KATIE WOOLF, HOST: Joining me on the line is the Member for Solomon, Luke Gosling. Good morning to you, Luke.
LUKE GOSLING, MEMBER FOR SOLOMON: Morning, Katie. How are you?
WOOLF: Very well, Luke. Before I get into IT, what are you doing for Territory Day?
GOSLING: We've got the federal Tourism Minister in town, so we're gonna have a bit of a roundtable down at the casino so he can hear from Territory tourism operators and might watch a few of the fireworks from there. But we've got a new puppy so the family might stay home because they're anxious about how the pup might go on her first Territory Day.
WOOLF: Yeah, we all worry about the animals a bit, hey? You never know how they're going to act.
GOSLING: Yeah, but I think she'll be okay. She's got a little kennel thing for her where it's her little safe place, so she should be right. But really looking forward to Territory Day, it's been a long first part of the year – but a good one, it’s been great to get the masks off, and obviously great to be in government now, so it's a big time. But yeah, I think everyone's looking forward to the Territory Day and letting off – safely – some crackers, and keeping crackers out of crackers and all the rest of it. It was good to hear from the fireys with his sage words of advice before, so I know everyone will do the right thing so we can have cracker night well into the future.
WOOLF: Well, this is the thing isn’t it, we've got to make sure we do it as safely as possible. And we got some good advice from one of our listeners a bit earlier this morning about how you can let them off a little bit easier. But yeah, some people do go a bit crazy. Please don't, on Territory Day, because we want to make sure that we do something that we can continue to do. Luke, you just mentioned Senator Don Farrell is going to be in town for Territory Day, but he's going to be here as the Minister for Tourism now in the Federal Government. What's he coming to the Territory for?
GOSLING: He's actually coming up here for Senator Malarndirri McCarthy’s wedding.
WOOLF: Oh, right!
GOSLING: It's a big occasion on Saturday, but he's also getting a roundtable together. Tourism's a big part of our economy, I asked him to hear from the crew of Tourism Top End, but also some other small operators around town that sometimes don't always get their voices heard. So he’ll fly in and we'll have that roundtable, and then we'll kick back with a frothy and watch some fireworks with everyone else there. So there's some other parliamentary colleagues that are flying in for that wedding as well. And one of them is coming in about 11pm, and I said, “well, as you come in to land, you'll have a great front row seat as it's all going off around the coastline.”
WOOLF: That's exactly what it sounds like. It's going to be a big weekend. But then of course, next week we know the Developing Northern Australia Conference is set to get underway from the sixth till the eighth of July. I'm assuming that we are going to see the Minister for Northern Australia here. What's going to be on the agenda?
GOSLING: So much on the agenda. Obviously it's her first opportunity at the conference over in Mackay and I'll be heading over for a day of that and I'll be talking about the support that we want to see and getting that NAIF going that we've talked about so often, Katie. We're really, really keen to see some of those smaller proponents receive some financial support towards their projects. We know it's been the big projects that they’ve focused on [so far] and we've really made a determined push – even when we were in opposition and now obviously we're in government. So that job, of course, is to make sure that those proponents that might be needing some financial support of $5 million to $10 million can get that support and get their projects up and running. It can really make a difference, that federal funding support. Because of course that gives Territory Government and gives other private investors the confidence that all the due diligence has been done, the project’s ready to go, the Federal Government has got some skin in the game and let’s go.
WOOLF: Yeah, we've got to try and make it easier. Not easier, but more accessible, I think, to see some more projects get underway. The best thing that we can do is have a more diversified economy, of course, for the Territory. Luke, one of the other things we've been wondering or waiting on to some degree as well, is the ship lift. Is there going to be much of an update in this space, do you reckon?
GOSLING: Geez, I hope so, Katie. Yeah, it is becoming increasingly frustrating that that project is not starting. I met with Paspaley recently and got updates from the NT Government recently, it’s in the pipeline. Hopefully there's going to be more announcements soon, but we need to crack on. If we don't crack on and start building the ship lift, if we're going to lose some of that maritime maintenance work to Western Australia. Because they’re saying, “we can get your boats out of the water, we can do the maintenance”. And of course that's their prerogative to do so. But what we need to do is get the ship lift happening so that the Navy and other industry stakeholders that are in the ship game can get that work done right here. But we're perfectly placed, obviously, and the Americans can obviously see that as well. They would be doing much more maintenance of ships here in Darwin and have a maritime maintenance hub out at East Arm. And all that is ready to happen. It's just the ship lift, we’ve got to crack on and get it built.
WOOLF: Are you a bit frustrated at how long it's taking?
GOSLING: Could you tell that in my voice, Katie?
WOOLF: Of course, I think everybody is. And it is something that I worry about. Cairns had flagged having some maritime precinct as well, in the lead-in to the federal election, and they've spoken about a ship lift at some point also. And, as you say, WA. The problem here is that we actually don't want to lose that work, as you pointed out, to another state.
GOSLING: Oh, that's right. And the Navy's got the new program of regional maintenance centres for their fleet. And there will be a tender that's being hotly contested to be the regional maintenance provider to provide those services. But the scale of the services that are conducted here in Darwin will depend on our ability to do work. And the ship lift is a key part of that.
So I spoke at the Australian Defence Magazine Congress down in Canberra last week. One of the things they wanted me to talk about in a keynote address where I just talked about our place in the nation, our role strategically and what we are able to do out of Darwin in terms of not only force projection but our capability to maintain fleets and for other countries to train here as well. And we know that happens. But, you know, we can do more with those big ranges at Bradshaw, Kangaroo Flats, Mount Bundy, and the Delamere weapons range. So we've got great training facilities. We've got a lot to offer. And it was great to be down there and speak to those 400 people in the room from defence industry. But the main thing they want me to talk about and something I'm really passionate about and I put all the big companies on notice on behalf of the new Federal Labor Government, is that we want to have local companies have a better go. So local companies up here in Darwin, you know, small and medium enterprises, SMEs they're known as. Because often these big international organisations, the primes, they’re called, the tier-1 type companies. They’ve been getting all the work and then sort of giving chicken feed to local companies. That's changing now a bit, I think. We've done pretty good down at Tindal with the packages of work being broken up into smaller packages so local businesses can have a go. But really the message down there in Canberra was, “if you want to have a go at getting this big defence and infrastructure work, well, you've got to have local Territory companies on your bid or you're going to struggle to get the work”.
WOOLF: Absolutely.
GOSLING: So in that sense, I think getting that message through to the primes and international companies is, sometimes we need their expertise and their sizes, but the majority of the work can be done by local companies to do that.
WOOLF: Absolutely. We’ve got to have locals. Well, Luke Gosling, we are going to have to leave it there. Good to catch up. Make sure you wish Malarndirri McCarthy all the very best from us. Sounds like it's going to be a big weekend.
GOSLING: I will. And her fiancé, soon to be Richard, fantastic fella. And it'll be a good weekend. Just finally, I’m out at the Grey Community Hall an event in Palmerston. For those who haven't seen it, it is a fantastic little community hall, well done to the Palmerston Council and with some federal funding. So yeah, think about it for your events for people who are out in Palmy.
WOOLF: Luke Gosling, thanks for your time this morning. We appreciate it.
GOSLING: Good on you Katie, cheers.
ENDS
