Damien Ryan shares vision for Lingiari after CLP preselection

Outgoing Alice Springs Mayor Damien Ryan has nominated roads and infrastructure as his priorities if he wins the federal seat of Lingiari.

• CLP decides Price is right for change in Senate, chooses Solomon and Lingiari candidates

OUTGOING Alice Springs Mayor Damien Ryan has nominated roads and infrastructure as his priorities if he wins the federal seat of Lingiari after being preselected by the Country Liberal Party on Saturday.

Mr Ryan said if he replaced Labor’s Warren Snowdon at the next election he would be advocating for Territorians from within the Coalition.

“Across the seat of Lingiari where I live, the roads are important factors whether you’re a pastoralist, a remote community, whether it’s for health, whether it’s for tourism, roads are the bread and butter, they’re they most important,” he said.

“We need to have strong representation in the room to continue to attract that infrastructure spend across the Northern Territory.”

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Mr Ryan said he would see out his term as Mayor ahead of the next local government election in august.

“Until such time as an election is called by the Prime Minister I’ll continue to do my job which will actually finish when the new mayor is elected after the 28th of August,” he said.

“There’s no desire to disrupt the normal business of local government and I can continue to do that.

Outgoing Alice Springs mayor Damien Ryan. Picture: EMMA MURRAY

“I’ve got a lot of years of experience around this and I do my job very diligently and I work pretty hard in whatever role I’m in, there’s now an opportunity after 13.5 years in local government having been preselected by the Country Liberal Party, to represent a broader group of people — that’s the people in Lingiari.”

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who will replace incumbent Sam McMahon at the top of the CLP’s senate ticket at the next election, did not respond to a request for comment.

She is a prominent activist taking conservative positions on issues facing Indigenous Australians, having opposed the enshrinement of the Indigenous voice and criticising public interest in Indigenous deaths as overlooking those deaths perpetrated by other Indigenous people.