While the country waits in anticipation for the Treasurer to hand down the Federal Budget tonight, NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler this morning handed down the Northern Territory budget, revealing big blowouts in debt.
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00:00 The Northern Territory's Chief Minister Eva Lawler has handed down her second budget,
00:06 her first as Chief Minister of the Northern Territory.
00:09 The headline is that the government is in debt and that's increasing from about $11
00:14 billion in the coming budget year to more than $12 billion over the forward estimates.
00:20 But to understand this budget, you need to know that it's an election year in the Territory,
00:24 which means it's really Eva Lawler's chance to pitch herself and Labor to voters before
00:29 they go to the polls in August.
00:31 With that in mind, crime and antisocial has been a really major issue in the Territory,
00:36 particularly with the introduction of a youth curfew in Alice Springs in response to a bit
00:40 of violent offending happening in the Alice Springs CBD.
00:44 So with that in mind, police and law and order are the big winners from today's budget, with
00:50 an extra $90 million invested in the coming financial year and more than $570 million
00:56 invested over the forward estimates extra for police.
01:00 There's also more money to corrections to convert two facilities into women's prisons,
01:05 about $90 million for that transition.
01:09 And that's to deal with the Territory's growing population of incarcerated people, around
01:14 1% of the population at the moment, the majority of whom are First Nations people.
01:21 But also in response to the introduction of a curfew in Alice Springs, we saw basically
01:26 all stakeholders calling for long term solutions to address the drivers of crime and the reasons
01:31 that young people were out on the streets at night after dark.
01:35 But in this year's Northern Territory budget, we haven't really seen very much to address
01:39 that with the Department of Territory families funding for child protection, out of home
01:44 care and family support all going down compared to this current budget year.
01:51 There is an increase in funding for education, however, thanks to a lifeline from the federal
01:56 government.
01:57 So that's going up by around $100 million in the next budget year, as part of a overall
02:03 agreement to fund Northern Territory schools to their Gonski levels.
02:08 The other loser from this budget though is the environment.
02:11 The budget for the Department of Environments and Parks has declined by around $2 million.
02:17 However, there are some programs to address buffalo and gambergrass, which are invasive
02:22 species and to monitor the impacts from the Northern Territory's resource extraction of
02:28 liquid natural gas from the Beedaloo Basin.
02:31 Overall, the Chief Minister is pitching this budget as being about responsible measures
02:36 and nothing too flashy or fancy.
02:39 She's saying it's not an election year budget, but there are clearly some commitments that
02:43 are on the big political issues like law and order, like crime.
02:48 So it remains to be seen what the opposition will make of it when they deliver their budget
02:52 reply tomorrow.
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