QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator McCARTHY (Northern Territory—Minister for Indigenous Australians) (14:46): Thank you, Senator Thorpe, for the question. It is interesting, actually—the direction from which your question is coming. I'm usually asked by you why we're paying the Northern Territory government any money.

In fact, that is the constant that I get. In the NTRA, the reason the Northern Territory doesn't get any funding is that it may not have met certain criteria. When it meets certain criteria, the Northern Territory government will receive the funding—which is not too dissimilar to federal funding arrangements more broadly across the country.

The difference this time, though, is that, for the first time in Australian government history, we have Aboriginal organisations at the table as part of monitoring how the Northern Territory government is going to go, so I expect a report from the Aboriginal peak organisations as well as the Northern Territory government before agreeing to release any funding.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Thorpe, first supplementary?