The pressure is working – let’s keep it up
It’s been a big few days for our community. Political interest in gamba is rising. Our message is getting through at a good time. Now we need to turn that into real action.
Friday’s big ‘gamba army’ announcement tells us the Gunner Government knows that gamba is a major issue and a different approach is needed to fix this crisis. That’s thanks to our community’s pressure.
They want to get Territorians back in work and they know that there’s real, urgent work to do tackling gamba – that’s why it’s their number one example for creating conservation and land management jobs in the Top End. But: it’s not a concrete plan. We don’t have a dollar or jobs figure attached to gamba action yet.
We can help make this a reality in the coming weeks.
What is most promising is that it’s not just one party making progress on gamba. We need to make sure that all parties and candidates take this seriously so that no matter who wins the election in August, gamba action is front and centre.
We’re making big inroads there too:
- Candidates from Territory Alliance and the Labor Party have visited gamba-affected properties in the rural area, for locals to brief them about the crisis
- The Country Liberal Party are working on their gamba policy right now, and keeping us updated
- Independent candidates have reached out to us to organise meetings to go over their plans to push for gamba action
All the major candidates are going to have gamba policies. But we’ve seen that before. What we need is concrete proposals with real funding to respond effectively to the scale of the problem.
