Labor's finance spokesman, Tony Burke, said the legislation introduced by the former government after the first Williams ruling was "an interim measure designed to ensure the validity of funding for a large number of commonwealth programs".
His point is the ruling could well impact other Commonwealth programs funded via executive orders, and the government needs to commit that it won't sneakily scrap programs that are not entirely legally sound.
In terms of the legislative fix being a botch up – Burke's line to the Coalition is stop whinging, you voted for it: The legislative amendments were an interim measure designed to ensure the validity of funding for a large number of Commonwealth programs, while further work was done to strengthen the legislative framework for these programs.
The Northern Land Council (NLC) manages and employs the rangers (along with 16 other ranger groups) and receives commonwealth working on country program funding for wages and operational funding but nothing for the provision of essential infrastructure (unlike most other government-funded regional service providers operating in remote communities).
Burke said the opposition was "prepared to offer bipartisan support on this issue to ensure the continuity of commonwealth government programs", including rural and regional, industry development, environmental, education and health programs.
In his diplomatic career he pursued better treatment for the Commonwealth and programs through the League of Nations and United Nations that would address world questions of pressing social and economic concern, culminating in his most ambitious work to eliminate world hunger through the Food and Agriculture Organization.
He said job support services were "the weakest part of the services that are provided at the moment" to refugees and the state's program would complement the commonwealth job scheme, Job Active.
This will be achieved by establishment of an integrated Commonwealth home support program by July 1, 2015 that seeks to maximize preventative and restorative care to optimize outcomes for care recipients and avoid unnecessary progression to more intensive, higher cost services.
Martin said the large reduction in commonwealth support for programs such as engineering was "difficult to understand given the government's public support for the idea that our economic future will depend on high tech industries and a knowledge economy".
