Labor is focused on an anti-social fix
MICHAEL GUNNER
I WANT anyone standing in Darwin’s CBD to know without being told they are standing in the Capital of Northern Australia.
We have $100 million on the table for new works and I have signed an agreement with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for the Commonwealth to tip in more. I’m confident we’ll know the amount soon. The investment means jobs – keeping hard-working Territorians here, our contributors here, and our friends here while the private-sector economy returns from the bottom of the cycle.
This is the short and medium-term good.
The long-term good is that the Darwin CBD becomes forever more attractive to visitors, new businesses, shoppers, renters, buyers and organisational workforces.
More people. More investment. More jobs.
It is projecting to the world – in infrastructure, policy and intent – that we mean business. We must change our mindset to hold ourselves as a city in competition for workers and headquarters not with Sydney, but with Singapore.
We must shift from the old thinking of Darwin and Palmerston as the service centre for the Top End, to thinking of it as a service centre for the entire region.
Darwin has obvious geographic competitive advantages, but we must do more to capitalise on this so we attract – and hold – workforces, headquarters and people.
And so the CBD must be more than a place of work alone, but an attraction, home, destination and economic driver in its own right. So, how do we get there? We progress the State Square project to have at our capital’s heart the kind of elegant space found in the great capitals of the world.
We underground the Parliament House and Cenotaph car parks into a shared 450-space lot, converting the existing heat-conducting asphalt into cool, green community space.
We begin shading Smith St all the way to Myilly Point, where a new Museum of the Northern Territory will tell our incredible 60,000-year story: Aboriginal, Asian and Europe- an migration; war and cyclone; destruction and growth.
On Cavenagh St, we grow a canopy of vines over local steel and Gumatj stringy bark, potentially cutting surface temperatures by 10 degrees.
Elsewhere on the street we install trees, planter boxes, misters and coat the baking bitumen with heat-reflective material.
We work with Darwin Council and Charles Darwin University to convert the oven-like carpark opposite the Cavenagh St Woolies – the future Cavenagh-Barneson Boulevard intersection – into student accommodation, a new carpark and university campus.
We begin our laneway movement across the CBD, repaving and shading Austin Lane to open it up for alfresco dining, art and foot traffic linking businesses to businesses.
And we foster a culture of art, music, food and events – I believe moving Charles Darwin University students into the city will go a long way to this end. This list is largely in- frastructure-based, but just as important to creating a more vibrant and welcoming CBD is addressing social problems.
I’ve lived the frustration of anti-social behaviour all my life. I hear it from my constituents. I hear it from my friends. I see it with my own eyes.
I’ve lived it long enough to know thought-bubbles will not solve Darwin’s issues.
No single policy announcement or line in the Budget will do it; nor will building slums in the suburbs and sweeping the problem elsewhere.
The Leader of the Opposition’s idea to push our home- less into the Bagot Community is a non-starter.
Bagot is a home and neighbourhood like any other, with working families, schoolchildren and good Territorians who contribute to their communities and clubs.
They neither deserve nor need the responsibility of absorbing Darwin’s homeless population and associated addictions and conditions.
Dealing with anti-social behaviour requires short and long-term strategies: thoughtout, consultative, evidencebased and respectful.
Reintroducing the Banned Drinkers Register to keep alcohol from the grip of problem drinkers is only one, albeit highly effective, measure.
As of November last year, 2288 people were on the register and 1267 attempted purchases had been blocked.
Our measures to address problems associated with itinerancy are not about pushing people out of sight, but about delivering them to help or to home. As part of the first phase of a broader homelessness strategy, Larrakia Nation’s Darwin and Palmerston Day Patrol service – cut by the CLP in 2015 – resumed operation on December 1.
In that month alone, Day Patrol helped more than 600 people to services. More than 150 people opted to return to their communities using the Territory Connect Program (formerly Return to Country), which we have funded with $1.5 million over five years as a way to give the program certainty.
In July, Mission Australia was awarded a contract to provide a one-stop shop for treatment and has moved from Coconut Grove into a refurbished facility in Berrimah to better service the needs of both Darwin and Palmerston.
“I’ve lived the frustration of antisocial behaviour all my life. I hear it from my constituents. I hear it from my friends. I see it with my own eyes”
The Berrimah facility, which now operates seven days a week, includes a 40-bed sobering-up shelter, a 40-bed residential rehabilitation service and a 12-bed specialist alcohol assessment and withdrawal service. The Government has also improved existing NT-wide services like the Patient Assistance Travel Scheme and the repatriation of people released from custody.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that Darwin’s homeless, many from remote communities, are among our most vulnerable and need our support and compassion. We cannot lose sight of the fact that many of these problems trace themselves to the original dispossession and are perpetuated in intergenerational cycles of poverty and addiction.
We must break these cycles with jobs, better housing, respect and hope.
A happy by-product of improving outcomes in the bush is that we improve outcomes in the city. Our $1.1 billion Housing Investment – the biggest in the NT history – is about outcomes.
More and better housing gives people space. It helps people escape domestic violence. It helps kids wake up refreshed and ready for school.
It creates jobs. In the individual, it creates pride and purpose. I welcome Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion’s words last week that the Commonwealth would match our figure. I trust his words will be met with action.