ABC’s Adam Steer and A Parkinson: I think it’s time to get to our spin cycle this morning, because it is 24 to 9 already. So there was some confusion over money this week. You might remember Police Minister Brent Potter on this programme I asked if he was spending $1.1 billion. That’s with a B on policing.
So you’re going to see in addition, we’ve got some further announcements later today and I won’t jump the gun, but you’ll see an increase of about $120 million a year on year over four years.
That will cover down on infrastructure and additional staffing numbers as we’ve committed to.
So that wasn’t quite correct. What we were able to find out, though, is in 2023, one point. So 2023, not this year. $1.1 billion was committed to what the Northern Territory government is labelling public order safety. So the cash is for police, transit officers, the private security officers and domestic and family violence funding. So it got us thinking about what else has public funds been poured into and why. As I was saying before, do we hear so many creative announcements during an election year? As usual, we sent producer a Parkinson down a rabbit hole, and this week our special guest is NT cross Acting chief executive Caitlin Perry. Caitlin, hello. Welcome to the programme
NTCOSS’s Caitlin Perry: Hello, Adam.
ABC: Hello listeners. And a welcome back. First of all, we’ve seen cash splashed all over the place in the last two weeks. Why is that?
Well, you might have heard this term pork barrelling. It is basically anytime you hear politicians using taxpayers money to swing their votes in that direction. And there have been a few big scandals over the years. You might remember the most recent, which was actually in the lead up to the last federal election, and it was the sports vouchers rort. Uh, essentially Bridget McKenzie, who was the minister involved, found herself in a fair bit of hot water when her own clubs received a huge chunk of funding. There was also other things, like, um, a rowing club in, uh, Mosman, North Sydney, which was Tony Abbott’s very highly debated seat. Um, got a huge cash splash, but a rugby club that didn’t have Changerooms didn’t have lights in a very safe labor seat. Got nothing. Um, so that’s kind of what pork barrelling is. But what are the things I did find out is kind of where this tome came from. And it’s pretty horrific, actually. Um, Guardian journalist Matilda Boseley did some work on this.
Now you know what pork barrelling is and what it allegedly looks like But I’m sure you have one burning question left. Where on earth does this worm come from? Well, basically no one knows, but many think it’s a reference to the practise of slave masters giving enslaved people a barrel of salted pork as a reward, and then watching them fight amongst themselves for a portion Yeah, it’s safe to say that people don’t mean it as a terms of endearment.
Yeah.
So wow.
Pork barrelling. Yeah. Um, has a pretty horrific backstory, actually, and we use it very regularly here in the Northern Territory, and we often see it, um, pretty, often in the NT, particularly because we know that the Northern Territory to win an election, in most cases, you need to win Palmerston and Darwin seats. And it’s been um, we’ve seen a lot of funding over the years poured into those seats. But in 2012 it was a little bit different. Yeah.
Certainly was. Sue Fraser-adams was the architect behind this that they called the Bush Revolution? Uh, it was when Terry Mills first got, uh, into, government and it was almost a surprise. I was at the CLP headquarters that night. It was almost felt almost like a surprise for the CLP that they’d managed to win government. So the incumbent labor government had done exactly what they’d planned to do and keep those northern suburban seats, but they had ignored the bush. And so the CLP went and spoke to the voters outside of the northern suburbs of Darwin. They went to the bush and they spoke to them, and they won those seats and, uh, whipped the power underneath from Labour’s eyes. I mean, we’ll see what happens again. This, uh, this election.
We sure will.
Um, so, Caitlin, you’ve been in the territory for a long time, working across law and social services. Do you think there’s been an investment in property and place over people in that time?
CP: Um, well, I’m not sure that I can kind of talk about the relativities, but I can certainly say that community services, which I think make the glue that make those things work, have been, uh, funding has been chipped away. There’s been an efficiency dividend, so-called applied to uh, community services funding since 2018. And that’s really beginning to have an impact. And when there were big announcements of infrastructure and things as, a was, uh, talking about, look, we think infrastructure and things we’ve got to have as part of the community. But to make those things work, to make them effective, to make them meaningful in the in and to help build community, we need to have services that bring, make, them work. for people that bring people to them that make them beneficial for people. And it was interesting hearing that discussion about pork barrelling and more animal noises. Don’t ask me to do any of those, please. Um, because I think that raises issues, really a serious issues of integrity as well as funding. And so, you know, it’s um, we have to question the political and integrity, um, behind the decision making that funds infrastructure that is not necessarily going to be effective in building community.
CP: And I think what I found over the last week looking into this is that there are a few questions that I had. So for example, we’ve seen 145 million, um, funded for the Civic and State Square in the in Darwin, which is the seat of, um, Paul Kirby. He only won that seat on a two party preferred basis that was actually won on a primary vote by the CLP. Um, we also saw $12 million poured into a new police station in Nightcliff for, um, Natasha Fyles seat, which, interestingly enough, was only five kilometres from Casuarina, which had a brand new police station, and it sat mostly empty for the last three years.
It’s a little bit of a red herring, isn’t it?
Well, I also wonder if it’s a little bit of a visual deterrence, because if you spend a lot of time in Nightcliff, you know that Aboriginal people and long grass is quite often use both sides of that building. The shops at Woolworths and the mall on the other side to use as public spaces. And there’s not a lot of police in there, but it definitely does, uh, sit there as a bit of a visual deterrent Yeah.
And then let’s move to the idea of the curfew in Alice Springs. Liz Trevaskis caught up with, uh, Yaringa school principal Gavin Morris on Tuesday.
GAVIN MORRIS: What we weren’t accepting in terms of behaviour and standards in the Todd Mall two weeks ago. Um, you know, behaviour where our CBD was taken hostage by vigilantes with anti-social behaviour, um, with values that just didn’t, um, align with how we think people should act. We should be applying, we should be applying those exact standards to our town camps. And if we did, we’d have a far different standard of living conditions for our Aboriginal community. And whilst there’s been a clear reduction in anti-social behaviour in the CBD, you know, under the bright lights and the visibility of CCTV and the like, what’s going on in the town camps is, what’s happening. Yesterday is happening today is happening tomorrow.
ABC: Yeah, it’s really interesting. And that got me thinking what I actually went and did in this rabbit hole you sent me down was um, I went and looked at the border over a Google map and the satellite imaging of that Google map. So there’s only a very tiny portion in that border that includes residential living. In fact, most of it is property, um, and businesses in the CBD. And what I’ve heard from a number of the social services and maybe Caitlin’s heard the same, is that violence in the town camps and in the suburbs is still very high. And so it made me kind of question, are we protecting property or are we protecting people?
Caitlin you’re nodding there.
CP: That’s a really good question. A and, um, I’m certainly hearing um, concerns that it’s about pushing, um, pushing those behaviours elsewhere rather than actually dealing with them, which is why I come back to the importance of community services. Now, you mentioned domestic violence services, and Adam mentioned that was one of the things that makes up part of that $1.1 billion. I would say that it makes up way too small a proportion of that. Yet funding domestic violence services, domestic violence is one of the key reasons police are called out. And at the moment we’re hearing that from police and the NT government, as well as from the services themselves, the specialist services do not have the capacity to respond to the level of need Those services, um, need more money.