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The Central Land Council says it has serious concerns about the lack of detail in the Northern Territory Government’s Working Future policy.
CLC director David Ross said Aboriginal people are being asked to accept and support yet another major upheaval in their lives without any detail on how that will come about.
“There’s some nice sentiments about school transport and roads mixed up with regressive strategies that herd people together into a couple of large towns,” Mr Ross said.
Mr Ross said the motivation of the policy seems to be to make life easier for the government rather than improve conditions in remote areas.
“Alekerange is the only Central Australian community on the eastern side of the Stuart Highway seen as worthy of spending more money on by this government. A vast area of the Northern Territory will apparently have no better existence than its current state,” Mr Ross said.
“What about Lake Nash, what about Utopia, what about Finke, what of their futures?
“Kintore is a community that was created to ease the troubles and difficulties that were caused by forcing many family groups together in Papunya until it became a pressure cooker like we see in Wadeye today. Now the government is proposing repeating those errors on a greater scale,” he said.
“All the evidence does not support herding people into larger centres if you’re hoping for improved health and well being,” Mr Ross said. “The government carries on about evidence-based policy but there is no evidence that people will be better off by neglecting smaller communities.
“It’s all based on trust, but there is no basis for that trust to date,” he said.
“It says the remote communities earmarked for growth will have proper planning, but the government can’t even get building certification right in Alice Springs, they say roads will be maintained to a good standard, but as we know the recent budget delivered little for Central Australia.
“School transport for the bush? Pigs might fly. I’d love to see it, but really, will we?
“There’s no detail, there’s no timeline, there’s no track record,” Mr Ross said.
