Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, you will know that last week, on 24 March, the Commonwealth Grants Commission updated their per capita relativities for use in the distribution of GST revenue among the states and territories for 2017-18. I note that the member opposite has a great interest in this because the Western Australian government and the Western Australian community feel that they have been hard done by. I have to say that is also true for the people of the Northern Territory. Sadly, despite the fact that we did not anticipate these changes, the overall impact on the Northern Territory is to reduce the relativity from 5.28 to 4.66. Even on the figures of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, they believe these changes would be around $269 million for the next financial year, which would be around four per cent of the Northern Territory's current budget. So, effectively, it is a four per cent cut in the revenue for their budget. If you use the Northern Territory Treasury figures for 2017-18 compared to the Northern Territory forward estimate figures, the number is $385 million, or almost six per cent of their budget.

It is really difficult for a jurisdiction like the Northern Territory, with a budget of only about $6½ billion dollars, to have to tolerate the impact of these sorts of cuts. It is fair to say that the method of reviewing the redistribution is accepted across the states and territories and we have to take the rises and the falls, but, nevertheless, this is going to cause a great deal of hurt in the Northern Territory. I note that the Commonwealth Grants Commission is charged with reviewing its methodologies and reporting back to states and territories and the federal government by February 2020, but that is not going to help us at the moment.

There is a real problem here because, as the Grants Commission acknowledges, the Northern Territory does not have the same fiscal capacity as other jurisdictions. In their report they say:

The Northern Territory’s below average fiscal capacity is primarily due to its above average assessed expenses which arise from its above average shares of a range of high cost population groups, including exceptionally high proportions of Indigenous people and people in remote areas.

Having represented the Northern Territory in this parliament for quite a few years, I can attest to the accuracy of those statements. But it raises a real issue about how they are going to maintain the provision of infrastructure and services to the Northern Territory community, and it will create great pressure on the budget for the Northern Territory and great demands on the Northern Territory Chief Minister and Treasurer to meet the needs.

I could go into a diatribe about the failures of the former CLP government to anticipate these sorts of things. I will make the observation that they were pretty crook, they were hopeless and, in fact, there is no question at all that much of where we are now is a direct result of their incapacity to govern properly and to govern for all of the people of the Northern Territory. It raises the possibility that the Commonwealth government might, as the Grants Commission concedes, provide the Northern Territory with increased assistance through Commonwealth payments. I would say to the Commonwealth that you need to look very carefully at the possibility, for example, of increasing funding to the National Partnership on Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment and using that avenue to provide capital for the Northern Territory to provide additional services to people living in remote communities—principally Aboriginal people. That would take a lot of pressure off the Northern Territory government's own budget. It would build upon the successful investments made by the Stronger Futures program, which was introduced by Labor when in government.

I say to the government: here is an opportunity. Sit down and negotiate in good faith with the Northern Territory government, the Chief Minister and Treasurer, and provide a capacity for them to get additional funding from the Commonwealth for these very important services.

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