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

You're absolutely right, Attorney-General—not true. But what we've got is L-plates on the back of the Northern Territory Treasurer, who maybe needs a little bit of help to understand budget papers and who, a week ago, when he received the biggest news that any treasurer in the Northern Territory—and I can tell you that there would have been Territory Labor treasurers who would have loved to have had the federal Treasurer say that they've just landed the biggest windfall in terms of the GST.

Those guys opposite gutted the Northern Territory by over $350 million in GST funding, so the Northern Territory has been fighting to have the GST reinstated so that the Northern Territory's regions and our remote communities can be better off through an increase in the GST payments.

A week ago the Northern Territory Treasurer said, 'This is a windfall, and this is great for the Northern Territory.' Then they must have got the phone call from the Leader of the Opposition's office or someone, and they came out negative and said, 'Oh no, this is bad; the Northern Territory has been left behind.' Which is it? The hypocrisy and the contradictions that are coming out of the Northern Territory CLP government are the same as what you see on the other side of this chamber.

I was with Minister McCarthy, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, last week. We were in a community, Maningrida, and we launched a subsidy—and I want to thank every member of our cabinet and the executive government for the decision that was taken to put a subsidy in place for 30 food items. Now, people might think that that's not much, but, as I'm going around these communities, everyone is saying thank you. In terms of the cost of living, what that has done for the families in those remote communities is remarkable.

It was fantastic to go to those communities with Minister McCarthy and to talk to those mums and dads and those families that have been doing it really tough, and to know that they are humbled by this government's subsidy of 30 essential food items—often things that we take for granted, living in the big cities where we can have choice. In a remote community you don't get that choice. So I do want to acknowledge the Prime Minister and all of the ministers of the cabinet for that single decision, because a lot of people are saying, 'This will be life changing for us. This will help us with the cost of living.'

I was with the Prime Minister when he made the announcement about $842 million for what they call the NTRAI. There has been $200 million on roads, continuing our investment in terms of infrastructure. So I disagree, of course, with the CLP government but also our other NT senator, who think that the Northern Territory has been left behind. I think that they need to read the budget papers properly. They need to give credit where credit's due. The Northern Territory's in a better place than it was.

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