Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I support Senator Nampijinpa Price's motion before the Senate today and note that, if this had been a natural disaster, the Prime Minister would have been on the first VIP plane out of Canberra to get his feet on the ground to assess the damage and offer comfort, solution and a big bucket of cash to affected communities. But because it was a national shame; a national disgrace; a crisis occurring far away from capital cities, far away from the tennis and cricket, far away from his summer break; he had to be shamed—shamed by the senators I am proud to stand with.

I acknowledge both of the strong female voices here from Central Australia—Senator Nampijinpa Price, a former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, and Senator Kerrynne Liddle, whose country and family roots go back to Central Australia and Alice Springs in particular—telling their lived experience and the lived experience of their families and their communities. They have been doing it from the day they both got here.

Let's count that back. It is for in excess of eight months that you've heard this and you did nothing. You knew the Stronger Futures legislation was lapsing and you knew the NT government had nothing in place, because you guys, like with your decisions on the cashless debit card, thought they were racist policies. That's why you did nothing until you were shamed into it. I think it is an absolute indictment on this Labor government, which purports to support Indigenous Australians.

I'm very proud to have been the minister responsible—one of the best things that happened in my career was to be appointed regional development minister under Malcolm Turnbull—for negotiating Barkly Regional Deal with then chief minister Gunner and the Barkly Regional Council. A two-year-old's rape in Tennant Creek made our government say: 'You know what? The record funding into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs in this country at the state, territory, federal and community levels is not working when we live in a country like ours and there are children getting raped every night.' It was one of my proudest days. There was $78.4 million across 28 separate cultural, social and economic measures.

In one of the great indictments, again it was the NT Labor government's failure. When I spoke to my department and stakeholders on the ground, what was actually going to be the game changer? Was it another skate park or this other thing? No. It was actually going to be to map the services from different levels of government, the private sector and charities going into that community and find the gaps so the kids stopped falling through those gaps. I'm standing here be the report card of the Barkly Regional Deal implementation plan. Of the 28 measures, most of them are implemented. In fact, all of them are implemented except the government investment and service system reform, where we work in partnership between federal and Territory government so we focus on the actual people. Five years later, we haven't got it together, and that lies at the feet of the Gunner government.

I call on the Labor party to support an election commitment we made in Alice at the Ypirinya School. It has a fantastic young principal in Gavin Morris, a proud Indigenous man, a great NRL guy. He teaches sport. They all love him. This school teaches in four local languages, including Walpiri and Arrernte. We promised $8.3 million to build a student accommodation facility there because these kids come in from town camps. It's a two-day one-way trip, and even back then this principal was telling us he needed to provide secure accommodation for his kids so that they can stay safe and continue to learn during learning week, if they so chose to.

The Labor Party didn't support that election commitment. We knew what was going on. You knew and you did nothing about it. You had to be shamed into making the NT government come to the table.

Question agreed to.