Northern Territory Economic Downturn To Be Talked Up

Yesterday's announcement that the Territory Chief Minister, Clare Martin, is heading to Sydney to sell the Territory's economy has more to do with hype for Territorian's consumption than it has to do with promotion of the Territory interstate and overseas.

"I welcome the promotion of the Territory anywhere.” Terry Mills said today.

"What I'm concerned about is how Government is trying to dress up what they're doing for domestic consumption. What they're doing is hyping the message to disguise the reality of a down turn in investment in the Territory as well as shrinkage of State Final Demand predicted for the current financial year.

"According to Government's 'Northern Territory Economy', document released at the same time as the Territory Budget, it highlights that there is an anticipated shrinkage of 15% expected in public expenditure in the current financial year and there is also a drop of 9.1% expected in State Final Demand.

"The report also says that,

Although total consumption is forecast to increase by 2.8 percent in 2006-07… total investment is forecast to decrease by about 38 percent more than off setting the increase in consumption.

"The fact is that several major projects are nearing completion and that will affect State Final Demand and Growth figures adversely.

"Rather than being realistic about this Government has engaged in an almost hysterical bout of self promotion selling the snake oil of spin rather than projecting themselves as sober and sensible managers of the Territory Economy.

"The other major problem with this approach is that the Government has revealed that they have used their extra GST revenues for recurrent funding rather than Territory building. If they had invested more heavily into long term wealth creation rather than short term recurrent expenditure then these profound swings caused by large one off investments would be softened.”

2006-09-29