NTCA promises to bring back Real Jobs program, amid Voice debate

Following the pulling of funding for the successful Real Jobs Program, the Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association president David Connolly made the promise at the organisation's annual conference this year that it would return 'bigger and better'.

He said governments were not, and would never be, the solution to Indigenous disadvantage.

"So to whom should we turn?" Mr Connolly said.

"It will have to be us.

"We must take a greater hand in improving this situation ourselves. We must take carriage of the job ourselves."

For 13 years, NTCA had run the Real Jobs program in conjunction with an indigenous agency, offering training and support to young Indigenous people to get jobs in the pastoral sector. Producers queued up to jump on board. More than 200 people have been through the program and many are still in the industry now.

Last year, the indigenous agency deemed other funding options more important and the program officially finished in December.

The NTCA has been swamped with young people and elders calling to ask if it could be reinstated.

Mr Connolly promised it somehow would be and that by this time next year a new version of Real Jobs would exist that would offer 'great hope and opportunity' for Indigenous youth.

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Indigenous disadvantage, the youth crime issues playing out in Alice Springs and the Voice to Parliament were topics raised numerous times at the NTCA conference this year.

Many pastoralists felt they were being cut out of Voice discussions by way of being labelled racist.

Mr Connolly: "If I asked everyone here whether an Indigenous Voice to Parliament would help address the challenges we face in the Territory, I could guess the answer.

"Equally, if I asked the same people whether disadvantage was something that must urgently be addressed, using new ways of thinking and that the answers of the past are no longer the solution, I would know for the certain what the answer would be.

"Around this country right now there is a fear of discussing the Voice to Parliament, of asking questions about it.

"The fear is of being called racist, being judged a bigot or worse. It's very real."

Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price agreed, saying she had been called a white supremacist for expressing concerns with the Voice concept.

"It's name calling in an attempt to shut people down and control the narrative," she said.

"We are not a racist country and the NT is not full of red necks and poor bugger black fellas.

"We get on with one another."

The Voice is a proposed body designed to advise the Australian parliament on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The government would be obliged to consult it on matters such as native title, employment, housing, the community development program, the NDIS or heritage protection.

A referendum will be held later this year, with a yes vote required to enshrine it in the constitution.

While the NTCA would not advance an opinion on a yes or no vote, its role was to ask questions in order to better inform its members, Mr Connolly said.

"In our attempts to further the discussion of this, we are being ostracised," he said.

"This referendum brings with it a seismic shift in Australia as a nation. Regardless of which side prevails the result will be recorded in the history books and taught to our children.

"I want to participate in this discussion. I have spent much of my life working alongside Indigenous people. I still do.

"I want to know this will bring about real change because I thought splintering people out of mainstream Australia based on race was something we had learned as a country not to do."

Mr Connolly said the Territory had borne the brunt of Indigenous policies championed by Canberra for years.

"As the federal government stumbles its way around a land different and distant to their own, so often our input and advice is ignored.

"My hope is that this renewed commitment to Indigenous disadvantage brings with it the change so desperately needed."

Ms Price said programs like Real Jobs needed far more support.

"Relationships between pastoralists and traditional owners were once very strong but a lot of that has broken down due to the influence of bureaucracy," she said.

"Funding needs to be far more accountable and with that comes effectiveness."