Snippets from the hustings, for those who still care, brought to you by ERWIN CHLANDA.
“The war on drugs has already been lost. We must act now to protect our youth and attack the problem at the source,” says Braedon Earley (at left) of the 1Territory Party, who wants the laws concerning the use of recreational marijuana to be relaxed.
This should involve witness protection, the medicinal use of marijuana, the sales, regulation and taxing through government run dispensaries, voluntary pill testing and a $10,000 bounty on drug dealers acting outside the law.
• • •
With Labor’s announcement of a $9m package over four years to kick-start the NT screen industry, matching the CLP’s own, recent, election commitment, the Territory film and television production is now set to take off – whoever wins this weekend’s election, says Alice Springs film maker David Curl (at right).
• • •
The residential construction industry in the Northern Territory requires urgent policy attention and support from the NT government, says Neilia Ginnane (at left), of the Housing Industry Association.“The extent of the current downturn in new home construction in the NT is sucking life out of the broader Territory economy,” she says.
“New dwelling commencements fell by 11% in 2015/16 and under current policy settings are projected to decline further over the next three years.”
Ms Ginnane says housing commencements in the NT are projected to fall from a peak of 2360 in 2012/13 to 1480 in 2017/18.
• • •
The price of wind power in Australia has dropped to a new record low, making wind power the country’s cheapest new electricity source, says Wind Alliance national co-ordinator Andrew Bray.
“South Australia’s Hornsdale Wind Farm has agreed to sell its electricity to the ACT government for just $73 megawatt per hour, fixed for 20 years,” he says. “It’s a significant milestone for Australia’s wind industry.
“You’d be lucky to build half a gas-burning power plant for that price. The cost of wind power has dropped by 50% over the last seven years.”
• • •
CLP candidate for Araluen Steve Brown (at left) says the Country Liberals will invest $15m to open up 11 new areas to tourism and recreational activities in some of the Territory’s most spectacular parks and reserves over four years.
He says visitors will be more readily able to go picnicking, fishing, camping, hiking, bird-watching, off-road driving and trail-bike riding.
New infrastructure planned includes nine bush campgrounds boasting about 100 individual campsites, three visitor centres, plus tens of kilometres of new access roads, 4WD tracks and trails.
Watched the People’s Forum in Darwin on 25 August on SKY News. Fifty hand picked undecided voters the audience. Allegedly.
It looked to me like a crowd made up overwhelmingly of middle class white public service types, greenies, one guns n roses bikie of ample proportions, a couple of tradies, a couple of battlers and a couple of token Aboriginal faces all with preconceived political preferences. Not hard to pick the political preferences of the question askers. Not hard at all.
I wonder who got the contract to select the audience? I bet it was the same mob who select the Q and A audience for Tony Jones.
This heavily weighted crowd did not appear to be a true numerically proportional representation of the NT population.