Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, draw attention to the presence in the public gallery of the Top End cultural alliance. Hello. Welcome. I see you; I hear you; so do my colleagues. I respect that you support gas projects in- and offshore in the Northern Territory. Your views are, however, invisible to the Labor Party, the Greens and some independents because you do not fit their ideological narrative. You are right to be gutted that, despite travelling so far from the Top End, the Prime Minister and the Greens did not meet with you. You aren't the elite, self-appointed leaders those opposite celebrate, yet you hold so much important knowledge, as remote community elected leaders with cultural authority to respect and represent your communities.

Yet the Greens and Labor and some, though not all, of the independents are happy to trample your aspirations, your dreams, your inherent rights and your legislative rights and interests. They talk of UN declarations, free, prior and informed consent and self-determination, and pay respect to traditional owners, but it's talk. It's the height of paternalism, when, on pursuing your rights and interests as the traditional owners for gas industry participation, they fail to recognise that you want the same things that they take for granted—efficient infrastructure, training and employment—and that, at the same time, you'll protect country, community and culture. Labor, you may have doubled funding for the environmental ranger program, but they know they can aspire to be pilots, lawyers, doctors and teachers. Just get out of their way.

And, Labor, why don't you speak to your mates in the unions—the teachers who are out there lobbying in the Northern Territory, against the gas industry, in schools? Why not get on with the job of teaching the curriculum?

It gets worse. Labor, when you funded the activists at the Environmental Defenders Office, you ignored free, prior and informed consent, their rights and interests under native title, United Nations principles and self-determination. (Time expired)