Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge that it has been interesting to sit here and listen to the member for Durack, who, like me, probably has one of the largest seats in this federal parliament. My seat of Lingiari is 1.1 million square kilometres. It covers 76 remote communities and 500 homelands in the Northern Territory. It stretches from the saltwater country in the Top End—all of the Top End coast—to the deserts of Central Australia. And it has many regional towns: Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. I was listening to the member for Grey and to some of the issues he was highlighting in places like Ceduna. I was the national head of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs for the Australian Red Cross, travelling to some of these communities and working in places like Port Hedland and Ceduna to have a look at how we get better solutions and outcomes for people. A lot of these issues have been long-term and communities have struggled for a long time with coming up with solutions. But when you do have communities that have solutions to a lot of these problems, often it needs government to listen to what those solutions are. For too long we have seen complete deafness or ignorance on the side of governments in terms of looking at what the solutions are. (Time expired)

Sitting suspended from 13:30 to 16:00

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