Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Members may not be aware of this, but Tourism NT, an agency in the Northern Territory Department of Tourism and Culture, has commenced a new advertising blitz. Known as It's About Time … Do the NT, the campaign involves digital partnerships, including with the travel site Wotif. There are ads on buses and locations around the southern cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The campaign squarely targets older Australians, those of 50 years plus, with a slogan 'Stop Guessing, Start Doing.' It is a catchy phrase and fits well as a response to how this government approaches funding and development of the Northern Territory—stop guessing; start doing—but I digress slightly. Our NT tourism campaign is particularly enticing this time of the year as our southern brothers and sisters begin to shiver a bit. In the Top End we are experiencing our glorious dry season with sunny, warm days and low humidity. It is perfect every day.

I am incredibly pleased to see the NT tourism campaign has hit a mark very close to home here in the nation's capital. I am speaking about the Treasurer, the honourable member for Cook, who has announced he will finally be making a trip to the Northern Territory. We are all pretty excited about this, and we are very optimistic that this visit will help the Treasurer to stop guessing about the level of need in the NT, stop guessing about the incredible potential and talent in the territory and be moved to start doing. There are a range of much needed supports. He could maybe start with announcing a city deal for Darwin or maybe that one dollar of the NAIF will be spent developing the north. After months of lobbying, we are very happy that the member for Cook is visiting the cities of Darwin and Palmerston in my electorate. His interest has been piqued, and I like to think that the Tourism NT campaign and my several invitations to him have had a role. It is his first trip to the territory since becoming Treasurer, and I am glad that he will be able to experience firsthand what the Territory has to offer. From Darwin, he can do a day trip to the beautiful heritage listed Litchfield National Park, where he can relax under our wonderful waterfalls. He can visit the amazing Kakadu National Park. He can go down to the Darwin waterfront to learn about the Royal Flying Doctor Service or experience the bombing of Darwin with a 3D-goggle experience, which is incredible. Or he can go for a swim in the cage of death with a crocodile.

The Top End is much more fun when you are with a local, and I am sure that the Treasurer will rely on the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, senator for the Northern Territory Nigel Scullion, to show him around the traps. However, if Senator Scullion is not available, I would be more than happy to show the member for Cook around our amazing capital of the north. I would like to take him off the beaten path a bit and give him a ground-level view of how the government's budget priorities and policies are impacting on people in my electorate. I could take him to the holding cells of the Darwin local court and out to the Holtze prison facility so that he can see the disproportionate number of Indigenous detainees that are there. We can go along the foreshore and he can meet the people that live in the long grass. These are itinerant people, mostly from remote communities. Their numbers have increased hugely over the past few years as services and policies to close the gap and the CDP continue to fail. Maybe I would take him out on the water to show off our magnificent Darwin Harbour, five times bigger than Sydney Harbour. I can show him the site of the future ship lift facility, a great incentive by the Northern Territory government which has, at this stage, attracted not one dollar of Commonwealth funding despite the great economic benefits that it will bring to the Territory and to the nation.

Speaking of not one cent, I will lean over and ask the Treasurer, as we have our rods out over the water and maybe a beer in hand—I am quite happy to take the Treasurer for a fish—exactly what is going on with the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility. I will ask about that $5 billion fund that has been sitting there for a couple of years now, providing no benefit and no development whatsoever to northern Australia. I will take him around to meet some of our local businesses and industries. I do this when shadow ministers visit, such as the shadow minister for defence and the shadow assistant minister for defence, who have been visiting in the last months, meeting with local businesses to find out how we can make sure that local businesses and local people get a bit of a look-in with this increased Defence spending on infrastructure. The Treasurer can hear firsthand the problems of assessing the NAIF and the frustration of missing out on Defence contracts that seem unfairly weighted to large southern businesses rather than the local experts with capacity right there in the Top End to do the work. There will be plenty of people who will want to talk to him about the devastating, nearly $2 billion in GST cuts that are ripping the heart out of the Territory. What we need is for the Treasurer to put his money and the government's priorities where their mouths are when it comes to developing the north. That will help us to offset the damage done by that cut in GST revenue.

On our day out, the member for Cook will see firsthand the effect that this government's utter lack of interest in pursuing developing the north and closing the gap is having in the Northern Territory. The claims of wanting to reduce disadvantage, increase opportunity and unleash the huge potential of the north seem very empty. We have to stop guessing; we have to start doing. The 2017 budget delivered not one cent of new money for these agendas. I can take him past the unoccupied shopfronts on Smith Street. Because of no commitment by the federal government to sustainable population development in the north those shops are not being filled.

Today marks national public school day. I will make sure that, if I can act as a tour guide for the Treasurer, I take him to Anula Primary School. Twenty-two per cent of the students at Anula Primary School are Indigenous and around half of the students have a language background other than English. As noted in the House yesterday by the shadow minister for education, by 2027 Anula Primary School will get about $4,232 per child from the Commonwealth government. That is an increase of just $554 over 10 years for a government primary school in my electorate.

As we meander along Yanyula Drive, at 40 kilometres an hour because of the school, I will ask the Treasurer whether we can compare that to Trinity Grammar School in Sydney. With fees of up to $24,000 a year for primary school children being paid by those parents, Trinity will receive almost $8,000 per student, which is an increase of $2,734 per student over the same time period of 10 years. How does it get an increase in funding from the Commonwealth government that is five times larger than a local public school in suburban Darwin? I will ask him that as I show him around Darwin. How does an elite primary school in Sydney get five times more funding than our primary schools in suburban Darwin? I do not understand that, so I will ask him to explain it. In what way is that needs based funding? It does not seem like it is needs based to me.

The Northern Territory has the nation's most disadvantaged school system and yet we get the smallest increases in funding out of this apparently needs based system. That increase over 10 years for Anula Primary School is not even enough to cover inflation. We need to lift the horizons of our kids. The fact that Northern Territory schools do the worst out of this education policy is a national disgrace. We need to be lifting the horizons of our young Territorian kids, not just showing them that you do not really matter to us, that you do not really matter to the nation.

Before heading to the airport I will drive past the Australian Electoral Commission office. In the Northern Territory only 82 per cent of eligible voters are enrolled to vote, so 28,000 people in our small population are not registered and on the roll. That is a shocking statistic. It is the worst in the country. So what does this government do in this budget? It downsizes the Darwin office of the Australian Electoral Commission, including the Indigenous Electoral Participation Program. It is the only office in our country to be cut. I just do not understand that.

We have had lots of speeches this week in the House about the 1967 referendum about the importance of the first nations people of this country being part of our nation and equal opportunity. You take an AEC office of 15 people and cut the jobs, reducing it to three people, and then pretend you are going to somehow increase enrolment in the worst jurisdiction in the country for enrolment and participation in the democracy of our country. That does not make sense. I think that is a pretty fair comment to make: it just does not make sense. It is difficult not to think that there is a deliberate effort here to decrease enrolment of first nations people in the Northern Territory. I hope I am proved wrong and I hope that decision is reversed.

There is of course form from the other side of politics. It was in fact in 1996, when John Howard abolished the AEC's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Electoral Information Service. I just wonder what Sister Anne Gardiner, Senior Australian of the Year, who has dedicated her life to improving the opportunities for first nations people on the Tiwi Islands off the coast of Darwin, would think of this decimation of the AEC office in the NT. It just does not make sense.

Anyway, I will continue to head to the airport and make sure the Treasurer gets away safely. Our Darwin International Airport is shared by the RAAF base. When we are talking about defence, I will remind him that many veterans who live in our electorate live with the effects of their service to our country. Whilst there have been some commendable increases in services for veterans, we still have not been told whether we have a deputy commissioner for veterans' affairs. We are the only jurisdiction not to have a deputy commissioner for veterans' affairs. There was a commitment by the government to reinstate that position, but we are still waiting. I will continue to lobby for better services for our veterans.

We will also on the way to the airport call in to Larrakia Nation, who are looking after some of the most disadvantaged people in our country. We will pop in and have a cup of tea with people from the Tiwi Islands, who camp in the bush just near the airport and who drink water from Rapid Creek. We will see if there is an opportunity to get an update on the PFAS contamination issue. We hope that testing is rolled out very quickly. It is great that the RAAF base commander in Darwin has recently met with Larrakia Nation. We want that process to happen as quickly as possible so that Territorians can be made aware of where the dangers may be.

As a proud Territorian, I want to finish by urging all members to come and visit and experience our glorious dry season. Often people say that the politicians come up only in the dry season. Well, I say: come one, come all. It is a beautiful time of year up there, and everyone is extremely welcome to come up. But when you come up, I just want the opportunity to take you around to see the support that we need in my electorate and the capital of the north, to see the huge talent and to stop guessing and start doing.

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