NT election 2024: Dr Tanzil Rahman will contest Fong Lim for the CLP
The CLP’s Fong Lim candidate is a senior bureaucrat in Chief Minister and Cabinet. Read who it is.
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The CLP has preselected Dr Tanzil Rahman, an economic geographer employed in the Department of Chief Minister and Cabinet, as its Fong Lim candidate for August’s election.
Academically accomplished and a former wicketkeeper at PINT cricket club, Dr Rahman moved to Darwin with his family when he was two and returned to the city last year after more than a decade based in Oxford.
It was in Oxford that he completed a doctorate examining how states maintain competitiveness in the global market for skilled migrants.
His parents were among the suburb’s first residents when Karama was unlocked, and his father a well-known maths teacher at Darwin High School.
He attended Sanderson primary and high schools before embarking on an academic career beginning at Sydney University and Oxford University in law and demographics.
He returned to Darwin last year after pitching to the NT government and Dr Frank Daly, the former chief executive of the Department of Chief Minister and Cabinet, that greater focus was needed on developing sustainable strategies to grow the population.
“I got in touch with the NT Government to let them know I thought that significant population and workforce challenges needed to be addressed if the Territory was to achieve sustainable economic growth,” he said.
“I was bought here with a one-line job description to lead and focus the NTG’s overarching strategy for migration, talent acquisition, and population policy, to secure the human capital required to achieve the goal of a $40 billion economy by 2030.
It won’t be achieved unless we undertake structural reform of the economy and to think creatively about how to grow our population.”
His interest in demographics is less about pure numbers and more about the economic benefits of a sustainable population policy, which will ultimately impact on the prosperity and wellbeing of all Territorians, including the voters of Fong Lim.
“At the moment, everybody’s focused on the symptoms but not the underlying cause of those issues, which is a dysfunctional economy,” he said.
“The people who live in Stuart Park, Bayview, Woolner, Winnellie, Coonawarra, The Narrows, and Berrimah are aspirational Territorians raising families in challenging circumstances who would benefit from sustainable population and economic growth.”
Dr Rahman said it was an honour contesting a seat named after an inspirational Territorian.
“I’m delighted to be a preselected candidate in an electorate named after Alec Fong Lim,” he
said. “Multiculturalism is very important to me and Alec was the embodiment of Australia’s most successful multicultural community.” He said.
Dr Rahman is expecting to finish as Executive Director Human Capital with Government at the end of next month.
In 2020, Labor’s Mark Monaghan defeated the CLP’s Kylie Bonanni 52.6 per cent to 47.4 per cent on a two-candidate preferred basis.
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