There has been a lot going on in Clown Town since our last edition, including a certain “senior officer” being stood down…eventually. It’s clearly time once again to wallow in the misdeeds, malfeasance and asinine behaviour of our leaders and explore that sweet corruption-incompetence nexus that makes us all feel at home in the Great Territory Lifestyle.

TELL us what you have seen happening in Clown Town at news@ntindependent.com.au

Please educate us Chief Minister – about what really happened

If Lia Finnochiaro ever tells you to use something you have done as an ‘education tool’, best clean up your desk and refinance your mortgage; or lawyer-up if you have the integrity of…well, a disgraced Northern Territory Police Commissioner.

For those of you who’ve been living under the Berrimah overpass – and for the spectacularly un-curious Public Service Minister Jo Hersey and Minister-for-something Jinson Charls – the Police Commissioner Michael Murphy was the subject of an Office of the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption investigation which found he engaged in misconduct to give a job to a mate without declaring the extent of his friendship, which was a misuse of public resources and a “detriment” to the public interest.

The Chief Minister handled this with the grace of a three-legged donkey in a leotard performing a ‘Triple Russian’ on a pommel horse.

She flip-flopped, gasping for oxygen, like a fish on concrete; except fish don’t tend to lie so much.

All the while, some CLP sophists loudly clapped their ‘leader’, and held up perfect 10 scorecards for her allegedly well-considered and pragmatic approach.

The narrative of a few, that her refusal to even acknowledge that the matter was serious, for about a week, showed how considered and careful she was being, really only showed the damage that being in a cult can do to your brain.

The crucial point here being, could anyone watching the Cowboy Clown Show that was the CLP government in its dying days in 2015, have imagined that a decade on, Adam Giles could be considered the Territory’s fifth-worst Chief Minister?

Slapstick politicking

We were going to say the Chief Minister was non-ably advised by her former grog-lobbyist chief of staff Alex Bruce, and former gambling promoter-cum-newspaper editor-cum deliverer of favours for powerful racing mates at the expense of the public, he of the Darwin Turf Club ICAC report, Matt Williams.

But to be fair, Williams has some serious experience in suppressing the reporting of ICAC investigations. We have finally realised he does have one qualification for the job.

You can still call the trio Larry, Moe, and Curly.

Clown Town just has one question for that insane clown posse on behalf of the people of the Northern Territory: For all your million dollars-a-year-worth of governance and political genius, can you please explain how you go from an ICAC report being just an educational tool for public servants, to a Police Commissioner needing to be sacked at 9pm on a Saturday night, because you lost confidence in him?

Chief Minister, you read the full ICAC report, and were given a briefing the day before a redacted and condensed two-page statement was made public. And between then, and the time the Commissioner for Helping-Out-His-Mates had to go, you received no more information about the situation beyond the anger of the public and your colleagues.

Was there ever a plan of how to deal with the information provided, either from an acting-in-the-public-interest perspective, or a political spin perspective?

Instead, Territorians were treated to a political poke in the eye, and a slap in the gob.

‘Unintentional impropriety’: The clowns rallied around their boy Murph

The Murphy apologists also reared their heads this week, which included journalists and senior CLP figures.

The NT News went to bat on Friday in a strange editorial for their mate ‘Murph’, arguing it was hard to tell if he deserved to be sacked for engaging in outright misconduct as the NT Police Commissioner – where one would would expect the highest level of integrity was a pre-requisite – and said they wanted to see a disgraced police commissioner challenge his sacking in court.

They were backed up by Labor-apologist and ‘northern myth’ blogger Bob Gosford, who this week outdid his own genius back in August, when he opined that Labor would win the Territory election because Territorians only voted out “governments they hate” and Labor was not that. He’s been sleeping since that embarrassment, but came out swinging this week for ol’ Murph, telling anyone who would listen that he should not have been sacked for misconduct because his deliberate and undeclared conflict of interest in the hiring process as exposed by an ICAC investigation was merely “unintentional impropriety”.

Yep, ol’ Murph just happened to slip on a banana peel and sign his best mate’s executive salary package on his way to the ground.

Then ‘Boof’-head himself and long-time CLP figure Peter Cavanagh took to the comments section on the NT Independent to suggest Murphy did nothing wrong by hiring his mates and misusing public resources, ’cause, you know, that’s how it’s always been done here and he can do what he wants. Not everyone agreed.

“Your assertion that cronyism must regulate employment is the very first time in my life I have witnessed a person openly advocate corruption,” responded commenter Tony Ryan.

Mic drop.

The world’s pre-eminent dramatist

Palmerston’s greatest Shakespearian actor Clinton Howe, who has a side gig as a CLP MLA, penned a festering, turgid, and tediously pompous letter to Territory police officers, that was the equivalent of a cow that has been dead for four days; bloated and emitting a foul odour. You can put on a gas mask and read it here.

While totally not being a complete wanker, he addressed it to the “Thin Blue Line”, and cited the oft used quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” which he attributed to Edmund Burke, who was not from the Territory, obviously.

Leaving aside the fact there is no evidence Burke actually said that, we hope it was meant as a scathing satirical comment on his leader’s week of do-nothingness until political pressure left her leadership ready to explode like that dead cow, and she actually had to do something.

But we have heard the Member for Drysdale in Parliament and know his note was consistent with who he is, without the ability to escape from the shackles of delusional self-aggrandisement.

We wish were we joking when we tell you he included five dot points, defining duty, loyalty, integrity, courage and morale.

And for courage he wrote: “To do what is right no matter what the cost. To stand up for those beneath you. To confront injustice – even within your own ranks. True courage is not found in words, but in actions”.

You are now screaming the highest form of satire, right?

No! Trust us, he’s the 2025 version of John Elferink. Well, if you don’t trust us, strap on the gas mask again and watch this video of his performance in Parliament, where he well and truly pops the bloated cow.

The letter was a rolled gold hypocritical ‘think’ piece – that no one asked for – for the ages, and if there is in any justice in this world – which there is not under any NT government – it should still be performed long after that gronk Shakespeare’s plays have been forgotten.

And to the rest of you mob

To the Chief Minister’s colleagues who all stood very still and said nothing publicly about the failure of their leader to do anything – except Mr Howe of course (lol), and Robyn Cahill who briskly walked from TV cameras and faked a cough to avoid answering questions – there is only one thing to say: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg once said: “With or without religion, good people can behave well, and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.”

Swap the word ‘religion’ for ‘political parties’ for a moment.

He also said: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”

Swap the word ‘universe’ for ‘Northern Territory’.

Improving productivity

As evidenced by what has happened as a result of the ICAC investigation into the Police Commissioner, we know the best value the NT has ever achieved from our long-suspended, sort-of-ICAC Michael Riches is when we have told him to stay home, sit on the couch, pour himself a scotch, and watch people on his 15 television screens being fed through the network of CCTV cameras he has installed across Darwin.

Now that he is ‘gone’ the ICAC office is actually finding people have done something wrong.

His personal tally of findings of wrongdoing since he came to the job in July 2021 was basically sitting at minus one, after he removed Ken Fleming’s entire Darwin Turf Club report from the ICAC website when there was absolutely no need to do so, with the findings apparently still very much active.

This included his truly bizarre “no concluded findings” on the Michael Gunner travel rorts scandal, with the reasons why he made no findings making Mr Howe’s letter look sane.

Just to remind you, his job as the anti-corruption commissioner was to investigate allegations of corruption, use the evidence to make a judgement on what happed, and then expose corrupt practices,

But Michael, in the travel rorts case, said he would have to assess the “reliability and credibility of witnesses … where witness evidence is conflicting”, and concluded that he was “loathe” to assess who was lying and who wasn’t, “as a matter of fairness”.

Remember, the NT Independent reported in October the ICAC did not interrogate a single person as part of an investigation last financial year – Riches went on leave in late June – which the then-Acting Commissioner claimed was due to renovations to the office’s hearing room, and a new policy introduced by Riches not to force people suspected of corruption to provide evidence, citing concerns for their mental health.

Also remember that the corruption watchdog made no adverse findings into five Territory Response Group officers lying to the court in sworn statements about racist award certificates, because of a promise made by Riches to the Police Commissioner, before he had collected any evidence, which later led to evidence that contradicted the officers not being admissible.

Even if he sat at home and all he did was pay for a subscription to the NT Independent and read our articles exposing corruption and wrongdoing, he would still be doing more to fight corruption than he ever did while he was employed.

You have already paid Mr Riches about $400,000 to sit at home and hold lawn sales and occasionally flog off Britney Spears merchandise on the internet for the last nine months.

But considering what has been achieved in that time, it is money well spent, Clown Town says.

However, the public will always get better value from the NT Independent: The Independent Newspaper Against Corruption.