HAYLEY SORENSEN

lip service to the concept of consultation has led to public sector paralysis that’s leeching into the private sector.

The fracking inquiry is one example.

It was always going to have one outcome.

But the need for “consultation” meant we had to endure a 15-month, $3 million show trial scientific inquiry first, which set industry back massively at the time it was needed most.

If gas royalties were to flow earlier unimpeded by “consultation”, would we be in the same disastrous position we are now?

In their quest not to upset anyone, Labor has managed to piss off everyone.

Greenies who voted Labor for their gas moratorium feel lied to and industry groups are seething they’ve had to wait so long for the pointless charade to play out.

But for all its lip service to consultation, when it really matters the Government won’t listen.

Where was the consultation when Eva Lawler and Dale Wakefield stood on a vacant lot in the middle of the Pinelands industrial area and announced that was the new site for a youth detention centre.

Business owners in the area were told a few hours before media were. How’s that for consultation?

A fair dinkum consultation

“In its quest not to upset anyone, Labor has managed to piss off everyone”

process done earlier had found the best place for a new centre was right where the old one is now, but that idea was abruptly chucked out to save pissing off a handful.

To save the Territory from insolvency, Labor doesn’t need meaningless consultation, it needs bravery and it needs to stop spending like a drunken FIFO boilermaker on days off.

Paying cops $26,000 a year housing allowances and splashing $250 million on an indigenous art gallery in Alice Springs at a time we’re borrowing money to pay public servants and to service the interest on Government debt is insane.

Mr and Mrs Malak don’t have the answers to this crisis.

Labor needs to stop consulting and start getting on with it.

Hayley Sorensen is a regular columnist