Homelands ‘key for the future’ in the NT Minister says, as parliament debates policy review
SMALL remote Aboriginal communities are “the key for the future” of the NT’s housing system, the Minister in charge has said
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SMALL remote Aboriginal communities are “the key for the future” of the NT’s housing system and could create job opportunities “across a range of industries”, the Minister in charge has said.
It comes as Mulka MLA Yingiya Guyula, in an impassioned speech to parliament delivered partly in language, said the education system in homelands needed to be set up in such a way that children could learn the way of their land but also the Australian curriculum.
He said this would equip Aboriginal people with the ability to “walk the two worlds” and “survive in the mainstream”.
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Mr Guyula said people drew strength from being on country and it was where “we want to take care of families, children”.
Debate into the NT’s homelands in parliament comes after the government last month released its long-awaited homelands policy review.
Nearly 40 per cent of the Territory’s 500 or so homelands have no global power supply and rely on diesel generators, which the report suggested was also linked to “insufficient funding”.
Authorities have accepted or accepted in principle all 13 recommendations outlined in the review, but the NT government is in so much debt that its main commitment leans on bringing the commonwealth, alongside the NT’s four land councils, to the negotiation table to aid financially.
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Remote Housing Minister Chansey Paech said the former CLP government under Adam Giles had sold the Territory “for crumbs” by broking a one-off $155m deal with the commonwealth to take on full responsibility for homelands.
Mr Paech said he believed homelands, into the future, would create further job opportunities across a range of industries. “Homelands are the key for the future of the NT’s housing system,” he said.
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