On Friday, the NT’s Country Liberal Party (CLP) government is set to make a formal bid for the territory’s annual migration numbers to be increased at a national ministerial roundtable, while the vice-chancellor of the NT’s only university has just returned from a trip to India on a mission to attract more international students to the region.<\/p>\n
The territory government said in a statement on Friday about its migration bid that the NT needed to attract 14,000 workers over the next five years to meet growth and service delivery demands.<\/p>\n
Indian constituents call for apology from Price<\/a><\/p>\n The Darwin multicultural society wrote a letter branding the NT senator’s comments about Indian migration as “racist” and “ill-founded”.<\/p>\n CLP Senator Nampijinpa Price was dumped from the Liberal Party ministry on Wednesday<\/a>, a week after she made controversial comments surrounding Indian migration numbers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n After her demotion, she released a statement citing the “damaging impacts of mass migration” and how she would continue to speak out against it, but did not mention the ongoing efforts to bolster migration levels in the NT and its need for more workers.<\/p>\n Her office did not respond to questions about her views on the NT’s unique circumstances.<\/p>\n Some officials in the territory believe Senator Nampijinpa Price is working at cross-purposes with her own constituents.<\/p>\n Alice Springs-based Charles Darwin University political analyst Rolf Gerritsen said he believed Senator Nampijinpa Price was not speaking from an NT perspective surrounding migration.<\/p>\n Rolf Gerritsen says he doesn’t believe Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price understands the cultural make-up of her electorate. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)<\/p>\n “If you go around Alice Springs Hospital, probably 80 per cent of the employees in the hospital are immigrants \u2026 those hospitals would not run without immigrants,” he said.<\/p>\n “I don’t think she even knows who her constituents are.<\/p>\n “I think her constituent is Sky News.”<\/p>\n Labor MP for the NT seat of Solomon, Luke Gosling, said even though Senator Nampijinpa Price officially represents NT voters, he believed that “often her focus is interstate on other issues”.<\/p>\n Luke Gosling says the NT needs more skilled migrants. (ABC News: Pete Garnish)<\/p>\n “The Northern Territory is open to everyone,” he said.<\/p>\n “We want to see people with skills that we need moving from overseas, we’ve got the DAMA [Designated Area Migration Agreement]<\/a> in place now to facilitate more numbers there.<\/p>\n “I think if Jacinta Price, the NT senator, could focus on where we’re lacking, we’re lacking in workforce.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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