Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

We sometimes need to remind ourselves just what we are doing here, not on the issue of intervention—I will not lecture you on that—but just on the scale: 99.8 per cent are exempted from all of this. This is just simply one prescribed road, and it was important that I had that clarified because I was not sure about it. There are no shortcuts. There is only going to be one prescribed road into a community. It is normally a public road paid for by taxpayers. It would require maintenance and a fence on each side. Anywhere else outside the township area, when you go off a road and there is a house and fence, is private property. The norms of anybody travelling in a town will provide. People are not going to be walking into houses, and I know that you are not asserting that. But it is a very small area and the relative benefits are a safer, more prosperous community. I accept your experience in Western Australia and it is a tragedy to know that there is no silver bullet for these issues. There has to be a suite of answers to this. I concede that if nothing else happens, if you just have open communities as they have in Western Australia, that is insufficient—I acknowledge that. We are providing a wide range of initiatives and this suite of initiatives is going to make a real difference. Part of those initiatives is the lifting of the permit system for the road in the way in—just on the township. We believe that a net benefit will be the prosperity and safety in the communities.

Question put:

That the amendments (Senator Chris Evans’s) be agreed to.