OPENING the 30th Tennant Creek and District Show was a real highlight for me as an MLA and celebrating this event with my colleagues and community brought home the importance of such an opportunity for both town and country folk.
The Territory is a large place geographically and extreme in its shapes and forms however it remains up close and personal in many ways including opportunities for meeting your political representatives and discussing your issues as constituents of this great space!
Not so long ago I was also a constituent in the Barkly who used every opportunity to meet with and discuss social and political issues with our politicians as this meant having my voice heard and my opinions vented.
Now I formally represent the Henderson Government and serve the community, listening to your ideas and concerns in a two way process of receive and dispatch delivering the messages right into the core of Government decision making.
After working the show with the Chief Minister and my Parliamentary colleagues I returned to the business end of the job in a busy round of meetings, lobbying and making personal contacts testing the ideas and advice of the electorate.
Greyhound Australia was back at the table to progress our work on both the regional bus network throughout the Territory and patient assisted travel out of Tennant Creek.
It should be noted that Greyhound has a history of 104 years servicing rural and regional Australia and are valuable transport providers interested in the ‘bigger picture’ of the regional integrated transport strategy I am tasked with developing as Minister for Transport.
The regional strategy integrates inter-modal transport models for the whole Territory however will go a long way to supporting Tennant Creek and our regional areas for the important links to major centres and consequently the rest of the country.
There was a good level of interest shown in our NT Corrections stands at both Alice Springs and Tennant Creek that has potentially recruited more locals into a career with correctional services and reinforced the region’s support for the first corrections outreach program in the Barkly to commence this year.
As the Minister for Corrections I also made contact with representatives of the pastoral industry exploring opportunities for having prisoners engage in training and work placements as part of this remote area rehabilitation concept with some very positive responses to follow up.
In relation to ‘Bring Back Birthing to the Barkly’ I met with the CEO of NT Health and Families to once again reinforce the strong community lobby within Tennant Creek about this issue and as to the progress of the Territory clinical reference group working on it and the new obstetrics training initiative and relocation package into regional areas for existing NT doctors.
I stepped outside the square in a personal attempt to recruit a General Practice doctor with obstetrics experience I know of which I learned a great deal more as to why recruiting and retaining specialist health professionals into regional and remote areas is extremely challenging and ‘let me tell you’ its not all about money!
Finally I would like to congratulate the Tennant Creek Women’s Refuge on 20 years service to our community and with respect to their outstanding support and care for women and children would like people to reflect on the countless lives they have saved through tirelessly challenging violence against women and breaking the cycle of domestic violence within our community.
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