Federal Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says the Finocchiaro CLP Government is gaining a reputation as being “very difficult to work with” following a meeting on Friday that the Federal Labor Government scheduled to discuss why the NT was leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table in unclaimed flood disaster relief payments and why other money it has collected from the Commonwealth is not being spent on domestic violence prevention, remote housing and in other crucial areas.

The Commonwealth has said it will redirect funding to organisations directly if the CLP Government cannot explain why it is not spending the funds the way they were intended.

Ms Gallagher appeared on ABC Radio Darwin Monday morning to reflect on the meeting that was scheduled with Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro, but which ended up being held with acting Chief Minister Gerard Maley after Ms Finocchiaro left for three weeks leave after the meeting was scheduled.

Ms Gallagher said her visit from Canberra to Darwin was to establish what “problems” the NT was experiencing in applying for disaster relief payments and why they were not funding different support programs, involving “education, housing, early childhood education, care, in all of those areas”.

She said on a recent visit to Daly River she spoke to people dealing with flood recovery efforts and was told “the money is not flowing”, including from a construction company which said it was not seeing any money to rebuild homes and had laid off apprentices because the work wasn’t being approved.

“If we’re putting in the investment, we want to see it actually deliver not only the housing there, but in that case, skills and jobs associated with it,” Ms Gallagher said.

“So that’s one example. In family, domestic, and sexual violence [programs] where we see some organisations lose funding from the Northern Territory, you know, it doesn’t make us want to cover that shortfall when we’ve already got money that we’re needing to put into other areas.

“So [the visit] was raising those issues. It was really saying, ‘look, what’s going on? How can we get this back on track and make sure that we are getting the outcomes we need?’ We want to work with the Northern Territory Government…but at the moment, there is a level of frustration around the Cabinet table.”

Ms Gallagher said Mr Maley asked for more funding to go directly to the NT Government instead of to community organisations providing community support programs.

“…The message I gave in the meeting was, well, if we can’t fix up some of these issues, we’re going to go more [to the organisations directly],” she said.

“We will look at direct funding organisations at an increased level than we’re doing now, not less, because we need to get support out the door and make sure communities are supported.”

Ms Gallagher said she was pleased to receive a letter from Ms Finocchiaro in recent weeks suggesting the NT Government would eventually be applying for the disaster relief funding “by the end of the year” for a “number of projects”.

“So that was a bit of progress…because I know many of those communities [affected by flooding] are waiting on some of that infrastructure and support to flow,” she said, adding the government had claimed it was “a small government” as some sort of excuse for not filing for the flood relief payments earlier.

Ms Gallagher said there were “tens of millions of dollars” ready to be paid out.

“The Commonwealth money flows once the applications are finalised, and the business cases have been put in, and we get that takes time – again, ‘small government’ – I completely understand that, but we just want to make sure that all of this paperwork is being done so that that money can flow,” she said.

Ms Gallagher added there was also “a couple of hundred million dollars” in federal funding for combatting domestic, family and sexual violence in Aboriginal communities, but that the NT Government has not signed up to the “action plan” to access that money.

“I hope we are able to meet with the Chief Minister when she is back, it’s an important discussion,” Ms Gallagher said.

“It’s not just the Commonwealth, it’s all state and territory jurisdictions have signed up [to Closing the Gap targets], so there’s a shared commitment there and the thing we wanted to say was ‘how best can two governments work together to deliver and work towards achieving those targets’. That’s the conversation we want to have with the Chief Minister when she’s back.”

The CLP Government was also criticised for failing to meet housing requirements under a Commonwealth funding agreement and seeking instead to reduce the number in the 10-year housing target from 2,700 homes to 1,800.

Mr Maley said at a press conference on Friday before the meeting with Ms Gallagher that the NT Government wants an audit into organisations that receive Commonwealth funding for programs in the NT.

Ms Gallagher said she told Mr Maley to give her a list of organisations he feels are not meeting their milestones and the Commonwealth would look into them.

Mr Maley also threw out the old line used by chief ministers since self-government about how the Commonwealth should not “come up here and tell us what to do”.

“They need to have a good, hard look at themselves because they are spending money in my view where it should not be spent,” he said.

Mr Maley has repeatedly claimed that mining and gas royalties pay for “everything” in the Northern Territory, but failed to note that the Federal Government gives the NT more than 70 per cent of its annual income.

The ABC reported an unnamed “government spokesperson” said the Friday meeting was “productive” but that the “federal ministers had come with closed minds and pre-prepared press lines”.