Latest / 360 with Katie Woolf / Member for Namatjira Bill Yan says the NT Government has revealed there are more than 4 million rapid antigen tests in the stockpile with storage costing $400,000 a year

Transcript

Member for Namatjira Bill Yan says the NT Government has revealed there are more than 4 million rapid antigen tests in the stockpile with storage costing $400,000 a year · 360 with Katie Woolf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Joining me live on the line is the Member for Namajira,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Bill Yan. Good morning to you, Bill.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Good morning Katie, and good morning everybody.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Now, Bill, before I get into the questions or notice
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: that you put to the government around those rapid antigen tests,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: can I just ask how did things go in Alice
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Springs last night? We are told that a number of
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: vehicles got stolen and yeah, there's been a few issues
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: out there.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well reports I got this morning with the vehicles
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: stolen overnight. I know that territory families got hit as well.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: They lost a couple of vehicles. So this is off
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: the back of what happened the night before. Vehicle stylem
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  Speaker 2: from McDonough Regional Council and driven around Mayhem and the
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: CBD for about four or five hours. I think that was.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: That was Wednesday night Thursday morning, and I was spending
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  Speaker 2: repeat a game last night. It's just really hard to
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  Speaker 2: say them, Katie, and the government needs to get on
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: top of it. But our cry restrictions have sort of
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: reduced issues in the CBT during the day that we're
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: still doing all sorts of issues at night and round down.
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  Speaker 1: So do you have any idea, you know, like Obviously
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  Speaker 1: we've not seen anything yet from the Northern Territory Police.
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  Speaker 1: But do you have any idea whether it's kids involved
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  Speaker 1: or exactly what the situation was.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I know that from the Wednesday night incident, Katie,
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  Speaker 3: that was kids involved in that, and he could sort
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  Speaker 3: of see some of the stuff from the CCTV out
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  Speaker 3: of my office where they stopping and picking up different
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  Speaker 3: kids outside that office here.
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  Speaker 2: And in my well, my office and of course the
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  Speaker 2: Cole's complex. I'm not sure about last night, Katie. We
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: haven't had any reports on who was involved in those
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: eight deaths last night, but he said, we've got to
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  Speaker 2: get on top of this, the governments to get on
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  Speaker 2: top We can't keep going down this road people like
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  Speaker 2: we had an elderly lady in a world scare assaultiers
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  Speaker 2: in home just the other night. Viciousness of this crime
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  Speaker 2: is just getting out of control.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had actually read that pressure lease on a
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  Speaker 1: couple of days ago and was mortified to see that
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  Speaker 1: that had happened to an elderly woman inside her home.
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  Speaker 1: My understanding is that the alleged defender had knocked on
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  Speaker 1: the door, she'd opened that door, then she was knocked
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  Speaker 1: out of her wheelchair.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's absolutely horrendous types of crime and
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  Speaker 2: viciousness of these attacks on people in their own homes.
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  Speaker 2: He's only escalating and Ronner a bit of a downhill
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  Speaker 2: spiral here. There's something sadly, something bad is going to happen,
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  Speaker 2: and it's going to be again, will be national international
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  Speaker 2: news yet again somewhere we don't want to be. But
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  Speaker 2: until government get really well and truly on top of this,
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  Speaker 2: we're going to be facing that well.
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  Speaker 1: And Bill just on that note, because I do know
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  Speaker 1: that there's been certainly some national reporting and even some
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: local reporting over the last couple of days that those
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  Speaker 1: crime rates have have dropped to some degree in Alice Springs,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: just reading from a story by the ABC Online that
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  Speaker 1: said new internal figures from Northern Territory Police shows significant
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  Speaker 1: dropping crime in Alice Springs since the reintroduction of alcohol restrictions,
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  Speaker 1: but experts are divided on whether those bands have been effective.
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  Speaker 1: So in late January, a suite of measures, obviously restricting
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: alcohol sales was launched and the data has shown that
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  Speaker 1: a month on, break ins are down forty five percent
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  Speaker 1: and there's been a thirty percent decrease in domestic violence
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  Speaker 1: and a thirty six percent decrease in youth disturbances. Is
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  Speaker 1: that in line with how locals are feeling.
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  Speaker 2: Well, you've got to take it into context. Took any
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: make stack stay anything, and I was one manolo job
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  Speaker 2: that makes that so what I want to But you've
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  Speaker 2: got to take into acount and base level of crime.
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  Speaker 2: We've seen a huge increase in January of what was happening,
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  Speaker 2: So of course we've seen those introduction of alcohol measures
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  Speaker 2: at the end of January, I mean into February, and
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  Speaker 2: of course we've seen a reduction from January figures, but
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  Speaker 2: when we're talking figures at five, six seven, up to
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  Speaker 2: ten times high and anywhere in the nation, So you've
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  Speaker 2: had a reduction on your January figures, which you're already high.
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  Speaker 2: So I welcome the reduction. I certainly welcome the rest
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  Speaker 2: spite that the town's getting, but you've got to look
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  Speaker 2: at those baseline figures and that saves those incidents per
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  Speaker 2: one hundred thousand population, and our springs and ten creeks
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  Speaker 2: worse than our us and Catherine's now getting up there
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  Speaker 2: as well. We're seeing crime rates, like I said, five
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  Speaker 2: to ten times higher than the national average per hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand populations. So that's the key thing we need to
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  Speaker 2: take away from this is that this was as great.
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  Speaker 2: We're seeing a quick reduction with the introduction of these
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  Speaker 2: alcohol restrictions. I get that, and I like it, but overall,
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  Speaker 2: we're still seeing huge high rates of crime in Central
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  Speaker 2: Australia and all of our other regions. Now it's the
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  Speaker 2: ten Creek and it's starting to increase and day on too.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Bill. Let's move along and talk about these rapid antigen
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: test costs and also the storage. Now, this is something
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  Speaker 1: that had really been raised. I guess last year. It
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: must have been when we learned that the Northern Territory
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: government had purchased a huge volume of those rapid antigen tests. Bill,
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  Speaker 1: talk us through exactly what questions you put to the
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  Speaker 1: Northern Territory government.
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  Speaker 2: So we sort of we asked the government how many
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: rapid engine tests they had in storage, what was the
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  Speaker 2: cost of storage, have any gone out of date, if
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  Speaker 2: any had to be disposed of. Some of the figures
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  Speaker 2: we got back were like, like pretty high. So it
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  Speaker 2: turns out we've got, oh, we say, we've got over
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  Speaker 2: four million rapid engine tests in storage. At the moment,
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  Speaker 2: and the cost for storage of those rapid engine tests
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  Speaker 2: per year is four hundred thousand bucks a year. That's
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  Speaker 2: a lot of money in anyone's books. So wow, life
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: for those tests. It's going to take us four years
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to get through all those tests. The bigger question is
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  Speaker 2: are only those tests going to go out of date
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  Speaker 2: before we actually use them over those four years, because
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  Speaker 2: based on the numbers we got back from the government,
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  Speaker 2: we're using about five hundred thousand a year, So it's
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: going to take four years to get through what we've
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: got in stock. But we lost two point eight million
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  Speaker 2: dollars worth of rapid engine tests in that warehouse fire
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  Speaker 2: up in Darwin just recently, and that equates about two
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  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand tests gone up in smoke.
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  Speaker 1: Wow. So, Bill, based on the info that you've been given,
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  Speaker 1: are any of those rapid antigen tests due to expire?
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Well, no, that we didn't get that data from government,
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  Speaker 2: They didn't give it to us. All we got from
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: them that they've only lost, So we've only had sixty
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: one single rapid engine tests will expire by June twenty
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: twenty three, So we'll be asking some follow up message
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  Speaker 2: of government is to based on that four year estimated
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  Speaker 2: period to use up everything that we can having stop.
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  Speaker 2: Are we going to be losing anything to expire before then?
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  Speaker 2: And if so, our government's starting to do deals with
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  Speaker 2: other places to try and move them on so that
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: they don't get waste. And then of course there's then
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  Speaker 2: not a loss of money to the territory taxpayer at
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: the end of the day.
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  Speaker 1: So why exactly, Bill did the LP decide to go
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: down the path of asking these questions to the Northern
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Territory government. What was the main reason for us?
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  Speaker 2: Well, we just wanted to know how many we had,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: have any expired? Are they going to expire? Of course
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  Speaker 2: this comes down to cost to the territory taxpayer. So
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  Speaker 2: we've seen COVID sort of dropping away in certain respects
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  Speaker 2: at case loads are way down where we're living with
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  Speaker 2: COVID Now at the end of the day, if you've
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  Speaker 2: got it, you can still go to work. You don't
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  Speaker 2: have to ask, So you just have to be a
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: little bit sens a litle about how you go meet
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: the daily live. So we're looking at how we're going
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: to manage and look at COVID into the future and
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  Speaker 2: of course there there was a reaction to buy all
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  Speaker 2: these tests last year and the year before, and now
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  Speaker 2: we're sitting on them and we're seeing it reduction in
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: our COVID numbers. So, yeah, what are we going to
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: do with all those tests and we're just going to
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  Speaker 2: its awesome in the bin, or we're going to get
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  Speaker 2: smart about getting about other people to use them so
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  Speaker 2: they don't get wasted.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's I guess the big question, particularly when
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: you look at the fact that that costs per month
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  Speaker 1: for storage, by the look of things, is thirty five
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars a month.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, four hundred and twenty thousand dollars in the UK.
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  Speaker 2: That's not small change in anybody's books.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: No, it's really not. Well, Bill Yan, good on you
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  Speaker 1: for putting those questions. Obviously to the Northern Territory government.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's always good to try and get the
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  Speaker 1: answers to some of those questions that territorians do really
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: care about, and one of those things is wanting to
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: know sort of how the taxpayer dollar is being spent.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly, Katie, we've got to keep them honest and
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  Speaker 2: keep finding out where our money's going and how it's
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: being used because it's not a bottomless pit, and he
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: said with nine billion dollars and good at the moment.
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  Speaker 2: Definitely need to see that come back down because otherwise
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: our kids and our grandkids are going to be paying
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: that they're off for us. Got to keep them honest.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Well, Bill Yan, always appreciate your time. Thank you very
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: much for having a chat with us this morning.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Jeez, Katy, have a great weekend.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you you too,