Let’s wallow for another week in the misdeeds, malfeasance and asinine behaviour of our elected leaders and explore that sweet corruption-incompetence nexus that makes us all feel at home in the Great Territory Lifestyle.

Your presence is intimidation enough

Famed good ol’ boy Shane Leslie Stone and Head Clown at the CLP circus, tried, as Clown Town understands, to make the former NT Cattlemen’s Association chief executive and general meat aficionado Ashley Manicaros a member of the CLP with the aim of installing him as campaign manager for the 2024 election.

At the CLP’s central council meeting, Stone attempted to reinstate him after he’d previously been rejected on character grounds, and was said to have interrupted Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to tell the meeting he fully supported the move, after she alleged receiving “threatening and harassing” messages from the aggressive man with a feminine name, who incidentally was convicted of threatening to kill NT Police officers and their family members 20 years ago.

Stone was told directly by a party member that “nobody asked for your opinion”. Which is perhaps something the CLP should have thought about before they voted him in as Head Clown.

Mr Manicaros – who worked for Stone in the 1990s – did not respond to the NT Independent about the claims, but later posted on social media: “People only bring up your past when they are intimidated by your presence”.

The former forklift driver and wannabe CLP spiritual adviser, seemed to have inadvertently summed up everyone’s problem with him; and didn’t seem to realise the definition of ‘intimidate’ is to frighten or threaten someone, usually in order to persuade them to do something you want them to do.

You don’t even need to be in his presence for that, who doesn’t remember the time he threatened on Twitter to tear someone’s ‘fucking lips off’?

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

Beware of the tiger

The NT Government has awarded a $23,667 contract to install Tiger brand wire mesh to the already existing security fence around the police compound in Wadeye. The company happens to sell razor wire.

This was a Tier 2 tender that was never made public and was given directly to prospective suppliers, so we will not know what sort of “mesh” is going to be installed until the “mesh” is actually installed.

Are the criminals there so keen on being arrested they have to be kept out with razor wire? Not that we understand there is much crime in Wadeye based on NT Police reporting. Is being too peaceful a crime?

Or are NT Police just trying to set a bruatlist-razor wire chic as a trend for this Dry season?

Literary Response Group

At the Kumanjayi Walker coronial inquest on Monday, Zach Rolfe gave evidence the TRG handed out an annual award for the member who had shown the most “coon-like” behaviour.

On Tuesday morning, Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said the NT Police – alongside unspecified “other agencies” – would investigate the allegations of racism itself.

Four former TRG members gave statements, which became evidence in the coronial, and the suppression order on their names was lifted on Thursday.

But in their denial of any racism, the members Manicarosed themselves, by seeming to show the award was, in fact, racist.

They said it was a self-deprecating joke about TRG being considered Neanderthals and “knuckle draggers“, and was awarded to the dirtiest, most feral member, with the winner presented an “improvised weapon” resembling a “prehistoric man club” that had been seized during riots at Wadeye.

The conflicting explanations in the statements were about as convincing as the NT Police investigating itself for racism. The latest revelations the awards were printed on paper alongside an Aboriginal flag cast further doubt on their claims.

Acting Assistant Commissioner James Gray-Spence said the award was given because TRG members could only “lift concrete not spell it”, but said “Noogada” – the award name – had no Indigenous connection and suggested it was “onomatopoeia that imitates the utterance of a caveman”.

If NT Police had known that he knew the word onomatopoeia, and how to spell it, or that he knew someone who knows, he would never have made it into the TRG. For the record he – or someone he knows – can also spell troglodyte, motif, jocular, affidavit, and misogynistic.

Clown Town suggests this man has no place in the NT Police, or the Northern Territory itself.

In contempt of oneself

The coroner issued non-publication orders, on multiple names during the inquest, including, obviously, the names of those senior police members.

The funny thing about non-publication orders is they need to be enforced to mean anything and they need to be enforced equally.

The video from the livestream of Monday’s coronial’s session was still available on Tuesday with the identity of at least one of those members not suppressed.

Hard to swallow

When Police Commissioner Michael Murphy was asked at the press conference if he knew about the TRG’s allegedly racist award, one viewer said he looked a little unwell. The description reminded us of the recent Four Corners episode when Coles chief executive Leah Weckert was asked if she knew of the term “Colesworth” and there was a giant gulping before she said no.

It seems from all the statements from senior NT Police that Zach Rolfe was the one who introduced racist terms to the force, which up until his arrival had been made up of 1,600 Dalai Lama equivalents.

Minister for Hypocrisy and Footy

Clown Town heard the Minister for Kicking the Footy Joel Bowden on Mix 104.9 berating the CLP for not knowing how much it would cost to have truancy officers in schools.

This is the same minister who just last week did not know how much the Civic and State Square development cost. The answer is probably north of $200 million, by the way. And while he publicly committed in front of a press conference full of journalists to provide the total cost, he later refused to say how much the taxpayer would be paying.

He also did not know the Labor Government spent about $260,000 creating a business case for the project, a business case that was commissioned three years after the construction first began.

Does this man get liquid hypocrisy injected straight in his veins?

Hard to swallow II – ‘Coincidently’

Three years before he became a minister, Brent Potter – or Donald Trump Junior, as we at the News Donga know him – had no immediate future prospects before getting the swell job on the fifth floor, coincidently where his sister-in-law worked. Coincidently, while he was working there, an ex-colleague who is now the executive officer of AAI was given $10 million by then-industry minister Nicole Manison, who Don Junior worked for, for their bold plan to build 60-year-old sea planes.

Along the way, he started on the path of becoming the Wolf of Mitchell Street when he bought shares in Seafarms, which dreamed of building the world’s largest prawn farm in a remote part of the NT – yes, they certainly were dreaming – and were given Major Project status in 2015. Coincidently again, at the time, Don Junior was one of about five people who worked for Manison – who would have had knowledge of the company few outside the company would have had – and coincidently he happened to be her Trade and Northern Australian advisor.

Coincidently, he bought those shares the month before Seafarms Group announced it had raised $92.5 million in funding to kickstart the construction through a share placement.

And coincidently, he got picked by then-chief minister Natasha Fyles to run for Labor in Fannie Bay. Coincidently, his sister-in-law was Fyles’s chief of staff. And coincidentally, he was then working for Fyles as a senior adviser on Major Projects, of which the prawn farm is still classified as.

Coincidently still, he owed Fyles a favour for picking him and he was made Police Minister at a time when it was a shit time to be Police Minister and Fyles needed someone to do what she said but didn’t want any blame herself.

Mr Potter said he sold the Seafarms shares upon becoming Police Minister in late October, however coincidently a “sell order” he provided shows the shares were sold on November 17 – one day after Ms Fyles divested her shares in Woodside Energy, following the NT Independent revealing she had breached the ministerial code of conduct by not divesting those shares when she became a minister.

Don Junior’s life is just one Deidre Chambers moment after another.

It’s such a coincidence to have so many coincidences, but we guess that is the nature of coincidences and nothing can be read into this. If anything, it makes it more likely to believe Don Junior.

Hard to swallow III – with a Vengeance

Eva Lawler was swept to power on the back of a shares scandal exposed by the NT Independent that claimed her predecessor Fyles, who said the honourable course of action was to resign as chief minister. Her attachment to honour did not extend as far as resigning from Parliament to get back on the tools, pull on some floaties and live it up on the luxury of a swim teacher’s wage.

But when the NT Independent exposed the share scandals of Deputy Chief Minister Chanston Paech – who helped Lawler stomp on heads to take the top job – and of course, Don Junior’s, she lost that new found commitment to transparency she found on the day she was sworn in. She had kicked transparency to the curb like it was a no-good boyfriend.

Both Chanston and Don Junior’s explanations for their wrong-doing sounded a lot like the trademarked Manicaros Method.

NT Labor already set the integrity bar so low that their politics was like a game of limbo. Now they are liable to trip over that same bar.

Lawler needs to get on the phone to Assistant Commissioner Gray-Spence because he is a great speller and he might be able to teach her how to spell integrity. Because we also know from those police statements, if there is one thing the TRG have, it is integrity.

Anyway, in an unrelated segue, we must be off now to do a bit of insider trading.