Federal GST funding to the NT has now just become a political football, writes Matt Cunningham

THE Feds need to invest in the NT but not just hand out blank cheques. Instead their money should be directed at needy areas, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

THE Feds need to invest but not in blank cheques. Instead their money should be directed at needy areas, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

A $300 million ship lift at the Darwin Port is the number one priority for federal government infrastructure spending in the Northern Territory right now.

That seems to be the near consensus from our politicians as we continue the fight with Canberra to deliver.

GUNNER accused of “begging” for ship lift money

There are some reasonable arguments for the ship lift - potential job creation at the top of those - but if you stood back and took a look at the Territory as a whole and where our infrastructure deficits exist, would a ship lift really be our most urgent need?

It’s a point that might be considered at this weekend’s Garma Festival for it’s perhaps emblematic of the argument they’ve been making on this particular weekend out in Northeast Arnhem Land for more than a decade.

That money is pumped into Darwin and Alice Springs while remote parts of the NT have infrastructure that wouldn’t look out of place in the 1920s.

Look at the roads that take you to Wadeye or Nhulunbuy. They’re two of the NT’s biggest towns but they’re connected to the Stuart Highway by “highways” that are unusable for many months of the year.

In last year’s budget the Federal Government committed $180 million to seal the Central Arnhem Highway.

HURRY up and wait: Years before Northern Territory sees millions in promised roads funding

That might do about one-third of the road from Gove to the Stuart Highway. But cries for more money to finish the job - with obvious benefits for industry and tourism - are barely heard.

Meanwhile work is progressing on Garramilla Boulevard in the Darwin CBD to ease a bottleneck that existed for 10 minutes at the beginning and end of each public service work day.

The complaints from the Yothu Yindi Foundation and others about this spending imbalance have long been dismissed as a baseless whinge.

But when they take to the stage at Garma today they’ll be armed with evidence. It comes in the form of the Government’s own report into Budget Repair. It found — as the YYF has long argued — that the rapid growth of the NT’s public service is sucking up far too much of the NT Government’s money.

The genesis of this problem came with the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax and the way that money was distributed among the state’s and territories.

Due to our long-standing challenges — particular indigenous disadvantage in very remote areas and the cost of service delivery — the NT received by far the biggest relative share of GST revenue.

But that money has been swallowed up in large part by our rapidly expanding public service. In 2003, when the system for distributing GST between the states and territories was introduced, there were 14,538 full-time equivalent public service employees in the NT.

NO fixing financial mess without genuine public service reform

By 2016 that number had grown to 20,596. A 41.7 per cent increase despite a population rise of just 21.4 per cent.

Since 2016 — as has been well documented recently - the public service has kept growing despite the population falling.

And as this column noted last month, the biggest area of growth hasn’t been in teachers, nurses or police. It’s been in administration.

If the growth in the public service since 2003 had remained in line with population growth we’d have about 3000 fewer government employees today.

That would save about $400 million per year, or about 1.3 ship lifts. Or two-thirds of a sealed Central Arnhem Highway. Every year.

GST funding has now become a political football.

The NT Government cries about cuts that don’t exist, while the Commonwealth points to the NT’s relatively enormous share of the GST pie as proof that our woes are simply the fault of our own economic mismanagement.

But the Federal Government can’t wash its own hands of this.

When the Northern Territory gained self government in 1978 the Commonwealth left a massive infrastructure deficit.

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We were literally 100 years behind the eastern states.

The Federal Government needs to invest more in the Territory, but how that funding flows needs to reviewed.

Rather than handing over a blank check, perhaps it’s time to tie this funding to specific projects and ensure the priority for these projects is assessed on need.