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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-09-09 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

SA/NT First Ministers' Forum

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:03): I seek leave to give two ministerial statements.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: South Australia has a special relationship with the Northern Territory and last week, as part of building that relationship, the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Adam Giles, and I held the inaugural First Ministers' Forum in Alice Springs. The forum is the latest strengthening of the relationship between our governments and follows the signing of a memorandum of understanding in April this year. Our shared experience, coupled with complementary strengths and shared challenges, makes coast-to-coast cooperation a tremendous opportunity for mutual growth. Together we can promote the complete outback experience and our state and territory have many international level tourist attractions.

This opportunity can be capitalised upon by promoting the Adelaide to Darwin journey as the great Australian road trip, a journey of similar standing to the Great Ocean Road. In the global tourism market, there is a tremendous demand for natural experiences, but also a need to couple those with sophisticated urban experiences. Together we have agreed to collaborate on the tourism marketing campaign that will promote adventure tourism focusing on, amongst other things, our unique offerings of crocs in the north and sharks in the south.

The First Ministers' Forum provided the opportunity to discuss in detail a range of topics of mutual concern, and I am pleased to inform the house that we agreed to jointly tackle a number of cross border and national issues including:

pursuing a collaborative approach to the issue of feral camel numbers on both sides of the border, including the joint funding of a study into the economic viability of commercial uses of camels;

improved coordination of policing to tackle the trafficking of drugs like ice across the border;

working together on mining regulations to ensure both jurisdictions present an attractive regulatory regime for potential investors; and

ways to continue the rollout of telehealth services across the two jurisdictions to improve health outcomes, particularly in remote communities.

Additionally, we discussed the national leaders' summit and the work our jurisdictions lead relating to early childhood education, including my proposal to include three year olds in preschool. We also considered the Northern Territory intention to establish a pipeline to connect central Australian gas reserves to the rest of the nation. We agreed on the importance of retaining the current system of distributing revenue from the GST which is internationally recognised as the most equitable and productive method of revenue distribution.

There is much to be gained through collaboration between our two jurisdictions. Significant progress has already been achieved, and I look forward to this continuing at the next forum planned for early next year.

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