Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 24 November last year we had a federal election and this country voted overwhelmingly to place in this parliament a new government, a Labor government under the prime ministership of Kevin Rudd. It was the fourth federal election that I had faced since being preselected as a senator for the Northern Territory but, of course, for me it was the most momentous election. Before I provide my contribution to this address-in-reply, I want to thank once again the people in the Northern Territory for providing their support to me in representing them in this chamber. I must say I take that responsibility extremely seriously. I have other Labor colleagues from other states here, but for people like me and Kate Lundy, who are the sole representatives for our constituencies in the Labor Party and now in government, it is quite a responsibility that I take most seriously, and I respect the choice of the people in the Northern Territory. I think it is also appropriate to place on record my thanks to the people in the Labor Party, to our many hundreds of volunteers and supporters throughout the Northern Territory and also, again, to my family who supported me not only during the election campaign but in the three years leading up to that.

Having said that, and having paid my respects to those people in the Territory who have worked so hard to ensure that we have had a change of government, let me say that we did see an excellent result for Labor in the Northern Territory in such a huge electoral area. If I turn to the AEC report of the overall vote, it actually rose for the Labor Party from the 2004 election when it was then a total of 38,204 voters or 41.4 per cent, to 46,532 voters or 46 per cent. So it went from 41.4 to 46 per cent, nearly a five per cent increase. This reflects the massive swing to Labor right across this country. Of that total in the Territory, we received 22,214 votes in the seat of Solomon and 24,491 votes in the seat of Lingiari.

This increase was due no doubt in part to the nationwide swing to Labor and in part to the many thousands of people in the Northern Territory who took stock, assessed what had been happening not only across the country but to them, to their families, their family budgets, their households, and to the people around them and the way they had been treated by the former government. They made a swing to a party that has looked forwards, not backwards, to a party that has shown energetic enthusiasm for wanting to change and drive the way this country moves in a different and renewed state. People put confidence in us and voted for us accordingly at the ballot boxes.

In the seats of Solomon and Lingiari we had worked particularly hard through the three years, listening to people about what was needed and what was wanted. The Tiger Brennan proposal, which is to extend the road through from Lingiari into the CBD of Palmerston, will be a major roadway and motorway now that connects rural Darwin to Palmerston and the CBD. It will greatly ease the flow of traffic between Darwin and Palmerston. It took the Labor Party to finally put together the costings to complete that project, which is what people were looking for. We will be opening a new super clinic in Palmerston, a most welcome move for the growing population of the area. It will mean, for instance, that Palmerston residents will be able to visit a local medical clinic that will provide comprehensive health care, not just GP services but allied health as well, and it will also go to easing the workload from the accident and emergency departments at Royal Darwin Hospital. In Lingiari there was a massive commitment to roads and infrastructure funding that had been so sadly neglected by the Howard government.

In Lingiari I made a huge effort to visit as many communities as I possibly could. I spent five of the six weeks on the road, making trips to Alice Springs and Central Australian communities, to Tennant Creek, Katherine, Nhulunbuy and Jabiru. What I can say to you, though, is that the support that the Labor Party achieved in the seat of Lingiari shows that, clearly, people were overwhelmingly, convincingly and comprehensively rejecting the policies of the former government in respect of Indigenous affairs. Not only did they not want to endorse in any way whatsoever the actions of the former Prime Minister, they also completely rejected out of hand the policies presented by the former minister for Indigenous affairs.

Let me just back that up by some of the statistics. I go to the community of Wadeye, which you may remember had achieved enormous attention from the former government. In that community the Labor Party returned a 92.43 per cent return on its polling booth. In fact, if you drill right down to the voters in that community, 684 Indigenous people voted for the Labor Party compared to just 56 for the coalition. At Gunbalunya we received 617 votes to only 41 to the former government. In Finke, at Aputula we received 314 votes to the former government’s 27. In fact, right across the seat of Lingiari we returned almost a 90 percentile range of support. Finally I want to go to my personal favourite, which is the return of the vote in the community of Yirrkala, where we obtained 260 votes to the Howard government achieving only four.