Chief Minister Eva Lawler has laid out her Labor Government’s priorities in a “year ahead speech”, six months out from the NT election, with a stated focus of getting remote Territorians working, building the Middle Arm industrial precinct and ordering a review of the Youth Justice Act, while also attempting to reduce cost of living pressures.
Ms Lawler presented the speech at the Entertainment Centre on Monday morning to NT public servants and business leaders. She said jobs were not the problem in the NT, getting people to fill the jobs was the challenge and that she wanted to see more Indigenous people benefitting from the jobs that are here.
Just pre-election hype. Once again dependent on Commonwealth funding to plug the gap from a string failed treasurer’s and money wasted on grants to start up dreams that are yet to make a return. How much is the government paying for the solar farms that are sitting idle? How much have we paid for Black tip gas that never got used? Millions spent refurbishing a vandalised swimming pool at Wadeye and now it sits idle because the concept of volunteer life guards to keep it open does not exist. 50 years of taxpayer funding to do nothing cannot be turned around in 6 months. A very large percentage of people on communities have never had any incentive to work as it has not been necessary to survive. CDP has failed to achieve its goals for 20 years or more. Ranger programs do some good but are just jobs created by taxpayer funds and in many cases take funding away from volunteer fire brigades and schemes to create businesses use taxpayer funds to equip organisations that compete with private business that have to finance themselves. If you want to have viable businesses on communities you must first educate the managers on how to run a legitimate business without the malfeasance that is common when money comes freely from grant funding.