Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, , 4:24:46 to 4:44:17
Minister McCarthy addresses the Northern Territory's failure to meet Closing the Gap values regarding the Yissa facility and discusses potential reforms to federal funding agreements to ensure state and territory compliance.
Topics: First Nations, Closing the Gap, Government spending
Speakers: Hon Malarndirri McCarthy, Unknown Speaker, Senator Barbara Pocock, Senator Karen Grogan
>> This is the conundrum with the closing the gap. Uh, it is an agreement but it's uh it's not uh we've discussed this before in terms of financial arrangements. there's no penalties >> uh surrounding whether uh parliaments be you know penalized for not doing the right thing according to the agreement. So simple answer is they certainly um went against the values of what the closing the gap agreement is all about.
Can you now withhold funding under the Commonwealth uh agreement to reflect the money that was offered but rejected by the Northern Territory government
>> for this particular What we've done, Senator PCO, is I have uh been working with the ministerial working group on closing the gap, which includes the finance minister. And I have said at the beginning of this year that I've had concerns about the fact that uh state and territory parliaments are not adhering to closing the gap and the best way to to try and enforce it is through the financial arrangements. So I have made adjustments to the Northern Territory remote area investment as a result of it. That's the first uh federal funding agreement which I've incorporated changes in that through NIAA's uh negotiations. But the second thing I've done is ask the finance minister to come to the Northern Territory which she did. >> Um and we met directly with we were meant to meet with the chief minister but the chief minister was unwell or took leave. if I beg you pardon. And uh so we met with the deputy chief minister and put on the table our concerns from the federal government uh across a large area of funding, not just Yissa uh with housing, but also with many other areas. and in that meeting expressed very clearly the financial concerns and the funding arrangements um that were were troubling the Commonwealth and also that we would start to seriously look at uh other avenues of funding in particular direct funding to Aboriginal organizations and or local governments. Do you think
there are reforms needed to the agreement, the the Commonwealth government agreement to give the Commonwealth more control uh over how funds are spent by states and territories? Do we need to make some reforms here so that the objectives can be really followed through and enforced?
>> Look, that's a really good question. I I it is deeply frustrating in terms of uh the the Commonwealth funding arrangements. Uh, one of the things I'm conscious of is that there are so many FFAs uh around with each state and territory or all the states I should say. The territory we're we're trying to work with now. The others don't expire. They're three-year funding federal funding agreements. So, we'd have to start negotiating next year, I'd say, for many of them. So, this would be coming up to a really important time to be able to consider uh some of those
Uh I want to switch topics to go to stolen wages. Would you like to >> just let you know? Well, I think maybe we'll take the break now. >> Um so we will now move to the lunch break. Um we will return with NIAA um at 2:30. Apologies to anyone who is inconvenienced by our blowout in time