COAG Confusion

The Chief Minister, Clare Martin, will be attending the most important CoAG (Council of Australian Governments) meeting she's ever been to tomorrow and there is no indication from her what she's going to be doing there. This is the meeting in which she is to raise the issue of violence in our remote communities and a she has remained silent.

"It is as if she just wants the issue to completely go away and stop bothering her.” Opposition Leader Jodeen Carney said.

"In rejecting the invitation to attend the Federal Minister's Summit on violence in Aboriginal Communities she said that CoAG was the place to discuss the issue. We discovered during estimates that her twenty year plan didn't exist and recently she assured Territorians that CoAG would be the place to bring the matter up.

"By all accounts she'll be flat out getting ten minutes on the subject and it appears that the Chief Minister seems to think that will be all they need. That is hardly a contribution to this national debate and will provide nothing in the way of solutions for Aboriginal women and children.

"What it really represents is an abandonment of the issue as being too hard.”

2006-07-13