NEWS Internal rift over Tennant

LABOR MLA Scott McConnell has criticised his Government’s handling of indigenous affairs, saying the shocking incidents seen in Tennant Creek will continue until real economic opportunities are available for people in the bush.

“This is happening because people are moving to urban towns because we are not actually delivering services where they live,” he said.

“I would argue that some of these people are actually, using the international term, internally displaced people.

“They can’t live where they want to live so they’re like refugees in their own country and they are moving to urban centres.”

Mr McConnell said he had ideas about how to fix the problem, but he had been frozen out by Chief Minister Michael Gunner and his advisers.

He also revealed the Government’s much-vaunted Aboriginal Affairs subcommittee had met just twice since Labor took power more than 18 months ago.

On Friday, Mr Gunner travelled to Tennant Creek, where a two-year-old girl was raped last month.

The Government has since bolstered child-protection services and introduced tough restrictions on alcohol sales in the town. But Mr McConnell said the violence and dysfunction would continue until Aboriginal people in the bush had the same opportunity to participate in the economy as someone in Darwin or Alice Springs.

Mr McConnell has also backed an independent audit of how the Territory’s funding is distributed, despite the Chief Minister’s strident opposition to the move.

Mr Gunner was furious at the Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra last month after the Federal Government supported a productivity commission review of Commonwealth and Northern Territory funding.

Statistics show one in three Aboriginal children were subject to child-protection notifications last financial year.

The NT News reported on Friday that 60 per cent of Aboriginal children in the Territory were subject to notifications.

The figures were extrapolated from a report that indicates 26 per cent of the child population in the Territory is Aboriginal, which equates to 14,050 Aboriginal children.

However, Territory Families has since confirmed the Aboriginal child population in the NT is 26,700.

This means 8559 individual Aboriginal children were subject to notifications – representing 32 per cent of the Aboriginal child population.

The percentage of NT Aboriginal children in out-ofhome care is 3.5 per cent.

SEE MORE OF SCOTT McCONNELL’S INTERVIEW: SPEERS ON SUNDAY, 6:30AM, CH 601