KATHERINE Town Council mayor Fay Miller says there is a strong possibility the town could eventually be home to 30,000 people.
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Responding to comments made by Member for Katherine Willem Westra van Holthe at last week’s Developing the North regional summit that he could envisage the community becoming “a town the size of Alice Springs”, Ms Miller said it could happen.
“I certainly can see it happening,” she said.
“I think it will be led in the first part by the rapid development of [RAAF Base] Tindal.”
Currently, Katherine is home to about 10,000 people, meaning the population would have to triple to see Mr Westra van Holthe’s vision become a reality.
Ms Miller said she believed defence would play a critical role in the town’s long-term growth, in addition to the agricultural and resources sector, and the creation of an intermodal freight hub.
While turning Katherine into a Northern Territory hub for road and rail freight has been discussed for several years, Ms Miller said the NT government needed to take a proactive approach to its development.
“We’re at a crossroad for north, south and west,” she said.
“One of our challenges is that freight goes straight to Darwin, gets sorted at the intermodal freight hub there and then comes back.
“We need to be more efficient.”
Transport and Infrastructure Minister Peter Styles agreed with Ms Miller than Katherine’s proximity to the Stuart and Victoria highways, as well as the north-south railway line, made it attractive for freight handling.
“Katherine is ideally located next to the two major highways,” he said.
“This proximity has will continue to be valuable for Katherine and the entire region.
“The [NT government’s] Territory Roadmap is looking at our road transportation services and asking for input from all stakeholders about where focus should be given for concepts like a transport service hub.”
Mr Westra van Holthe stood by his comments about Katherine’s growth potential and confirmed the government was in the process of “setting aside land” - believed to be 500 hectares - adjacent to the railway station.
“That is in preparation for what we see as the growth of the transport industry,” he said.
“I think that, given the economic potential of the area Katherine services, particularly with a growing agricultural sector and a mining sector as it will be, and the oil and gas sector, in years to come, there’s no reason Katherine can’t grow and expand.
“The growth of Katherine needs to be planned; it needs to be done in a way that avoids the boom and bust cycles.
“It’s not like we’re going to double in size over the next five years because of the gas industry, that’s not going to happen.”
Both Ms Miller and Mr Westra van Holthe conceded the town needed to clear some big hurdles if it was to become home to 30,000 people.
“Certainly the antisocial problems that Katherine has, they exist and they are an issue that needs to be dealt with at a number of levels, but I don’t see that as an impediment to growth,” Mr Westra Van Holthe said.
“Now is the time to take control [of antisocial behaviour] so we don’t have those issues in Alice Springs on top of those problems we already have here,” Ms Miller said.
Land availability is a key concern in the town and Ms Miller said the development of new residential blocks in Katherine East would alleviate the problem.
“Land was an issue but we’ve got over 200 residential blocks coming online,” she said.
“Having land available free of native title in the future is going to be extremely important to development.”