Huge debt a deeper crisis for new NT government
Lia Finocchiaro inherits a wicked problem: the Northern Territory government’s most high-profile challenge is crime but, behind the scenes, the deeper crisis is debt.
Lia Finocchiaro inherits a wicked problem: the Northern Territory government’s most high-profile challenge is crime but, behind the scenes, the deeper crisis is debt.
Her ability to address the crime and social dysfunction in Alice Springs and beyond is severely impaired by the fact the Territory of 233,000 people is a financial basket case. It has gone beyond anything a federal bailout can fix, though it has been a long-establish practice for the federal government to reward failure with more money in the NT.
The Territory has a net debt of $10.82bn. In Tasmania, there is sheer panic over a $3.5bn debt on an island of 541,000 people. Keep in mind, Tasmania does not have the social problems of the NT.
And the work of the Territory government is unique because 30.8 per cent of residents are Indigenous.
Health editor Natasha Robinson showed us in an eye-opening reports this year that central Australia is a global diabetes capital.
NT hospitals are overwhelmed with the grim work of amputations on younger and younger Indigenous people. In Arnhem Land, men die on average aged 54. All manner of chronic and preventable illnesses hit the top end’s Indigenous residents at shocking rates.
In responding to violence, alcohol-fuelled chaos and family dysfunction in Alice Springs earlier this year, Anthony Albanese called these “complex problems”.
These are also expensive problems.
The evidence is in that what helps keep children on the right path is not a custodial sentence when they are 16.
It starts with pre-natal programs that support pregnant young women to make good choices, it requires early childhood programs, early interventions when families are struggling, and it all costs a lot. It does not, however, cost as much as dealing with the results.
As opposition Indigenous affairs minister Jacinta Nampijinpa Price told the Sky News Australia’s election panel on Saturday: “We can decrease incarceration by dealing with the problem when they’re children.”
The Territory has not managed its federal grants well for many years and this is going to be a difficult problem for Finocchiaro.
The Yothu Yindi Foundation claims NT governments are beholden to “an administrative class” of bureaucrats who mostly live in Darwin in the seats that both sides of politics need to get elected.
Five years ago, economist John Langoulant told the Territory government that it was overpaying its 300 highest-ranking bureaucrats by about $80,000 a year each.
They were earning between $217,533 and $233,565 a year each but he found they weren’t doing the work to justify those wages. The former West Australian under-treasurer recommended they all get pay cuts. Of course, this did not happen.
At the same time, the NT government spent $300m on a bar and dining precinct on the Darwin waterfront. And while the NT population rose 21 per cent, the size of the Territory’s public service increased 41 per cent.
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Not quite as bad as Gough but it’s close
The Albanese government provides no rationale or narrative for its disconnected actions. Everything is spin. We’ve seldom seen a government this poor in such critical fields at such a dangerous time.