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

I want to speak in support of the motion that has been brought forward by the member for Gilmore, and I just want to put it in the context of my electorate of Lingiari, which is about 1.1 million square kilometres. As I've said before in this place, it covers 76 remote communities and over 500 homelands—quite a vast part of the Northern Territory. It stretches from the saltwater country in the Top End to the deserts of Central Australia. As in other regional seats, I think some of the challenges in reaching our communities and dealing with our constituents are extremely difficult, particularly during the seasonal times such as we're seeing with the wet season, where we've seen many floods. There are communities, particularly in regional Northern Territory—places in the Barkly and Borroloola—where we're now facing the challenge for the first time of getting food drops, particularly going into those Gulf communities and homelands. There are challenges that certainly confront us in places like Lingiari.

Looking at some of those challenges, I want to pick up on one issue that we're addressing through action which will go a long way towards assisting particularly the young people in my electorate through the Real Jobs Program. The only way we're going to look at stimulating the economy and also make sure that those communities can have a positive outcome and build their economy is by having a jobs program. I think the Real Jobs Program is going to be really important for providing that pathway in the Top End.

When I was running the Northern Land Council, we started a program which was called the Learning on Country program. That program looked at how we address school attendance—how we get young people to engage in school and stay in school—and it looked at that pathway from school into a full-time job. That program went from having 200 young people participating to nearly 600 young people participating across a lot of the schools in the Top End. It is a success, and I think it's a success that we can build on, showing that one way to engage young people in the education system is to give them that pathway and that self belief that there is a pathway from school into a job. The Learning on Country program—which then has a pathway to a range of other programs, including learning on country, caring for country and playing a role in the environment, whether it's land or sea—is tailored particularly to build that economy on the ground in those communities. Given some of the challenges we have in remote Northern Territory communities, I think we have to look at things creatively and think outside of the square as to what we are going to do.

The state of Australia's regions report looked at some of the areas, and a couple of those were regional workforces in meeting the needs of today and tomorrow, and promoting economic aspirations. But the culture and the language of First Nations people need to be part of that process so that we can capitalise on the strengths of those communities and Aboriginal people. That way, we'll be able to get the best outcome, not just for the community but particularly for families in those communities. I think if those families can see their young people working and engaged, we will see a better outcome for those communities. That should be what we all aspire to; we should all work with those communities to try and get the best outcomes for Aboriginal people, particularly in those remote communities. The reality is that we're not going to get the big multibillion-dollar companies investing in those communities, so we have to look at how we build those small economies to make sure that they can participate.

I fully support the motion brought forward by my colleague. (Time expired)

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