Chasing the bucks down the burrows

A Senate inquiry has just been tasked with examining the Northern Territory Government's apparent failure to spend its allocated “Canberra cash” in key community sectors.

Bart Simpson cruelled the “my dog ate my homework” excuse for everybody. People have become so cynical that they just don't believe this one anymore. Similarly, the apologetic “I think I must have been away that day” no longer really cuts it as a “full and frank explanation”.

Something a bit more inventive is needed in the “duck and cover” stakes these days. And it's just possible that a recently announced Senate inquiry will prompt some new and more exciting cop-outs.

Senator Nigel Scullion has been a key player in instituting a Senate inquiry to examine federal and NT government expenditure on Indigenous affairs in the Northern Territory.

The inquiry will look particularly at whether the “NT Government's expenditure of GST receipts accurately reflects the Commonwealth Grants Commission's funding formula”.

Senator Scullion obviously knows a lot more about Indigenous disadvantage than can be gleaned while tickling down a coldie and wetting a line off the Tiwi Islands. And he'll have plenty of time to concentrate on the issue, now that he has been relieved of the presumably onerous task of leading the National Party in the Senate.

But the inquiry is welcomed, since it will serve to spotlight some alarming discrepancies between the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) figures and the money actually spent by the NT government.

The CGC is an independent body which oversees the distribution of GST revenue to the states and territories. The Commission makes adjustments for remoteness, population size and other factors affecting the cost of service delivery, and then doles out the dollars that are needed to provide an equal level of service across Australia.

At the end of each financial year, the CGC publishes these figures, together with the amount that each state and territory reports as their spending in the area.

The 2006-07 figures did not make happy reading for NT politicians.

The Commission assessed the appropriate level of spending on Indigenous communities at $218 million, but in its wisdom, the NT government saw fit to spend only $110 million.

Now it just so happens that thing aren't all that fab in many remote communities here in the Northern Territory. I even recall the odd news item in the last 12 months which bears out this fact. This underspend is staggering.

Incredibly, the spending on family and children's services was actually $43 million instead of the assessed level of $179 million. Expenditure on roads was $123 million instead of the assessed level of $250 million.

Guess which group of people in the NT suffers disproportionately from this incredible neglect. Hint: it's the mob that always misses out.

“Waffle and Bluster” is not a firm of solicitors. They are simply the names of the techniques that the NT government spin-doctors have chosen in their attempt to ride out the storm. But the CGC figures are there in stark black and white. They will take a lot of explaining away.

The rules of this game are governed by what the bean-counters call a “uniform presentation framework” which is designed to keep the skulduggery to a minimum. The capacity to generate rubbery figures is apparently very limited.

Nevertheless, it seems that the government believes that these numbers are most easily consumed by the delicate diner after an entrée of obfuscation.

"It wasn't me" cries Bart - who, after all, has only three fingers on each hand, and thus can't be expected to be a sultan of the spreadsheets.

However ministers and treasury bureaucrats have no obvious digit-deficit, so hopefully they can explain to the taxpayers how the dough disappeared. Explain, that is, without recourse to exotic teaching aids like peas, thimbles, smoke and mirrors.

Because there is more than a touch of the Bartian blather about the unconvincing word storm being generated by the government. They are saying there is basically almost no problem at all, really. Particularly when you look at things in the broader context, at the end of the day, in light of key additional data, and with regards to the government's superbly executed complementary initiatives.

Let's be clear. The GST dollars are untied, so the NT Government has done nothing illegal in finding other ways to let the funds slip through their fingers.

But we ask more of our pollies than to simply avoid criminal prosecution. It would be nice to think that they might also turn their attention to making life a little better for those most disadvantaged in the community.

It will be interesting to see what the Senate inquiry comes up with. Perhaps they will adopt the language of the Great Inquisitor, Pauline Hanson, and invite NT Chief Minister, Paul Henderson, to “please explain”.

Somebody should.