLP? Are you going talk about that?
Mr DUNHAM: Okay. What about putting a university in the north part of Australia against everybody else? That is a pretty good policy development, and we did that. We did it and you did not agree with it. What about Katherine Rural College? Yes, we did that. What about Batchelor College? What about Centralian College? What about some of the initiatives we have put into Aboriginal education, particularly when jobs are available? Look at our Aboriginal Health Workers, our Aboriginal Police Aides, our Aboriginal Community Policing Officers. These are things that do not exist in the same way in other places. That sort of training - I can talk about Aboriginal Health Workers - was on the job. It was stuff that we did, and it was not mickey mouse. We tried to make sure that people were industry-ready and that articulated straight into the community sector. So if people say: ‘Give me a policy’, we could talk about this for weeks and weeks.
To say that you have inherited a wasteland and it is all going to be fixed up on a steep curve like that because among your number are people who care, and we did not care. Among your number are these wonderful people who have done these various little sorties through Asia and understand, with great depth, the entire South-East Asian subcontinent. Stuff like that, if she is even half inclined to read it again, will either have her crying or rolling around laughing because nobody is going to take that that sort of contribution seriously. I think the current education minister, in his heart of hearts would realise that also. He is probably doing a good job, the current education minister. Health and education is something we all know a bit about because it affects all of us. There is not a person in this Chamber who does not have some connection with the education industry, the education problems; some solutions of their own in their heads; some angst and railing against some of the systems that are there. That is a pretty good base for this man to be working from because behind it comes quite a head of support for him. I know that in the sector there is respect for some of the things that he is trying to achieve, and there is also respect for his bona fides: that he is trying to give it a good shake.
The proof of the pudding, however, is in measuring how things are going and being frank enough to admit that if some things are going backwards, you have to change how you do it. It is not just a matter of parading out ‘School attendance of 50% at Yuendumu must have been the CLPs problem’, says Principal Toyne. If we are all contributors to this thing, we are also contributors to solutions. It is not just a matter of having people like Attorney-General Toyne who was at Yuendumu with the poor attendance rates that accompanied that school, saying that these were terrible CLP policies. He was an instrument of the government at the time, he was a loyal public servant, he was a contributor in the various skilful ways that the member for Karama has described.
Let us get down to the basics. We will concentrate on a product that is helpful. We will concentrate on playing the ball and not the man, and we will concentrate on everybody giving this shake and seeing if we can make things better. But the continual black hole, how terrible it was, I am offended by it to the extent that whenever it comes - and it comes through the usual air-headed, empty, boorish way of the member for Karama – I am going to make sure that the record is corrected.
Mr STIRLING (Education, Employment and Training): Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank members for their contribution: the members for Blain, Johnston, Greatorex, Barkly, Karama, Drysdale and indeed your good self as the member for Nelson.
I am a bit sad when I hear the member for Drysdale go off like he did just then. It seems to me that he suffers a little bit from what the former Senator Gareth Evans suffered from: the ‘relevance deprivation syndrome’ of opposition. There is a little bit of angst there, I think, that he is in opposition and there is a touch of bitterness creeping in to his comments.
We do not pretend everything with the CLP was bad, but we do point out where things were crook and when you had indigenous education going backwards for 27 years unaddressed, things were crook. When you look at the six Foundations for Our Future document, how many times is education and learning mentioned within Foundations for Our Future which was the then Chief Minister’s vision, the Country Liberal Party’s vision for the one way forward? Sadly, not 10 times, not 9, not 8, not once. Not once. And here is a former government that tells us they were committed to education. Their vision document for the future never mentioned - in six documents, the whole package - education, never mentioned learning and that is why they are over there and that is why they are consigned to the dust bin of history.
But I do not want to concentrate on the negatives that come across. I want to pick up on some of the issues that the member for Blain raised. In the first place, he was talking about registered training organisations, private versus public in this arena. I want to assure him that it is not all as simple as all public are bad and all private are good. In fact, you can get a very mixed balanced. There are 75 Northern Territory registered training organisations in the Territory out of the 181 operating across the board. That seems to me an extremely high number but the market sorts that out. If there is a place for 181 operating registered training organisations, and they are all making a sustainable living and income from it, that is fine. Out of that total 181 operating registered training organisations, just three are public, so there is an overwhelming majority, 178 private to just three public.
The previous government and ourselves have had concerns with one public provider - I do not want to mention the particular organisation - but equally, we have had concerns with some private providers along the way and their way forward – and it was picked up by the member for Barkly as well – was that they wanted to train what they were good at delivering whether or not there was a need for it in the marketplace. Well, that is not the way we see it. They were good at delivering a certain product and come hell or high water, they wanted to be in the marketplace delivering that at government expense. That is not the way forward for us. We want demonstrated need that it is going to take the Territory labour market and the individuals involved in the training forward and it is not training for training’s sake.
On the other hand, I was pleased to oblige a former sparring partner of mine and the former member for Nightcliff, Steve Hatton, who runs a number of private training companies out at Coconut Grove. He invited me to open his latest and new location at Coconut Grove. They are high quality training rooms with a conference room, computer training room, where they are able to provide a whole range of office-based skills requirements across the board, and he is running a great company and credit to him. So there is an example of a very good private providers. I can quote examples of very poor private providers. I can quote excellent public providers and I can quote public providers with a few question marks around it. So it is not as simple as an ideological view that all private equals good and all public equals bad. That is simply not the case at all.
The actual apprentice numbers in the Northern Territory that the member for Blain was also talking about, 2700 trainees in the Northern Territory. Is that enough?, I ask myself. Probably not. I think that there is much more that we need to do there. I look at a public sector of over 14 300 public servants, and I ask what is the capacity for training apprentices and trainees within the public sector. I think probably in terms of Darwin and Alice, our numbers may be all right. We need to have a look at that. But I would question Katherine and Tenant Creek, and whether the maximum capacity available is being utilised. That is something we are looking at to ensure that the Northern Territory Public Service is in there doing its bit, and probably more than its bit.
I have just received a note, just in case I have misled the record here, three of the 181 are Northern Territory public. Some of the rest that are interstate and not registered RTOs may well be public as well, but probably not very many.
The member for Blain was saying that he would like to get out and speak to these Training Advisory Councils, and I welcome his interest in doing so, and by and large, doing a very good job. If he wanted to follow up with Peter O’Hagan in my ministerial office upstairs, Peter has come out of this background, he knows all of the players in this field and I am sure he would facilitate meetings with the Training Advisory Councils for the member for Blain.
The member for Blain asked in relation to VET in schools, apprentices in schools and our training for remote youth initiative which can go to youth that are not at school at all, and what this means in terms of resources for remote, regional and, I guess, in the main indigenous schools. Let me assure him that the day we have to pump more resources into these schools, I will welcome it. I will be on the Treasurer’s door banging the door down the minute I got that information because that would indicate to me that we are getting somewhere, that we are in fact pushing up enrolment so that there is a greater need for resources. In terms of the literacy and numeracy, it is a very mixed picture.
I sat with a 14 year old at Port Keats some months ago and I remember the reader. The teacher asked me to sit down with this 14 year old, and the opening line of the book was:
- Mum said: ‘Sam, go to bed’.
and it was that standard of reader of eight or 10 pages. Not one word recognition from the 14 year old. That class had 12 students in it and, as I said, that particular student was not able to recognise one word. So how is one teacher - and I think there were 12 or 13 students in the class - going to get that particular student - and indeed there may well have been others of a similar ilk in that classroom, I only sat with the one - that would require intensive one-to-one to break, in the first place, the literacy barrier.
So I felt for that teacher who was absolutely trying his hardest, but with a 14 year old who had rarely been to school, really starting from the basics. It is a tough call that we place on some of our teachers. We cannot simply put 14 teachers in the classroom either. Unsustainable. We have to work through with these accelerated literacy programs that are beginning to show some success where the student, of course, goes to school. I would welcome, very gladly, the need for greater resources in these schools to catch up on literacy and numeracy because it would be a sign that we are in fact getting there.
The Tennant Creek situation is a concern to me and to this government, particularly if there is a perception by parents of students that the Tennant Creek High School is not working for their children and not meeting their needs. If that is the case - and I am saying that is a perception that I am told parents have - we need to find out why. I really do not want to stay too much more on this point because I have asked the department for a full report into the situation why 48 students have jumped on a bus and disappeared across to Shalom College in Townsville. There are key concerns in this whole picture below that of the perceptions that are perhaps held about Tennant Creek High School. But until I get that report from DEET - and I have asked the department to talk to parents about their views, to get as full a picture as they can as quickly as they can - there is no point in conjecture, and I do not want to surmise around issues, and until the department has had a chance to get a report up to me, there is little I can say except to say I share the member for Blain’s and my colleague the member for Barkly’s concern on this matter and will get to the bottom of it.
In relation to comments from yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker, the old apprenticeship, very, very highly relevant to today, although it is called New Apprenticeship and we have New Apprenticeship Centres - very much the same process as 30 years ago where the young fellow or the young woman went off to the workshop if it was fitter and turner or mechanic or whatever. There are a couple of differences. They can start in school today, and they can mix and marry the apprenticeship and the beginnings of the apprenticeship training in school at the same time that they are doing Year 11 English, Maths and those core area subjects. They can start in school. The other major difference is that the traditional four-year apprenticeship of first year, second year, third year and fourth year is collapsed to competency based. If you have a real bright youngster who is able to achieve competency, albeit they still have to do the block release training if they are in the workplace and not at school, they can get there in 2.5 years, become a tradesperson, so the old four-year indenture no longer is locked into that. It is simply a matter of passing through the various competencies at each level until you are recognised as having gained all of the competencies required to be classed a tradesperson.
We have a lot more to do in relation to VET in schools and apprenticeships in schools because it is a way of fast tracking, particularly where it is a competency based scheme, and I think we probably are a little bit behind the other jurisdictions in getting that up.
I thought your most valid question was: why is this training world so bureaucratic? I have nightmares when I have to read Australia National Training Authority agenda papers for meetings. They are full of acronyms; they are full of terms that you can’t understand, and it is the language and the use of these acronyms and the frightening bureaucracy that puts business and industry off because they do not know what they are talking about.
Now, I suggest that if you have an opportunity, talk to one Andy Bruyn at some stage because Andy talks pretty common sense, straight language and he was the Chair of the former Board for so long that he well knows just how tied up - and he understood it all, but it took him a long time to understand it and he expressed, even at the end, a lot of frustration about how bureaucratic the whole world of training is and how it cuts people out because they simply do not have the time to get around all of the terms, the language and the acronyms that are used.
Some of the bureaucratic layers relate to the fact that we have moved to nationally recognised and accredited competencies across all forms of training so that what you achieve by way of a traineeship, apprenticeship in the Northern Territory is totally applicable in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia or wherever. Now, in order to achieve nationally uniform competencies across the board, you have to have loads of bureaucracy, one, to get those standards in place, and that requires liaison with industry and business in all of the jurisdictions in Australia, so it is not an easy task to bring national uniformity. That does build in extra layers of bureaucracy, but it does seem to be an area that loves technicalese and lots of that sort of over-complex language.
It makes reading the documentation very, very difficult indeed. Why can’t we have a tech school? was an issue that you raised. Certainly, we can if we look at the school based apprenticeships, as I was explaining, in the sense that you could have the student doing Year 11 Maths, English core subjects that they still require to get through Year 11. They could be doing on-the-job with their apprenticeship and they could well be doing off-the-job. So in that sense, they are part at tech school. We need to do more in there.
I pick up the point that the member for Barkly was making in relation to CDEP. It is way past time that we brought quality training into CDEP itself, so that real skills are developed and enhance the ability of the individual on CDEP to move into real full-time work. Mind you, the jobs have to be there. That becomes a partnership responsibility and obligation both on government and the communities to create at least the beginnings of labour markets beyond those perhaps 130, 140 jobs that exist in a reasonably large remote Aboriginal community. We have to have between 300 and 400 jobs in order for these people to have access beyond CDEP. It is something that we will have to continue to talk to the Commonwealth government about. I am sure if we have a Labor government in future, it was in policy before at the federal level, and we need to ensure that that stays in there - that you build in a quality training component into CDEP.
I noted your ‘Hear, hear!’ in relation to ensure the quality of training and the protection of the trainees and apprentices in our work force. That consultative process with industries and unions will commence very shortly because we will be exploring with them this idea of a common rule award where we would lock in and protect these issues that surround trainees and apprenticeships. I do not think there is a lot of poor and shabby treatment - not a lot that comes to my attention – there is the odd case, as you know yourself. Nonetheless, there is a need to ensure that it does not happen, and you do that by way of this common rule award. We will find out with that process of communication and consultation with industry unions if that is, indeed, the right way to go.
I forget who made the point about group training, but it is an excellent medium that lends itself, a very efficient tool in terms of the Territory where we have a multitude of very small employers who may not necessarily be able to see an apprentice or trainee completely through their time and the competencies they need to cover. In fact, they may not be in a position to offer experience and practical work in every area that the trainee needs to get across. So group training which allows the trainee to spend time with one employer in one business and then move on to another is a great way of providing flexibility for both trainee and for small business.
We need to do a lot more in the rural sector because the Cattlemen’s Association were in to see me just a week or so ago, and she was talking about stations in the Barkly where they cover a whole range of pastoral activity but up the road is a stud property which would have different expertise and slightly different activities again, and down the road was another area which could provide different experiences for the trainee. It would seem to me that - within the Barkly Tableland itself in the rural sector if we could get group training they could do their three or four months with different properties and move on - they would get more well-rounded skill and training throughout. There is more to be done right across the area of group training. We will continue to work closely with group training companies to ensure that they are out there wherever possible facilitating training across the Northern Territory.
For other members’ generally positive contributions, we have put employment, education and training at the top of our agenda. We are prepared to stake the success of this government on how well we achieve in this area. With those few remarks, Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank all members for their contribution.
- Motion agreed to; statement noted.
ADJOURNMENT
Mr STIRLING (Leader of Government Business): Mr Deputy Speaker, I move that the Assembly do now adjourn.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Mr Deputy Speaker, this morning I rose to ask a question of the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure about a businessman from Darwin who went to Alice Springs to start a business, and the issues relating to what occurred in Alice Springs.
The minister did not really come clean with his response. You will recall that the government in about November of last year decided to put the commercial passenger vehicle business on a moratorium. In fact, they put a restriction - according to the response to a petition by the then Minister for Transport and Works, the member for Arnhem, who said that there will be a temporary numbers cap on taxi licences, minibus licences, and private hire car entitlements/licences put into effect on 26 November 2001. The cap will remain in place until December 2002.
The cap was to also apply to regions, so that vehicle licences were not allowed to be transferred from one region to another; such as from Darwin to Alice Springs or to Katherine or to Tennant Creek for that matter. What happened last month, around 28 July, was that an operator went from Darwin to Alice Springs with a minibus and commenced operations. You can imagine the uproar that caused to the industry in Alice Springs. People were concerned that with the regulation in place, with the cap and the restriction against transfer of one vehicle to another region, suddenly out of the blue appeared this vehicle with minibus licence plates.
There were other businesses in Alice Springs which were looking to expand and were told they were not allowed to buy any more minibus plates, while this business man turned up. The argy-bargy in Alice Springs was quite intense, and I understand that business people in Alice Springs then spoke to the Office of the Chief Minister in Central Australia, following which further discussions occurred between that office and some other office on the 5th floor, I am not sure which it was. The outcome of the discussion between Alice Springs and Darwin was for the operator in Alice Springs to be recalled. I believe that by the end of this week the operator in Alice Springs will have ceased its operations and moved back to Darwin.
When I looked further into this matter - I spoke to the operators, to the taxi industry, to businessmen in Darwin also. My information is that the businessman surrendered five minibus licences that he had in Darwin. In exchange, he was promised he would be issued with minibus plates – one set of minibus plates for one bus in Alice Springs. He also made a prior arrangement with another minibus operator in Alice Springs who was looking to sell his business. So the businessman in Darwin was prepared to surrender his five licences; receive one in Alice Springs to operate; and to buy a second one so that he would have a fleet of two minibuses to operate in competition with the other business that is in Alice Springs. You can imagine the angst that this whole matter caused.
When I spoke to the businessman and to the operators in Alice Springs, I was told that the businessman had been in communication with somebody on the 5th floor who thought that surrendering his five minibus plates in exchange for one was reasonable, and that he could go down to then start his business in Alice. But that was in complete contravention to the advice we have just received from the member for Arnhem in response to a petition. It was also contrary to an information bulletin that was sent out by the MVR. In fact, on 29 July it was sent out. I assume MVR wanted to inform the operators in Alice Springs about the restrictions. One of the items that was in the information bulletin relates to the transfer of licence plates and cabs. I will read it for the record:
- Transfer of taxi, private hire car and minibus CVLs between areas (regions) is not permitted.
The maximum number of CVLs issued in each region is also capped.
It appeared from the information that I have received, somebody on the 5th floor intervened, went against the regulations that were in place and in force, made a special deal with the businessman for whatever reasons, and gave an expectation that he was able to operate a minibus business in Alice Springs with a new set of plates, plus the one that he was going to purchase. Because of the controversy that arose in Alice, he now has to return to Darwin.
This is a businessman who had given up, literally sacrificed, five minibus plates which he had to purchase in the first instance. He received no remuneration as far as I understand, when he gave up those five plates. He would have to buy the plates in Alice Springs, I would assume, otherwise how could he have got it? Had he bought the plates, it would have cost him $10 000. I assume that is what he paid. He would have driven the minibus all the way from Darwin to Alice Springs at his own cost. I understand that the businessman then rented a home in Alice Springs for himself and for one employee that he retained to help drive the minibus.
As of today, the minibus is still operating in Alice Springs through the services of this employee. The businessman is now in Darwin and is most irate; he is very upset that it has cost him a lot of money to go through this exercise, an exercise that was authorised by persons unknown. I was not able to get the minister to advise as to how this businessman had an expectation that he was going to be supplied with a set of number plates to operate his minibus in Alice Springs. And there you are.
You have a problem that somewhere along the line, some communication between the minister’s office and this businessman has occurred. It caused him to go to Alice Springs with an expectation. The problem with that is that you have regulations that are supposed to apply across the Territory to all in the CPV industry. Yet somebody made a decision. Now, if you were the minister, then I think it’s beholden on a minister to own up and say that ‘yes, I did wrong’.
If I may just quote again from another point that was made by the former Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Development, the member for Arnhem. In the third last dot point in his response to a petition, and I read it for the record:
In the meantime, a full review has been conducted of the regulatory arrangements for
commercial passenger vehicles which has involved extensive consultation with stakeholders.
I anticipate that Cabinet will make a decision on the outcomes and recommendations of the review
in the near future.
Now, has the minister acted without Cabinet approval? I think it is beholden on the minister to respond to that question and tell us honestly what he did and what he did not do. I accept if the minister did wrong, he should say so and that is not a problem. We all make mistakes. We are not super human beings. But when a minister does something without thinking it through, breaks every rule that he makes himself - I understand that he was actually in Alice Springs during the Alice Springs Show and met with people from the commercial passenger vehicle industry and assured them in company that the capping will apply and the refusal to transfer between regions will apply until December 2002. Yet something occurred.
When the people complained to MVR in Alice Springs, the officer in charge in Alice Springs said: ‘I know nothing about it’. He was not told that somebody up in Darwin had authorised for the release of a set of plates in Alice Springs. Now, if MVR in Darwin and MVR in Alice Springs are not talking, that is also an issue. There must be a paper trail somewhere - there has to be - for a set of plates to be issued in Alice Springs. I suggest to the minister, if not the Chief Minister, to find and follow that paper trail to see what went wrong, then tell us about it, ensure that it does not happen again and ensure that the taxi industry or the commercial passenger vehicle industry works properly.
This moratorium that the government has applied has been the cause of many businesses being unable to expand and it is causing a lot of angst for lots of businesses which have the capacity to and the clientele demand to expand. This morning’s responses from the minister were inadequate. He told us that he knew about the event. He almost - not quite, but almost - admitted that he had a part to play in it, but he was not prepared to accept the blame obviously.
Now, if the minister’s office, staff or himself have something to do with this, then I seek the minister’s advice tomorrow morning during a report or during Question Time when he can explain himself to us, to tell us exactly what he did or did not do.
If he broke the rules, then I think the Chief Minister should censure him or reprimand him for that. You do not make rules, then reinforce the rules to people just a few weeks ago - the Alice Springs Show was 5 July - and within three weeks break all the rules. This is what causes business people a lot of angst. Now, this business person has lost a lot of money and I wonder where it is going. Is he going to be compensated by the government for giving up his licenses, driving to Alice Springs, driving back, renting a house and he has to give up the house half way through the leased term? So let’s hear from the Minister tomorrow.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Arafura): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the exciting opening on Saturday 10 August of the exhibition Weave. As most of us know, geographical remoteness, insufficient and inadequate education and vocational training, and limited natural and financial resources combine to make difficult the establishment and maintenance of viable economic enterprises in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities.
One of the few stand-out success stories has been the Aboriginal arts and craft industry. It is an industry that showcases both the age and depth of Aboriginal culture and the contemporary excellence and dedication of our artists and craftspeople. It is an industry that is worthy of support from our government. I was particularly honoured to open this exhibition of work by women from a community in my own electorate of Arafura. Maningrida has had a thriving Aboriginal arts and crafts enterprise for some decades now, thanks in part to the sponsorship of various organisations and hard working and committed individuals. In particular, Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation, the Maningrida Arts and Culture Centre and the Maningrida Womens Centre.
The exhibition displayed the quality, innovation, and vibrancy of the women’s work from the Maningrida region, a centre long recognised for its production of dazzling fibre craft. In the etchings, dry point and collographs which comprised the two-dimensional aspects of the installation, artists responded to the weaving traditions and its continuing contemporary practice. Line shapes and forms evocative of the frequently made dilly bags, fish traps, floor mats and string bags occurred through many of the works. In other pieces, either the raw material of weaving, such as sand palm and pandanus are represented, or the bush tucker typically collected in the finished bags and baskets. All the works were the culmination of ongoing collaborative projects between the Maningrida community and the Northern Territory University through Northern Additions and the School of Fine Art Remote Area Print Making which have fostered the vibrant and exciting production of limited edition prints, particularly amongst the community’s female artists.
Since the 1990s, workshops conducted in Maningrida and at the university in Darwin, have enabled artists to explore a full range of print styles and techniques. Moreover, the acquisition of a printing press as part of Maningrida’s Women’s Centre in 2001 has meant that the artists can also play a greater role in auditioning of their works such as the collographs mounted as part of the show.
The Weave exhibition marked the third print exhibition by Maningrida women and introduced emerging print makers Dorothy Galaledba and Trudy Nicky Marabik for the first time. It also drew on the work by the more established practitioners Susan Marawarr, Deborah Wurrkidj, Kate Milwulku and Lena Kurinya - and I can supply these names to the Hansard people who may have difficulty understanding some of them - each of whom has attracted the attention of major public galleries and private collectors in the past.
Some of the other female artists whose works were included, were Mary Marabamba, Bonny Burarngarra and Laura Runggiwanga. Each woven piece on display was appreciated and I noted with interest Senator Robert Hill bought some great pieces, so that was good for the women. It was appreciated for its sheer beauty by everyone who attended the opening. I would like to applaud and give recognition to two of the support workers who did a great job in working with the female artists, Kim Short and Genevieve Mehan. Certainly, the recognition of the female artists in this region is long overdue, and as I stated at the launch of this exhibition, they should be proud of their achievement. I was both privileged and proud to be invited to launch their exhibition.
Mrs BRAHAM (Braitling): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I was very interested to hear the minister’s answer to the question that I asked on CDL. I was pleased to hear that he personally supported CDL in principle, although at the moment he has stated that, for many reasons, he has not presented his paper to Cabinet. Tonight I would like to speak to the issue of CDL and encourage the minister to consider this seriously and get it going. Many of the things that he thought were barriers to putting it into place, I am sure, can be overcome. We certainly need to get into the time of implementing it.
South Australia introduced CDL as far back as 1977 and it is the only state in Australia that has done so. Recently, New South Wales commissioned an independent study and although the study showed much support for the introduction of CDL, the Premier of New South Wales has decided to wait until there is national agreement, and at this stage he has not gone any further waiting to see what happens.
If we recall, South Australia’s CDL was enacted as a litter control mechanism in response to increasing litter which coincided with a move from the beverage industry away from refillable containers towards one-trip items. I do not know if you recall, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, but as a young child in Victoria, one of the ways of raising pocket money was to go around collecting bottles and take them to the shop for a refund. Beer was only ever sold in large bottles and we used to collect those and put them in the trolley and take them up to the bottle-o. We did this before Easter so we could have some pocket money over the Easter period or for Christmas. It was a great little way that kids managed to get a bit of pocket money. But, of course, that was in the days when the bottles were reusable. In this day and age, when we have gone into the disposable items like cans and plastic bottles, we do not see so much of that happening.
So what do we see? We see cans and bottles littering our highways, our towns, our remote communities. There is no doubt when you drive into South Australia, there is an absence of litter along their highways and in their towns. I cannot say the same for many of our towns in the Northern Territory. You only need to go into Alice Springs, look in the Todd River, look in the parks, drive out to remote communities along the verges of the highways, go into a community and see the litter which is cans and bottles and cartons. Now, it is a very sad sight because that litter gives a really poor visual image of the Territory and, in fact, if we got rid of that litter, we would be adding to the profile of our towns. I encourage the minister to think about this and to start putting into practice one of the Labor Party’s election promises.
Any legislation that we do adopt must be mindful of the vastness of the Territory and not disadvantage rural communities. I am not sure what happened in Tennant Creek because the Julalikari Council did have a machine that compressed cans together and they were sending cans to Queensland. They used to go to different communities and collect the cans. I thought that was a really good way of solving some of our litter problems. Unfortunately, we all know that the cost of transport to southern or eastern states is quite high. That has been one of the reasons that it has not been successful in the Territory because we do not have that container deposit legislation.
The litter you see on highways and in our towns costs us, the ratepayers, money. We pay our local government or community councils to clean up that rubbish. There is no return for the work they do in cleaning up the litter that is caused by cans and bottles.
We know from the review that the minister commissioned there is a high level of community support for CDL within the Territory. Certainly, the survey that was commissioned by Keep Australia Beautiful showed there was 90% support in the Territory, 2% only were resistant. So we are not quite sure why the government won’t move on this particular proposal.
The Local Government Association in May passed another resolution in support of CDL and it is my opinion that it is the Local Government Association that should be taking carriage of the mechanism to put in place to collect these containers and to dispose of them. We have other support from people such as Keep Australia Beautiful and also all the environmental people. The cost of packaging and disposing of all this material could be spread more evenly across the community if we had some sort of system where a deposit was levied. I realise that there is an argument against an extra levy on cans or bottles because the cost to the consumer will be too great. But if you take a can of Coke and you go into supermarkets, corner stores, service stations, the price of a can of Coke can vary considerably, right across the board. There is certainly not any set price. The deposit that you may impose, I believe, would not be a deterrent to people to purchase the drinks, the bottles or whatever.
Dr Lim: Very, very true.
Mrs BRAHAM: Thank you, member for Greatorex, I am sure you agree with me on that. What could happen is the funds from the unredeemed deposits could be used for other waste management projects. Certainly, the whole effect from an environmental point of view is good.
I talked about the fund raising I did as a child in collecting bottles. I have been approached by the Scouts Association who see that this is a wonderful way that they fund raise, by being involved in one of these recycling depots. In South Australia, I believe the Scouts Association have 10 depots scattered throughout South Australia. South Australia has depots as remote as Coober Pedy and Oodnadatta, so they are trying to cover their remote areas as well.
From an environmental point of view, it would be good that our land fills would be lessened. At the moment, as we know, the difficulty we have in land fill around remote communities and all parts of the Territory is quite damaging to our environment. So the less effect on the environment by reducing the amount of land fill, the better it would be for us.
This proposition, and it is just a proposal, a starting point, is that the containers to be covered, those with a deposit on them, would be those covered in South Australia. We should start with glass bottles, aluminium steel cans, plastic bottles and cardboard cartons. I do not think we should try to go into legislation that would cover everything. Containers that are most frequently used by consumers are the ones we should tackle first.
We should keep it in line with South Australia, because if eventually it becomes a national program, national legislation, then we need to make sure that what we have would fit in to whatever might be proposed. Certainly, in South Australia, you pay a five cents deposit and you pay a handling fee. The process I am recommending is one that has been put forward to have a Materials Coordinator. The containers would be returned to collection depots, not to corner stores or supermarkets as I did when I was young, but there would be depots set up in all major centres, and in any of the major remote community centres, for collection. Community groups or businesses could tender to set up and operate these collection agencies. The Materials Coordinator would oversee the operation of the depots and sell the containers for recycling.
One thing that I believe we should ensure in any legislation is involving local government, giving local government the carriage of this, and it would be local government then that would appoint or outsource to a Materials Coordinator. At the moment in South Australia, it actually is operated by the beverage industry, but I think we would be far better off making this a local government function. They could outsource. Recycling depots could be set up, and there would be no need for government to be heavily involved, although I acknowledge that in the first instance there would be a need for government to in fact subsidise or assist in getting the scheme up. I think we all realise that there would need to be some sort of financial assistance to any local government to set up the scheme in this way.
There have not been a lot of arguments against CDL put to me. People are saying the price of drinks would go up, but in actual fact, it is very highly unlikely that a drop in sales would occur because we have seen, as I said earlier, fluctuations in prices already in different supermarkets, and it certainly doesn’t deter people from purchasing what they want.
When Paul’s did the Collect a Cap school program, I believe there was in fact some increase in the price of their product. It was a bit more expensive than products of a similar type, but their sales were unaffected. What I am saying is the consumer tends to buy what they want and that fluctuation in price, if they knew that money was going back to a good purpose, then it certainly would not be a deterrent for them.
There has also been some talk about curbside recycle collections collapsing, but in actual fact in the Territory, except for Darwin, I do not think we have any curbside recycle collections going on. What I think is exciting is that it would create an industry. It would create jobs, there is no doubt about it. It would enable remote communities to take part in the system, and it would give everyone a sense of saying that they are contributing to the care of the environment rather than allowing our environment to be polluted as it is at the moment. I believe there has been some concern raised by beverage manufacturers in the event that the government went ahead with CDL, but I believe that in the report the government brought down, no group opposed the idea outright.
So, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, in the legislation that I am proposing - and I have asked parliamentary counsel to look at it - the Territory government would regulate the scheme and local government would operate it. As far as I am concerned, that is the simplest way to go about it. We get local government involved at that level of the collection agencies. I realise there has been concern about whether it would be an introduction of a tax if we put a 5 deposit on containers, but South Australia has apparently been through the courts on that issue and it has not been seen as such.
What I would like to see the minister do is, in September or October, say to us that he will introduce CDL. What he needs to understand is that he would have so much support if he did. It would be greeted so positively within the community if we thought we could clean up our environment by this. Certainly, I give him every encouragement to do so. Perhaps we can talk about this later on, the minister and I, and I can inform him how far I have gone with looking at this legislation in the hope of being able to introduce it.
Ms MARTIN (Fannie Bay): Nice of you to remember, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker.
Ms Carney: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker!
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no, no, have a count. It is on your side.
Ms MARTIN: The Chief Minister always has precedence, member for Araluen.
I rise in adjournment this evening to acknowledge the outstanding contribution of individuals and groups to our Territory community.
First I would like to pay tribute to a man who died recently, just last month, and that is Charles See-Kee. It is with deep sympathy that I acknowledge the recent passing of a great Territorian, Charles See-Kee. My tribute to Charles is based on the eulogy delivered by Terry O’Neill on behalf of Charles’ family in St Mary’s Cathedral on 17 July.
Charles See-Kee was an extraordinary man. He led an eventful life which has left a lasting legacy to Darwin and to the Territory. Charles Tsang See-Kee was born in Hong Kong on 21 January 1913. His mother’s maiden name was Josephine Garr. His father, Tsang Tsing Kwong, was a merchant with his own import/export company trading in camphor wood, pearl shell, beche-de-mer and sandalwood. He also had a pearling fleet based at Thursday Island, interests in coal mines in Central China and commercial property in Shanghai. Charles’ siblings were Arthur, Bennie, Paul and Patsy.
Charles came to Australia when he was baby and he spent most of his childhood here. He spent his early school years on Thursday Island and then went to Nudgee College in Brisbane when he was 11. Charles was a great promoter of sport and it was at Nudgee that he discovered his natural ability and his love of sport. He played rugby union but was quick to admit that this had more to do with the need to make up numbers than the suitability of his physique. The one achievement that stood out in his mind - and this was said with a smile - was being awarded Knight of the Blessed Sacrament. This was the first of many awards that Charles was to receive during his long and productive life.
He finished school at St Stephens College in Hong Kong. When he left school, his dream was to do medicine and become a surgeon, but his father objected because he wanted Charles to go into the family business. His father finally relented and money for six to seven years study plus setting up a practice was entrusted to the company’s manager to invest. Unfortunately, Charles’ dream was shattered when the manager absconded with the money. He did not feel he could ask his father for the money a second time.
Charles went home to Shanghai and worked in the family business for a year. A family friend finally talked his father into allowing Charles to go to university, and he attended St John’s University in Shanghai where he completed the shorter degree of Bachelor of Arts. He also took a radio engineer’s course at the Lister Institute of Medicine and Engineering in Shanghai, and a general commercial degree at the St Johns College of Arts and Commerce in Hong Kong.
Charles spent most of his early adult years in Shanghai until the invasion by the Japanese. He had worked in Japan in his father’s business and could speak fluent Japanese. In those days, Shanghai was a bustling and progressive international city known as the Paris of the Orient. It is not hard to imagine Charles as the debonair young man from a well-to-do family, well educated, well travelled and multilingual. Ironically, it was a Japanese soldier, believing Charles to be a spy, who almost put an end to his life in 1939 when he put a gun to his head. It was only the intervention of an executive from the Jardine Matheson Company where Charles worked at the time, and instruction to ‘walk quickly and don’t look back’ that gave Charles a second chance.
We could contemplate what a loss it would have been to so many people over the next 50 years had that soldier moved his trigger finger just a few millimetres that day. After that close call, Charles escaped from China without saying goodbye to his parents and, sadly, with the lack of communications at the time and the subsequent rise of Communism, he was unable to have contact or speak with them. Charles was finally able so say goodbye when he visited their graves in the New Territories in 1975.
After fleeing China, he returned to Australia, traumatised by his experience and situation. He worked in Cairns for six months before taking a flying boat to Darwin with the intention of making his way back to China. However, he ended up staying here. He stated:
- It was harder to say goodbye to the land of my childhood than I thought. I found that my love of Australia
had not diminished, but on the contrary had increased with the passing of time.
Charles worked for a defence contractor for six months before he secured a position with the Commonwealth Public Service. He acted as secretary to the Primary Producers Board and then was seconded to the Administrator, Mr CLA Abbott, to act as his private secretary. This was no small achievement because the prevailing sentiment at the time was that the Chinese were an inferior race and at best only suitable for manual labour. Charles used to recount how, despite his position, he was banned from the Public Service Club.
Charles’ career again came to a sudden halt. Despite thinking he was safe in Australia from the Japanese and the war, he was in Government House when the Japanese bombed Darwin at about 10 am on the 19 February 1942. The air raid sirens gave enough warning for staff to take shelter under the floor, but Daisy Martin, the maid who was near Charles, was killed when part of the floor collapsed on her. He recounted how he watched the bombing of the ships in the harbour from the cliff near Government House and how he experienced a total of 13 bombing raids before being evacuated to Alice Springs in April 1942, when he was one of the last public servants to leave Darwin. He travelled on to Adelaide, enlisted in the RAAF where his Japanese language and radio skills were an obvious asset.
He saw active service as a radio operator from 1942 to 1945 when he flew in the Mitchell bomber, Mosquito, and Beaufighter in which one mission ended when it was shot down over New Guinea. Two of the five crew were killed and Charles suffered broken arms and internal injuries. He spent a month recovering in a Brisbane hospital and six months in the Governor’s residence at Surfers Paradise. Charles was demobilised in Adelaide and lived in Sydney for a year. He was then asked by the Administrator to return to the Territory and he worked for a while in Alice Springs before returning to Darwin to help with the reconstruction.
He left the public service in 1947 and started a refrigeration, radio and electrical business with premises in Knuckey Street. He met Noreen Wong, a Darwin born girl who was outgoing and intelligent and had an outstanding academic record. It is easy to imagine their mutual attraction. They were married in September 1949. They settled in Larrakeyah and had five children: Greg, Lorraine, Alison, Kathy and Malcolm. Charles gave up the business in 1957 and returned to the public service for a while. He also worked as a freelance journalist for the ABC. He now began to devote himself increasingly to community life. It was not long before Charles immersed himself in the local community, the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with the people of Darwin.
Charles had many pearls of wisdom which he quietly practiced. One of his favourite sayings was: ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’, hence his ability to assimilate without fuss. He also believed that all men under the sun are equal, hence his ability to blend and accept people no matter what their origins. Charles, through bitter experience, found that the most effective way to promote harmony in the community was through sport. He found that in many cases, the politics of what you looked like were left off the court and playing field. Sport for Charles, throughout his long and active life, became an important part in achieving another of his aspirations which was harmony between and within all people.
A fine example of the extent of this was practiced when he took a keen group of visiting university graduates and at their request, turned them into a baseball team. What was significant was that the graduates were Japanese, and despite the pain felt for what had happened to his family, his displacement and his war injuries, Charles coached them and in one season got them into the grand final.
Charles was elected as an alderman with the Darwin City Council, and I would like to read a paragraph from a pre-election circular put out by him in 1963, which for me, sums up so much of Charles’ character:
I have no political aspirations. I’m not tied to any party or group, and so I am free to speak and act in
accordance with my conscience and for the good of the community. If a party or group is for the community,
then I am with that party or group. But if a party or group is acting contrary to the wellbeing of the
local community, then I will oppose the group or the party machine, without fear, favour or ill will.
You would have thought that Charles had had enough adversity in his life, but then came Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve in 1974, and the See-Kee’s house was severely damaged while the family sought refuge downstairs. With youthful vigour, Charles worked to repair his house. He was 62 at the time, but seemed a generation younger than that.
Charles’ final adversity was a cruel stroke in 1997 which left him incapacitated and, for the first time in his life, reliant on others, especially his daughter Lorraine, his son-in-law, Geoff, and later the Salvation Army Nursing Home. Charles fought on courageously as he fought all his battles, and passed away at the age of 89.
Charles had done so many good works but two that gave great satisfaction were his successful fight to get a fair deal for the boat people, and his successful drive to establish community radio station 8-TOP FM. He motivated others by example, and was helped in many of his endeavours by strong and loyal teams of dedicated people. Charles had more awards and appointments than there is time to mention now, but here are a few of them. His appointments included: Justice of the Peace since 1982; Civil Marriage Celebrant since 1983; and Registered Migrant officer.
His awards included: Australia Day NT Citizen of the Year, 1983; The National Ethnic Community Award, 1985; Order of Australia, 1988; an Australian Achiever Award, 1991.
Some of his official positions were: the Senior Vice President of the Ethnic Communities Council of the Territory; President of the Multi-lingual Broadcasting Council; Welfare Coordinator of the Chung Wah Society; Chairman of the Chinese Language and Cultural School; Member of Telecom Regional Consumer Council; Board of Management, 8-TOP FM; and National Ethnic and Multi-cultural Broadcasters Council.
His executive positions included: Foundation Executive of many sporting bodies including the Darwin Chinese Recreation Club, the NT Basketball Association, NT Tennis Association, NT Baseball Association, NT Soccer Federation, and the Darwin Chess Club.
Civil and Voluntary organisations he belonged to were: the Australian Red Cross Society, NT Division, he was Treasurer; the Darwin Civic Committee - he was Chairman; he was an Alderman, as I said, of the Darwin City Council; and President of the NT Migrant Resource Centre. Charles was an honorary life member of many of those organisations I have just mentioned.
This courageous, modest and generous man has set standards for all of us to aspire to, and his adopted city of Darwin owes him a very great debt. I am sure all honourable members will join me in extending deepest sympathy to Charles’ family and friends. This is an extraordinary tale of an extraordinary man who gave so much to the life of Darwin. When you look at the list of achievements, it is a wonder that one man could contribute so much to what has become the strong multi-cultural and community based life of Darwin. This parliament should honour his work.
Members: Hear, hear.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to pay tribute to Helena Rooney, a Court Orderly at the Alice Springs Court House who will be retiring at the end of this month after 23 years service.
I met Helena when I first appeared at the court house in 1989, and I recall at that time being very impressed with her friendly manner and willingness to assist me. I might say that that did not change in any way over the 13 years that I appeared in the local and Supreme Courts in Alice Springs.
Helena Rooney came to Alice Springs in 1978 from Melbourne. Prior to then she lived in various places overseas including Northern Ireland, where she was born in 1943. She moved to Alice Springs with her partner, Joe Foley, who came to the town, somewhat ironically, to help to build the new court house as it was then. I am told that initially Helena worked at the Alice Springs Hospital, and after a year or so, she moved to work at the Motor Vehicle Registry. After a short stint she then moved to work at the Alice Springs Court where she has worked ever since over the last 23 years.
When Helena commenced work in the court system, it was when the court house was located at the back of the old Ansett building in Alice Springs. It then moved to what is called now the old court house, which is where the Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame is located diagonally across the road from the current premises. She has, as I understand it, worked in a number of capacities over the last 23 years, ranging from Court Orderly to processing the out of court work and the RTM position.
In addition to her work at the court house, Helena is widely known and recognised around Alice Springs as a friendly identity. She is regularly spotted on her pushbike with her basket, shopping or simply riding around the town. She is also a volunteer at St Vincent de Paul and has been for many years. Helena will however, I am sure, be remembered more for her work inside each of the two local court rooms in the Alice Springs Court House as well as the all important court foyer.
Over the years, she must have called the names of hundreds, if not thousands of defendants, plaintiffs and witnesses. She has also kept lawyers in line by getting them to be where they should be when their matters have been called on. Often she would have to run out the front door of the court house, tell lawyers to put out their cigarettes. They would then run like mad in to the court room and approach the Bar Table with Helena telling them how unimpressed and unamused the magistrate was on their way through.
Although she invariably has a big smile on her face, I have seen lawyers as well as magistrates test her patience. Her thick Irish accent has bellowed around the foyer of the court house on more than one occasion as she has tried to control unruly and badly organised lawyers and, on some occasions, unruly and obnoxious plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses. I am happy to say that these times have been rare, however, for anyone who has incurred her wrath, all I can say is that they must have deserved it.
I have seen her display remarkable compassion to accused people, some of whom were accused of the most horrible of crimes, yet she dealt with them all politely and fairly. This is not surprising because we have come to expect nothing less from Helena. Indeed, she has been a great example to new people starting at the court house over many years. Of course, working in the court system so closely for so long, Helena has picked up all of the tricks of the trade and has heard all of the stories, explanations, pleas and excuses. From time to time, she would comment astutely to me on certain dynamics that were occurring in the court room and would often predict the outcome of a sentence or a finding with certainty and accuracy.
In addition to dealing with accused people, over the years Helena has had to sit with and generally assist families who have been victims of crimes or families who have lost loved ones who find themselves at the court house for a coronial inquiry. It is at times like those when I have seen Helena go well and truly over and above the call of duty when she has assisted and, on occasion, counselled those people in her own way.
The court system, and in particular court houses, are not regarded as places of compassion, but Helena Rooney’s work over many years is the exception. Helena has, of course, seen many lawyers and magistrates, plaintiffs, witnesses and defendants come and go over the years and has no doubt lost count of many of them. She has also during her time travelled to some remote locations and endured some fairly harsh conditions at some of the bush courts around Central Australia. I know that I am not alone in encouraging Helena to put pen to paper in her retirement so that she can share the hundreds of stories she must have accumulated during her employment. Those stories are a part of the legal history of the Territory and her stories should be told. I am hopeful that she will find the time in her retirement.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, a farewell party will be held at the old court house in Alice Springs later this month and I am pleased to say that I will play a small role behind the scenes contributing to the event. I know I speak for all of those who will be present, as well as those who cannot be, that Helena Rooney will be greatly missed and I thank her for her work and assistance over the 23 years she was employed at the Alice Springs Court House. I wish her well in her retirement.
Dr TOYNE (Stuart): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, members will be aware that Ms Jenny Blokland has recently been appointed to the position of Stipendiary Magistrate. A vacancy arose in the Magistrates Court following upon the retirement of Mr Alasdair McGregor OAM, SM. The vacancy was advertised nationally and over 50 applications were received. A selection panel, comprised of the CEO of the Department of Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Director of Legal Aid and the Chief Stipendiary Magistrate, was formed to evaluate the applications.
Following a transparent and fair selection process, the selection panel recommended Ms Blokland for appointment to the position of Stipendiary Magistrate. The recommendation was agreed upon by myself and the Administrator subsequently appointed Jenny Blokland to the position from 12 September 2002.
Madam Speaker, in 1979, Ms Blokland completed a Bachelor of Laws at the University of Adelaide. She completed her Articles of Clerkship with the Northern Territory’s Crown Solicitor in 1981 and was admitted to practice as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory in 1981.
Between 1981 and 1984, Ms Blokland worked as a solicitor for the North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service. Her practice was primarily in the areas of criminal and family law. Between 1984 and 1990, Ms Blokland worked as a solicitor for the Australian Legal Aid Office in Darwin with a break of a year to travel overseas and a further year of tutoring in law at the University of Adelaide. She graduated as a Master of Laws from the University of Adelaide in 1990.
Between 1990 and 1996, Ms Blokland lectured at the Law Faculty of the Northern Territory University. During this period she went to the Darwin Bar, taking briefs with an emphasis on appellate work. For the period 1998 to 2000, Ms Blokland was the Dean of the Law Faculty at the NTU. During this period she was also a Judicial Registrar of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Ms Blokland then worked in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions as general counsel until 2001 when she went full-time to the Bar. In October 2001, she was appointed Director of Policy in the Department of Justice.
Ms Blokland has been involved in many professional and community activities, including a member of the Legal Practitioners Complaints Tribunal, member of the NT Criminal Code Review Committee, the nominee of the Central Land Council on the Community Living Areas Tribunal, member of the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Committee NT, member of the Legal Aid Commission Review Committee, Trustee of the Alicia Johnson Memorial Trust, member of the Women’s Advisory Council NT, Alicia Johnson Memorial Lecture Sub-committee.
Ms Blokland has a sound knowledge and background in the law and is ideally suited to fulfil the role of Stipendiary Magistrate. I am further pleased to note that Ms Blokland’s appointment adds some gender balance to the magistrates bench.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I want to acknowledge also tonight a number of public servants who have retired recently from the Department of Corporate and Information Services. Mike Geddes retired in July 2002. Mike joined the Queensland Electricity Generating Board on 6 January 1958. He was initially employed as an Apprentice Electrical Fitter Mechanic with the Townsville Regional Electricity Board and transferred to the Northern Electric Authority Townsville on its inception in the substation maintenance section on 1 July 1964.
He then worked in the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority from October 1964 for 18 months as a Leading Hand Electrical Fitter and subsequently rejoined the substation maintenance section in Townsville from May 1966 until May 1976. Mike was recruited to the Department of Housing and Construction in the Northern Territory on 4 June 1976 and was compulsorily transferred to the Northern Territory Public Service, NT Electricity Commission, in July 1978. He worked with the NTEC, PAWA until the safety function and his position as Senior Safety Officer AO6 was transferred to the Department of Transport and Works in July 1992.
Mike transferred to DCIS in October 1998, and was subsequently promoted to Manager AO8 with the Occupational Health and Safety Branch within DCIS in May 1999. We certainly acknowledge the very valuable work that Mike has done within the various departments in which he has worked in the Northern Territory, and I wish him all the best in his retirement.
Arnold Still, who retired in May 2002, commenced employment in January 1966 and was a compulsory transferee to the Northern Territory Public Service in July 1978. Arnold spent the majority of his employment with the Department of Transport and Works. He transferred to DCIS upon its formation three years ago. During his time with DCIS he has provided services from the accounts payable and vendor maintenance areas, and retired as a TAM Leader.
Peter Dawson retired from the NT Public Service on 19 June 2002. He commenced employment with the Commonwealth Public Service on 17 January 1966 in the Department of Treasury in Queensland. He worked with the NT Administration from 1969 and was a compulsory transferee to the Northern Territory Public Service in July 1978. Peter has worked with a number of organisations, but since 1985 has spent his NTPS career performing banking related functions essential to enabling the financial transactions of government. Prior to the formation of DCIS, Peter performed this function from within the NT Treasury.
Peter has been the sole occupant of the banking position since the Northern Territory government entered into contractual banking arrangements with Westpac in 1986. Since joining DCIS, perhaps the most notable transaction that Peter has been involved in was ensuring that the payments related to the finalisation of the railway agreements were effected precisely at the specified time.
Terry Bourke, who retired in July 2002, was recruited to the Department of Industries and Development with the Agriculture and Stock Division at Berrimah Farm on 13 February 1980, after 20 years service with the RAAF. Terry was a Technical Officer with the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries before becoming an occupational health and safety officer during October 1993. Terry transferred to DCIS with the Occupational Health and Safety Branch in January 1999.
Joe Smith, who retired in February 2002, joined the public service on 6 January 1969. He was initially employed as a clerk in the Postmaster General’s Department, Mt Gambier, South Australia, and transferred to Darwin on 20 April 1970. He subsequently joined the Commonwealth Department of Health. Joe was compulsory transferred to the Northern Territory Public Service, Department of Health in 1979. He worked with a multitude of agencies throughout his public service career spanning over 30 years including Mines and Energy, Labour and Administrative Services, Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment, and the Power and Water Authority.
During his career, Joe rose through the ranks to attain his current position as Manager of Work force Services. Joe distinguished himself as a public sector generalist, and added value through an ability to perform a diverse range of tasks and functions. He was also highly regarded by both management and staff for his ability to work with people and get results. Joe played a significant role in the successful implementation of the NTPS Job Evaluation System, JES, and recently contributed to the PIPS My HR project. Joe also led and developed the Work First Services Unit from the inception of DCIS.
We certainly wish all of these public servants all the best on their retirement. I acknowledge in this House the value of the work that they performed for the NT government.
Mrs AAGAARD (Nightcliff): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise tonight to tell the House about an event that I attended on the evening of Sunday 11 August. The event, called Get with the Rhythm, was held at Tracy Village Sports and Social Club. The aim of the evening was to raise awareness about suicide and drug misuse and prevention issues amongst Darwin’s young people.
This was an evening for the whole family. Those who attended enjoyed an amateur talent quest, an art competition, clown and face painting for the younger kids, raffles, and performances by a range of local performers. There was also a very moving candlelight memorial service conducted by Bishop Ted Collins for young people who had lost their lives.
The loss of our young people to suicide or to the effects of drugs represents a tragedy for families, but it also represents a tragedy for our whole community. I should like to congratulate the organisers of Get With the Rhythm. In particular, I should mention Donna Kittle. Members on both sides will recognise Donna as a tireless worker in the cause of combatting drug use by young people in the Northern Territory. Sadly, Donna lost her own son, Jesse, in 1999, as a result of drugs. She is now determined to do everything she can to help keep kids off drugs.
I would particularly like to note the amount of sponsorship which was raised for this event, and I would like to acknowledge Tracy Village Sports and Social Club which provided the venue and also looked after the public liability issues. First prize was donated by Amadeus Music, which was music tuition to the value of $1035. Second prize, which was donated by Top End Sounds and Curved Air Palmerston, was a guitar, guitar stand and music stand. The third prize, I was very happy to contribute to; it was a keyboard donated by myself and also The Sounds of Music. There were also various prizes presented from Jackson Art Supplies and Framed Hibiscus.
The fact that so many organisations in Darwin donated so much money and so many services for this event indicates that our young people are a real priority for the people of Darwin. I would like to say that the government, in looking at youth services for people of the Northern Territory, will be putting in a lot of effort in this area over the coming years.
Mr VATSKALIS (Casuarina): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to report tonight about my recent trip to Athens, Greece, as a guest of the Greek Parliament. The Greek Parliament invited me, together with another 60 parliamentarians of Greek descent to attend a conference in Athens. I would like to point out that there are about 150 parliamentarians of Greek descent around the world from the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and some of them even in the republics of the ex-Soviet Union.
I also want to point out that all the expenses – travel expenses, accommodation – were paid by the Greek Parliament. A significant amount of money was paid for the parliamentarians of Greek descent.
About 60 members of parliament, of Greek descent, attended this conference that was held in Athens. The conference was held from 23 to 27 June in the Senate Chamber of the Greek Parliament. The conference was opened by the Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Mr Apostolos Kaklamanis. The purpose was to form closer relations with the Greek Parliament and parliaments of countries where parliamentarians of Greek descent reside, where they are members of parliament; to improve or develop trade and commerce links between Greece and the parliamentarians’ countries; and also to advise the Greek government of the needs of Greek people living in the countries of parliamentarians who attended the conference.
It was very interesting because we received a briefing from not only the Speaker of the Greek parliament but also a number of Greek ministers, like the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Greece, Mr George Pappandreou; the Minister for Greeks Abroad, Mr Grigorios Niotis; the Minister for Education; the Leader of the Opposition; and leaders of other political parties in Greece.
The Greek government has implemented a number of initiatives in regards to Greek people who live outside Greece. One of them is the Council for Greeks Abroad that every two years brings Greek representatives into Salonika for a conference, and the conference advises the Greek government of what it has to do about the people who live outside Greece; the special needs of these people and their children.
This initiative attracted the attention of several countries in the European community because Greece was the only country in the European community that has such an initiative. As a result the Italian government and Spanish government have copied this initiative, and have introduced the same councils for Spanish people and Italian people who live abroad.
The Italian government has gone a bit further. They have now implemented changes to the Constitution and in their parliament such that Italians who live abroad can actually vote in the national elections in Italy, and they can be represented in the national parliament in Rome. It is a significant initiative considering the number of Italians who live outside Italy. Also, I want to point out that the population of Greece is about 10 million people and there are another 10 million people of Greek descent who live outside Greece.
There were a significant number of members of parliament from Australia. There were 14 parliamentarians who attended the conference from Australia compared to only six from the United States, five from Canada, three from Western Europe, five from Eastern Europe. We were really impressed with the attendance of the parliamentarians of Greek descent from ex-Soviet Union republics. There were more than 30. As you can understand, there were a number of different languages spoken at the conference, but with the translating service, things were much easier.
I met with a number of Greek ministers. I had discussions with the Minister for Education in Greece because prior to my departure I met with the Greek community of Northern Australia and other Greek organisations and I requested they provide me with a list of their needs. I advised the ministers in Greece about the needs of the Greek community here. We also visited the Presidential Palace where the President of Greece had an open house and he was very impressed when I presented him with a gift from the Territory government, a crocodile wallet and a polished pearl shell that was kindly provided to me by Paspaley Pearls. Quite a few people in Greece had not seen a pearl like that before and they were very, very impressed. They were also impressed by the fact that over 10% of the population of Darwin is of Greek descent, and it was totally unknown to them. Some of them didn’t even know where Darwin was, so I did my bit for tourism for the Territory and quite a few of them are actually pretty keen to come and see some of our coastline or some of our desert.
It was a very informative conference. It was very constructive, very productive. Apart from meeting the delegates to the conference, I had the opportunity to meet senior officials of the Ministry for Transport. Greece recently bought 600 buses for which the fuel is compressed natural gas. They are going to be used in Athens for the Athens Olympics because they have very low emissions. They are brand new buses imported from France, specifically constructed to use compressed natural gas as a fuel. Because we want to convert our bus fleet in Darwin to natural gas, it was a good opportunity for me to go and have a look at them. I have to admit that they came and picked me up from my parents house on Saturday. They took me to the place where all the buses go to be serviced. They gave me a tour of the buses, their workshops, the safety aspects and issues, and I had the good fortune to visit the natural gas company that provides natural gas for these buses. The buses have 10 high pressure bottles on their roof. The gas is stored at the pressure of 200 bars on these roofs and they can move around Athens producing very minimal pollution.
It was also a great opportunity to meet other parliamentarians, not only from Greece but from Australia, and also from other countries in the world. I would like to thank the Greek Parliament officially for inviting me there and paying for all the expenses, and especially I would like to thank the member for Nightcliff for acting in my position during my absence.
I also want to speak about Dance Magic. Dance Magic is a self funded non-profit organisation to assist young dancers with opportunities for skill development and travel to major dancing events nationally and internationally. On the weekend of 29-30 June 2002, Alex Hooper and Susanne Thompson, with the support of Dance Magic competed at the National Capital DanceSport Championships held at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. Around 650 clubs from Australia, New Zealand and Asia competed in the championships, the first major national event for the year under the Australian DanceSport calendar. For Alex and Susanne, this was their first competition together, having formed their partnership at the beginning of this year.
In an article published in the latest Australian Dance Review, Australia’s national dance sport publication, Alex and Susanne were noted by the author as being one of the outstanding couples of these championships. They won first place in the adult level two, new vogue section and made it through to the semi-finals for youth level three Latin American, which is an outstanding result. Stephen and Anne Farrawell coached Alex and Susanne at the DanceSport Studio and I believe that congratulations are due to Alex Hooper and Susanne Thompson for their success and also to their trainers Stephen and Anne Farrawell.
The Neighbourhood Watch group for Alawa, Nakara, Tiwi and Brinkin held their June meeting at the community meeting room at my Casuarina electoral office. Special guest speaker was Joy Smith, Animal Education Officer at Darwin City Council who provided information on various canine related issues such as what to do when confronted by a savage dog, something we all need lessons about, especially when doorknocking as we have experienced, especially the member for Nightcliff. The meetings of this group are held every second month on the third Thursday, with the next scheduled for 15 August. Coordinator Bill Rainbird has organised for presentation on domestic security to be made by home security experts Warren McAsey and Darren Bowdler.
I have also been delighted by the positive feedback I have had from residents in Alawa recently, particularly those living in the vicinity of the Alawa supermarket, like Jim Gilbert. I have been doorknocking through the suburb, and I have been speaking to the residents as well as hosting a sausage sizzle in the Alawa Park. Since the introduction of a new no book-up liquor licence condition in July, I have heard numerous reports that the level and frequency of antisocial behaviour in the area has decreased dramatically. One shop keeper, Chris Moffitt of Rochelle Jewellery, remarked that Alawa has returned to the way it used to be. This is a great example of how the community, the government and the authorities can work together to overcome problems, no matter how difficult they may be, and I encourage my constituents to take a proactive role in the community, to come forward with issues of concern so that all together, we can work towards finding a solution.
I must point out that it is not only in Alawa that we have had positive feedback. I also had positive feedback from Tiwi, and especially from the proprietor of Tiwi Shop who has advised me that the antisocial behaviour in Tiwi Park and the vicinity of his shop have significantly decreased after the introduction of the new licence conditions.
Ms LAWRIE (Karama): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening in adjournment debate to congratulate a young constituent of Karama. Claire Darben, aged 9, from Karama Primary School has been chosen as the Northern Territory’s winner for the Clean Up Australia Day National Schools Poster competition. So hearty congratulations to Claire Darben.
As part of the Clean Up Australia Day 2002 campaign, schools were encouraged to use their creative skills to design a poster around the theme of Wake Up, Clean Up showing what they had learned about rubbish, recycling, worm farming and composting during their clean up activities. Claire Darben, for her efforts, has won a $50 book voucher from Dymocks. Claire said:
- I wanted to enter because I really like drawing. I draw a lot and it’s fun.
Certainly Karama School Principal, Bob Hale, said the whole school is very proud of Claire’s efforts. I seek leave to table an extract from today’s NT News Classmate feature which covers a very happy Claire Darben.
Leave granted.
Ms LAWRIE: I just want to extrapolate on Claire, because I am really very pleased to congratulate her. Claire was born in Darwin. She has attended Karama Childcare, Karama Pre-School, and now of course, Karama Primary School. She has older sisters. Stephanie is 12, attending also at Karama Primary, and Haley is 16 years old and she is attending Casuarina Senior College. Claire’s parents are Barry and Jennifer Darben and they indeed were among the first residents of Karama and moved into their home in Applegum Drive on 1 November 1981.
Claire’s mother, Jennifer Darben, said that Claire is a very good student who persists until she gets it right, and certainly her efforts have paid off in this competition. Claire’s mother says that the young lass has a strange way of doing her drawings and homework; she crouches down on the floor in the lounge room, and no matter how many times she is asked to come up to the table, she ultimately prefers the lounge room floor position. Maybe this is showing that Claire is indeed a budding young artist, because we know that artists sometimes have their eccentricities and Claire is displaying some of her own at a very early age.
The whole family is very proud of Claire on the receipt of her award and Clare says it is her crazy dog drawing, and if it helps people to stop littering then it makes her feel really happy.
Claire comes from a very long term Northern Territory family. Barry Darben, her father, was born in Alice Springs in 1956, and shortly after his birth, the family returned interstate and resided in Melbourne for a number of years. His father, Don Darben, an engineer, was enticed back to the Territory by George Redman to oversee the development of beef roads throughout the Katherine regional area. Once this project was completed, the family moved to Darwin, just a few weeks before Cyclone Tracy. They remained, with Don Darben becoming head of the Department of Roads until his retirement from the Northern Territory Public Service.
Claire’s mother, Jennifer Darben, nee Sutton, was also born in Darwin in 1956. Her parents travelled to the Territory after World War II, arriving here in August 1947. They resided in the Batchelor region where her father purchased the disused Army sheds to demolish for scrap metal and tin for resale interstate. Later, the family moved to the 11 Mile where they established a market garden, chicken and pig farm that supplied the Darwin and surrounding areas with fresh meat and produce for many years.
Like a lot of people who travel to the Northern Territory, the Darbens came here initially for three years; the Suttons came here for six months and neither family left. It is with great pride that, on behalf of the community of Karama and Malak, I extend hearty congratulations to young Claire Darben. I look forward to seeing more of her artwork and displaying the poster in my Karama electorate office.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is with sadness that I rise tonight to advise the House of a serious injury suffered by Mr Arthur Boland, and to pass on the House’s best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Members: Hear, hear!
Mr KIELY: I would also like to add the best wishes of my family.
I first met Mr Boland in 1998 when, as a member of the NT Public Service, I was transferred into an agency, DCIS, to which he, too, was transferred as Deputy Secretary. It is through his hard work, diligence, conscientiousness that he managed to pull together the Human Resource Management area of the department. He is a very task-focussed gentleman. He has a very good reputation throughout the public sector as a person who can get the job done. He is highly respected by his colleagues, he has a wry sense of humour, and is well known throughout social circles as a bit of a rogue.
Over the time that I knew Mr Boland, we got to spend a lot of time swapping yarns, particularly on a Friday afternoon having a quiet beer. I found that we shared a common history. Mr Boland had spent some time in the RAAF as a young fellow, and I spent time in the Army as a young fellow. He was an Apprentice Fitter and Turner, and so was I. He had gone into the public sector and so had I.
Our paths were very similar. We certainly knew how to communicate with each other and we did this quite well - quite vibrantly at times. I also remember that on his 50th birthday his wife, Gail - they are soul mates, he and his wife; they have one of the strongest relationships I have ever seen. To say that there is deep love and affection there would be stating it quite accurately, to tell you the truth. On his 50th birthday, his wife Gail gave him a parachute jump and he had to jump over Mindil Beach. Well, let me say he did not quite do it on his 50th; it took him about a month or two afterwards, I think. It was going to expire so he had to get up in that plane and jump but when he did, he thought it was great. He loved it but he would never show anyone the video of him jumping.
Anyway, it was last Wednesday when I was out at the hospital to host a function that I became aware that Mr Boland was in Ward 3A. I immediately went up after the function to have a look at him. He had come into the hospital earlier that morning after they found him lying in a culvert in Ludmilla. What we believe may have occurred is that he was riding home from Harvey Norman Park on his pushbike and either rode into the culvert or he suffered some misadventure. Well, he did suffer misadventure but as to how it happened, we are not too sure.
When I saw Arthur he was ventilated, he was very groggy, but he had a real strength in his body. He was puffy from the accident. He had suffered spinal injuries, and unfortunately, there was no movement in his legs. This was of great concern to his wife and the specialists there. As a matter of fact, he is having to be air-lifted down to Sydney either today or in the very near future for further checks. I had to stand over the top of him for him to make eye contact with me and let me say the spirit that I saw in his eye – Arthur is a fighter. He is a real fighter. I am confident that he will come back to full health from this injury and that he will be the same Arthur that he was before that accident. This is certainly what I wish for him. I wish it for his wife.
Let me also say that if things do not go as we all wish, that if this injury does stay with him in some way or another, there will be no change to Arthur’s personality, there will be no change to Arthur. He is a rock solid character and I am confident that no matter what his future holds, he will face it straight on, straight up, and that he will make the best of a situation.
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I appreciate your returning to the Chair. I come into this Chamber tonight to speak of a matter which is of grave concern to me. The matter pertains specifically to my shadow portfolio of Parks and Wildlife and the minister’s apparent inability to come to terms with the restructure which is happening underneath him. I issued a press release the other day after I discovered from information received that the restructure was absolutely going to gut the Parks and Wildlife Service after the Chief Executive Officer of that service, Mr Bill Freeland, had been effectively removed from his position as the CEO and now I am starting to see more and more cracks in appearing.
The truth of the matter is that the sciences, the land management organisation, the land and vegetation issues, those sorts of things have all been taken out of the Parks and Wildlife Service and moved to another division under the restructuring process. With the restructuring process going as it is, the Parks and Wildlife Service has been reduced to basically providing a few parks around the Northern Territory which is a shame because it attacks the professionalism of those people who join the Parks and Wildlife Service with the very, very clear intention to do great things for the Territory parks estate.
These people work for only nominal amounts of money, considering the amount of ability that they bring with them into the environment, and I am disturbed that as far as the new minister seems to be concerned, under his restructuring process, that he sees no more purpose for these people than basically being glorified tour guides and camp ground monitors.
I issued a press release and I was hoping to get some sort of reasonable response from the minister in relation to the matter and unfortunately his response has been hardly coherent. I find it intriguing that the department has, on at least 6 August, made available the restructured environment in which it operates. So this is the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment with its conservation and natural resources division of which the Parks and Wildlife Service forms an adjunct. This whole restructuring process is occurring apparently without the minister’s knowledge because when asked about it the minister, rather than dealing with the matter on foot, simply says ‘Oh, I am going to make a statement at some point in parliament.’ Well, I have heard nothing today and this is an urgent matter. Is he going to address this issue tomorrow? Is he going to bring to the people of the Northern Territory a clear demonstration that he understands what is going on in his own department?
The incoherencies of the minister are incredible, and I will quote from a radio interview that he had on 12 August:
- At this stage, the CEO of the department is handling the inquiries, instructing to the people of
the department.
That does not even make sense. It is not even a rational sentence. It does not mean anything. There are several examples as he bumbles his way through this particular interview, because he clearly, clearly in this interview ...
Dr Burns: Who is to say your transcript is accurate? Is it a guaranteed verbatim transcript?
Mr ELFERINK: … clearly does not understand what is happening in the department below him. So he tries to obfuscate his way through the questions that are being put to him. The fact is that he is not demonstrating any coherent understanding of what is happening in the department underneath him. When a journalist asks him a question, he immediately says: ‘Oh, I’ll talk about it next week’. Well it is happening now, it is happening today in his department, and I am curious to see whether or not we see some sort of ministerial report, or ministerial statement out of the minister in relation to what is happening inside his department.
On the department’s own published material, I noticed that in the new structure of the division - which has already been announced by the department despite what the minister seems to think - there are some 56 vacant positions, 56 jobs which haven’t been filled, and that is of grave concern to me. How is a department …
Dr Burns: Since when? Since when?
Mr ELFERINK: Since 6 August, when this was published by the department. If you want to read it, go and look it up on the intranet. It is there. Your minister is not aware of it.
What the minister has to do, tonight, is come in to make it clear for the staff of the Northern Territory Public Service and, in this case, the new division inside the department, that this scorched earth public policy approach that is being used inside the public service at the moment is not going to extend to this new division. 56 vacant positions. If the government had created 56 new jobs, they would have been yelling it from the rooftops, but the truth of the matter is that since this restructuring process has been gone through, which has taken about eight months now, what has occurred is for some reason 56 vacancies have been allowed to arise. The questions that the minister should be answering tonight, in this Chamber, are whether those jobs are safe. How is the department going to operate with so many vacant positions? How is the department going to be able to protect the parks estate of the Northern Territory - something that the former government saw so seriously, set up a different department for with its own voice in Cabinet - how is he going to be able to protect their jobs and the parks themselves?
I am deeply concerned that this minister simply hasn’t a clue what is going on around him. He owes it to Territorians to make a response, not when he feels like it. He should be across this stuff. The minister needs to reassure the people of the Northern Territory that the parks estate which is the property of the people of the Northern Territory is a safe estate. At the moment, it is an addendum sitting on the fringes of a new division which is still going to require legislative reconstruction which is underneath a department. So you have department, division, and then you get the Parks and Wildlife Authority. It hangs on as something tacked on the side of a new division of a department whereas at one stage, it was a free-standing department in its own right. It had its own CEO. If any policy issue between Lands, Planning and Environment, and similar such departments and the parks estate became an issue, it wasn’t dealt with inside a department, it was dealt with inside Cabinet.
At the moment, anything that happens in Parks and Wildlife may not even reach the minister’s ear under the new divisional structures. This restructuring process has caused grave concern inside the Parks and Wildlife Service and a dreadful malaise amongst a lot of the people who work for this service. For God’s sake, Minister, for pity’s sake, Minister, 56 jobs are currently hanging in the balance. Do something.
Dr BURNS (Johnston): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, on Saturday, 22 June I was able to participate in the opening ceremony for India at Mindil, along with others. I was sorry not to be able to stay longer at this very colourful and exotic event which started five years ago as a very modest event. From personal observation, this cultural experience has become extremely popular and exciting. There were many, many people at India at Mindil on Saturday 22 June. The Chief Minister ably opened proceedings. There were many cultural artists and great food, and I am sure everyone had a fantastic night.
From Mindil Beach, along with my wife, I drove out to Palmerston to attend the Year of the Outback Golden Ball which was held in the Palmerston Civic Centre car park. It was a great night, and I met many Palmerston people, very fine people. Everyone had a lot of fun. The band was very good and everyone got up and danced and had a great time. The gold theme was encouraged by the organisers to set the tone of the night and it was indeed a golden night with an unusual setting.
On Monday 24 June I attended the launch of Healthy Living NT which was launched by our Health and Community Services Minister and the Cardiac Rehabilitation Service hosted by the Board of Diabetes Australia Northern Territory. As the health minister pointed out, I indeed had a role in the development of this cardiac rehabilitation service because when I was working with the Heart Foundation, I drew up a feasibility study which was submitted to the previous government and I noted that the current health minister did pay tribute to the former health minister because it was under the former government that this was originally funded.
So from both sides of the House, we have an interest in this being a success because there are a substantial number of cardiac patients in the Top End which this will be serving - I think somewhere around the 700 or 800 mark. Some of them are quite young, between 40 and 45. A lot of people have an event and they are wondering how they can prevent recurrences. This outreach program is ably conducted by Diabetes Australia under the leadership of Anne Kemp. Diabetes Australia is a very able organisation because of its existing links with medical practitioners and its proven record as a provider of advice, counselling and services to diabetic patients. I am sure they are going to make exactly the same sort of success out of this cardiac rehabilitation program.
Luke Morcom, who lives in the Johnston electorate, is a prolific poet. Members may remember that I quoted from one of Luke’s poems during the debate on the apology to the stolen generation. Luke has sort of donated this poem, if you like, to the service and I would like to read it.
- Diabetes Australia now have a new role to play,
teaching about cardiac rehabilitation and living a healthy way.
Education is the key, learning all about your heart.
Support from family members to help make a brand new start.
So they are Luke’s feelings about it. Certainly it struck a very positive chord with everyone who was at the opening of this service.
On 28 June, I attended the Valedictory Ceremony held at the Northern Territory University for overseas students completing their studies in the first semester of 2002. I did attend one previously, and they are great occasions. These ceremonies are actually held because by the time the official graduation is held in October, many of the international students who have qualified for an award would have returned to their home countries. So it is important to encourage our relationships with the international students, with the university, with the community and send them out as ambassadors of the Territory to tell their friends and relatives about the opportunities of learning at the NTU.
I might also say it is an opportunity for me to wear my academic gown of which I am very proud and which you have seen. It is a very colourful outfit, and I certainly enjoy dressing up in it on limited occasions because, you know, there is a strong tradition with academic dress.
Late June was a very sad time for my family and I, as my mother passed away very suddenly, and I had to travel back to Brisbane to make arrangements and attend her funeral. I would like to thank all of those many people, including members present, who phoned me, sent cards, and were very supportive, and sent their condolences during this sad time. On behalf of my family and myself, I am deeply appreciative - people working in the Legislative Assembly, a whole range of people. It made me feel a lot better and feel comforted by everyone’s best wishes.
I did spend some time in Brisbane making arrangements, and after that, I subsequently spent some time away on RTD travel; primarily to investigate drug education in schools. I will report on this RTD travel later in these sittings, and I hope that members find that particularly interesting.
Like many others in the community, I attended the Darwin Show. It was again a very well organised and successful event with large crowds of people who obviously had a lot of fun there. I would like to thank Percy Ellis, who is a constituent, for his hospitality, on behalf of the Royal Agricultural Society of the NT, at the reception following the official opening. I did notice the former Chief Minister in a very flash Mercedes on that day; he was obviously having a lot of fun. I would hate to think what a Mercedes would cost, but they are very nice machines. He was very noticeable in his very swish Mercedes.
On the 29 July, I attended the AGM of the Filipiniana Senior Citizens Association at Alawa Hall. I have told a number of members about this, because I was very impressed by the community spirit and fun atmosphere of these senior citizens. I have actually joined; I have become a member. I will enjoy spending time with them at every opportunity, and I commend it to other members. There was a whole range of entertainment there; people got up and sang traditional Filipino folk songs and ballads. Then we put the CD player on and we played the Rolling Stones and Brown Sugar and we all had a bit of a dance, and everyone was moving with a lot of suppleness there, and having a great deal of fun. I had a great deal of fun, too, sharing it with them.
On 30 July, I was fortunate enough to represent the Chief Minister at the opening of the new Darwin Atmospheric Radiation and Cloud Station. It is a climate monitoring facility at the Darwin Airport. It is an important partnership between the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology and scientific institutions in the United States, looking at weather patterns and changing weather patterns. We all know what a great economic and social impact that changing weather patterns can have on communities. It is a very important scientific partnership between the Northern Territory and the United States. I think it will benefit the whole region.
Following my weather commitment, I attended the Senior Citizens morning at Casuarina, with my colleague, the member for Sanderson, at the Casuarina community rooms. Once again, this is a group I commend to honourable members. I presented a cheque from the Lotteries Fund to the members to enable them to buy a small sound system and CDs in order to have some dancing and hopefully some sing-a-longs as time goes by. I thank Mrs Doris Ford who leads that group. Doris is a great worker and puts a lot into the community. She is a very special person, as are all of those who attend that particular group. I want to spend a lot more time with these delightful people, and joining in the entertainment.
On Wednesday 31 July, it gave me great pleasure to present a cheque for just over $2000 from the Lottery Fund to the Jingili Preschool to enable them to erect shade cloth over an area that was left exposed by the necessary removal of an enormous mahogany tree in the play ground. It was a danger to the kiddies there, and it had to be removed. This shade cloth will provide much needed shade for the kiddies there. I shared a morning tea with the staff. Mim Regan is a fantastic worker. She must have brought up generations of children in that Jingili area; she is highly respected. You can tell the kids are having so much fun, and the mothers were there having a cup of coffee, and it was a great atmosphere.
1 August was the launch of Seniors Month and along with other members of the House, we came along to the functions to celebrate these most valued citizens in our community. I attended the function launch in the Main Hall here at Parliament House and enjoyed serving drinks and food, particularly the sausage rolls. They were very, very popular; they just evaporated. Everyone had a great time there on the morning.
I also attended a morning and afternoon tea for seniors, hosted by the minister for Territory Housing at Nightcliff and at the Filipino Australia Club. There was a good group of people there and the minister certainly made the resources of his department available. Many of the people are clients of Territory Housing, and basically any problems, he had the staff there and it was certainly very valuable for a lot of the senior citizens who came along.
On 2 August I flew to Goulburn Island to accompany the member for Arafura and the Senator for the Northern Territory, Trish Crossin, for a look-see at Goulburn Island. I used to spend some time out at Goulburn Island going back over 20 years now, and I have a lot of very special friends living at Goulburn Island, particularly Michael Gunjangwui and his wife, Elsie. Elsie comes from Goulburn Island, or from areas on the mainland near Goulburn Island, but most of her adult life has been spent at Goulburn Island. They are very special friends of mine. It was good to sit down with them and have a cup of tea and a bit of a chin wag and find what is going on in Goulburn Island. I am sure the member for Arafura will report on the wonderful market garden project that is going there, and I was also interested to find out more - Goulburn Island is a place where people drink kava. I was interested to find out how that is going and how a whole range of other things are going at Goulburn Island.
I must say that the islanders were a bit confused about the federal government’s plan to excise the island away from Australia for this refugee business, and they just could not understand it. I know that Senator Scullion was out there at the same time with a great big map attempting to explain why they should be excised for this reason.
I went to the Darwin Cup reception. The Darwin Cup is a fantastic event and I am sure all members attended that and had a great time. I didn’t do too well backing winners. Last year, some members might recall that I backed the Labor Party at 7-2 to win the election. I cleaned up on that bet, and that is a bet I will be crowing about for some time. But in terms of the horses, I had two winners and a couple of places - didn’t win, but fantastic hospitality and feeling at the Darwin Cup.
On 6 August, I attended the Islamic Society reception at Parliament House to celebrate the respected role of the Islamic community in Darwin. Evening prayers were also offered for the first time in any Australian parliament, and I commend the society and their leader, Mr Asad Moshin, for their energy, commitment and for fostering tolerance and better understanding in our community.
The following morning, 7 August, I was honoured to represent the Minister for Health and Community Services at the Biggest Calcium Breakfast overlooking the Arafura Sea to launch Healthy Bones Week. I indulged in a bit of Tai Chi on the morning. The member for Sanderson was there. Raising awareness about the causes of osteoporosis as well as the things that can be done to prevent it is what this launch was all about. It has been estimated that 1.9 million Australians suffer from osteoporosis, one in every two women, one in three men. Along with other members, we went to the Healthy Bones launch of the new Arthritis and Osteoporosis Facility at the Tropicus Centre in Coconut Grove.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I have run out of time. I seek leave to have the balance of my speech incorporated into Hansard.
Leave granted.
- This centre is a fantastic example of what a group of volunteers working together can do for themselves
and for others who suffer from these two conditions. It is important for people with any form of
musculoskeletal disease to take action now and the information available at Arthritis and
Osteoporosis NT is an invaluable tool for educating those now afflicted or those with the potential
to suffer in the future.
On the evening of Friday 9 August, it was a pleasure to attend the Telstra National Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Art Awards at the museum. The standard of art on display was very impressive
and must have made it very difficult for the judges. However, Gawirrin Gumana’s win marks the first
time in the award’s 19 year history that a three dimensional work has won. My heartiest
congratulations to Gawarrin.
Along with other members here today, I attended the reception for Queen Sirikit of Thailand in the
Main Hall. It was great to join with the Thai community of Darwin in these birthday celebrations.
On Sunday 11 August, the Palmerston and Rural Senior Citizens launched their seniors week
celebrations at the Woodroffe School with a morning of festivities. There was fantastic entertainment
by Linda and Les Domotor and Bob Wynd of the Band Linju backing all the country favourites. I also
very much enjoyed meeting Mrs Elva Whitebread who is a stalwart of the group. Congratulations have
to go to Anne McNeill and her committee for the excellent organising and running of the week.
Mrs McNeill explained that it takes one year to fund raise for just eight days of entertainment, however
it is all well worth the effort of the committee and the participants.
Following on from many concerns expressed in my electorate from people in public housing about
security screening, it was fantastic to attend the media launch of the $3m public housing security screen
upgrade on 12 August at Malak.
On Monday evening, I was welcomed aboard HMAS Kanimbla for a reception. There was a sunset parade
with sailors and the band from the Kanimbla. The drill and music was excellent, not to mention the
discharge of weapons. Darwin is privileged to be a naval harbour and we are proud to host vessels and
their crews. Please call again!
- Motion agreed to; the Assembly adjourned.
Last updated: 04 Aug 2016