Independent MLA Yingiya Guyula slams government’s response to Homelands review as ‘disappointing’

New homes and infrastructure must be built in the Northern Territory’s smallest, most remote Aboriginal communities by mid-2024 in order to alleviate the “current crisis”, an independent MLA has warned.

NEW homes and infrastructure must be built in the Northern Territory’s smallest, most remote Aboriginal communities by mid-2024 in order to alleviate the “current crisis”, an independent MLA has warned.

Slamming the NT government’s response to its homelands policy review as “disappointing”, Mulka MLA Yingiya Guyula said only significant investment in homelands would help fix the crisis of overcrowded “growth towns” where “drug and alcohol dependency is growing and many people are losing their way”.

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Independent candidate and sitting MP for the NT seat of Mulka, Yingiya Guyula, pictured in Arnhem Land. Photo: Supplied 14.8.20

A review into the NT’s outstations by Territory Families found more than 800 homes in those communities had fallen into disrepair.

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.

Between the two levels of government and the land councils, it is proposed a new homelands policy is written and the financial burden shared.

This comes six years after the former CLP government decided it was a good idea to take control of housing in homelands from the commonwealth in exchange for a one-off $155m payment.

Mr Guyula said the NT government needed to “commit to real outcomes”, and called for a significant increase in homeland houses and infrastructure during the current term of government, which will expire in 2024.

Remote Housing and Town Camps Minister Chansey Paech.

“Homeland towns are not our luxury holiday homes – these are places where we endure many hardships with great determination, so we can bring up our children healthy, happy and educated,” he said.

“This is our country, where we live and can build businesses, schools, hunt, provide for our families with healthy food and care for country while teaching future generations and staying spiritually strong.”

Remote Housing Minister Chansey Paech said he wanted housing in homelands to improve, but the NT needed the commonwealth “back to the table for the critical financial resources” for that to happen.