(3) The Commonwealth Government is as responsible as the Territory Government for this state of affairs. The current GST formula, at best, tries to maintain the status quo. The status quo is not good enough. The formula must tackle and address the disadvantage, not maintain it. The Commonwealth should not be able to continue to avoid its obligations to the Territory’s disadvantaged regions. (4) The Commonwealth formulas that go to local government funding are scandalous as we point out clearly in our submission. (5) We are plagued by public servants who mostly live in Darwin and we are forever strangled by red tape. Our submission points out that more money just seems to mean more public servants. (6) It seems more and more people in the south are identifying as “Aboriginal”. These people usually live in urban or semi-urban areas, yet they are treated the same in the terms of the formula as Aboriginal people who live in remote areas. This is a serious disparity that needs to be addressed. My colleagues here to my right will touch on this briefly. Commissioners, the Northern Territory is different and these issues are not going away. Indigenous matters are front and centre for we Territorians. We urge you to make recommendations that address the issues that we have identified, and not just make a scapegoat of the Northern Territory. The NT has great need and to address that need, we require a new manner of doing business that sends government funds direct to the point of need and addresses the issue of the disempowerment of Aboriginal people. On my last point, I take this opportunity to recommend a model based on the work of Empowered Communities, and I table a copy of that report for you here now. MS CHESTER: Thank you. MS BOWDEN: And with me are two important advisors to the Yothu Yindi Foundation. Barry Hansen here, is a former chairman of the Northern Territory Council of Social Services, and Bob Beadman a former chairman of the Northern Territory Grants Commission. They’re going to speak for a small amount of time and then, perhaps, we might take some questions. Thank you. MS CHESTER: Thank you. MR HANSEN: Thanks, Denise. Commissioners, Denise has mentioned and Yananymul has mentioned “underspending”. Now to put some numbers to it, and I’ll go back to – it might seem like I’m going back a number of years, but I’m going back to 2006/7 to show a pattern of working
budgets. That’s the primary concern that you’ve got that that will then directly flow on to what the spend is in education in the NT? MR RYAN: Yes. And with that figure, that’s been providing to me by the Education Minister’s advisor, and she stressed it’s an estimate. I can only go on the figures that are provided. MS CHESTER: Yes. Okay. That’s good. MR RYAN: Yes. MS CHESTER: And we’ll be asking them about that tomorrow. MR RYAN: Yes, okay. MS CHESTER: That’s a new number to us. MR RYAN: Sure. MS CHESTER: And I suspect that number, and this might help in terms of contextualise your concerns that that number is probably assuming that we do what - a cold turkey policy change, so we move to that new system tomorrow. MR RYAN: Right, yes. MS CHESTER: And there’s no transitional phasing or compensation. So in our draft report, one of the biggest challenges we’ve got in this phase of the inquiry is whenever you make a change to something like the HFE, the key formula, which is how we work out the relativities, and particularly our starting point is we’ve got a really wide relativity band of you know WA down in the 30s and the Northern Territory off the scale. MR RYAN: Yes. MS CHESTER: That to move to such a change, you would need to do it very gradually over time, such that it you know doesn’t materially disadvantage particularly the smaller or the fiscally weaker states. So that’s one of our guiding principles for the transition part that we wouldn't want to see the fiscally weaker territories and states materially disadvantaged. So that’s in our draft report. And so part of our priority now is to try to consult with the states and territories on what would a transition path be that would ensure that? And to some extent, the way the GST pool grows over time and if you transition