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Northern territory Chief minister Clare Martin and Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough. Mr Brough has said he will be watching how the NT government spends money during the commonwealth's intervention in Indigenous communities.
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NT govt to be accountable for spending: Brough
Issue 134 - 26 Jul 2007
Canberra
NATIONAL
Issue 134, July 26, 2007: THE federal government will hold the Northern Territory accountable as a major intervention into the territory's Aboriginal communities is rolled out.
Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough said he was keeping a careful eye on how money handed to the NT by the commonwealth was spent.
He said one of his chief concerns was ensuring education funds were responsibly spent.
"It's a right of every Australian child to actually have an education and if you've got two, three, four thousand people living somewhere there should be ... comprehensive educational facilities and teachers," Mr Brough told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
"The commonwealth pays that money to the territory to do that and we're going to hold them accountable and we will support them, so we will do both things simultaneously."
Mr Brough guaranteed extra resources promised by the commonwealth would arrive in the communities plagued by child sex abuse and substance abuse.
"I am going to guarantee that and I'm going to do that in two ways," he said.
"We're not going to allow state and territory Labor governments to abdicate their responsibility to their citizens."
He said education, a first order issue, had been taken over by the commonwealth and alcohol control - "that's a law and order issue" - had been abdicated by the states and territories.
He also denied the education plank of the intervention would punish the parents of students who did not attend school.
"By quarantining 50 per cent of the welfare payments we immediately strip out so much of the opportunity for the abuse to occur by ensuring that children get breakfast and lunch at school, paid for by the parents through direct debit from Centrelink so it's controlled," he said.
"We can start to improve their dietary intake, their reason for being at school, obviously the resourcing at school is going to have to be looked at immediately when more children start to turn up.
"We do not underestimate for a moment ... how massive this task is."
The leaders of the intervention, Sue Gordon and Dave Chalmers, arrived in the Arnhem Land town of Maningrida on Tuesday.
Mr Brough reiterated one section of the education intervention which will be enforced not just in territory Aboriginal communities but at every school in the nation.
"You are required by law to have your children at school and we can't change that and we won't change that and in doing so destroy the chances of that child."
He said getting children into school in the Aboriginal communities would be enforced by government bureaucrats.
"We are having Centrelink officers and other departmental officials in the communities to support those teachers. It's not going to be the teachers' responsibility. - AAP
 
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