EDITORIAL: Revelations this week that the Chief Minister’s family personally benefitted from the systemic maladministration and apparent misuse of public funds at the Darwin Waterfront Corporation is further proof the Territory is completely broken and must be the catalyst we need to finally stamp out corruption at the highest levels of our public institutions that has been allowed to run unchecked for years.
We thought the previous revelations of potential misconduct at the Waterfront were the height of arrogance by a self-serving group of over-paid bureaucratic fat cats looking after each other and their mates, but the latest insights have once again achieved a new low for the Territory.
As far as scandals go, this could not be bigger as it goes to the heart of all of our public institutions and the people who run them.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s handling of the situation – or lack thereof to date – is more problematic than the last time her leadership was tested. We all remember her attempts to downplay former police commissioner Michael Murphy’s misconduct as an “educational tool” for weeks before being forced by public backlash into doing her job and terminating him from one of the most senior roles in the public service that requires the utmost level of public trust.
What has transpired at the Waterfront is far worse than the Murphy scandal and goes to the highest levels of the public service and now the government – those we have entrusted to run the Northern Territory.
The NT Independent’s special investigation series revealed that senior public servants, including former and current chief executives, not only failed to manage conflicts of interest, they appeared to use taxpayer money to buy favours for one another and their mates and family, with seemingly no regard whatsoever to propriety, general decency, the cost to taxpayers, laws, or public service recruitment processes.
We saw Andrew Kirkman, who was the acting head public servant last year while also a Waterfront board member, successfully advocate a pay rise for his mate and Waterfront CEO Alastair Shields, less than six months before Kirkman’s wife was hired at the corporation.
Then we reported on another secret memo that showed Shields attempted to get Kirkman’s sister, his mate and former head public servant, Jodie Ryan, $44,000 a year to attend six meetings on the DWC board in the middle of a pay freeze our hardworking public servants were suffering, that Ryan helped implement.
But it wasn’t clear why the Finocchiaro Government was playing tricks and ordering internal reviews until this week, when it was revealed the Chief Minister’s husband Sam Burke was in on the game, receiving obscene amounts of taxpayer cash for part-time gigs that his mates created for what appears to be the sole purpose of keeping him in grease and providing him more money, while ignoring proper recruitment practices and other public service measures meant to protect the public against misconduct.
His latest $300,000 ECO2 contract – for a part-time, three-day-a-week role – was not put through a proper Job Evaluation System review, nor were the other jobs that brought him an estimated $400,000 in ‘higher duties allowance’ over six years on top of his salary, which were all approved by Shields and Kirkman, without being advertised publicly, while a series of government processes were seemingly ignored in favour of backroom deals that enriched the few over the public.
One of the memos showed Shields, Kirkman and Burke shifted taxpayer money from a separate publicly-owned corporation they all manage to the Waterfront Corporation to give Burke the extra cash he had no business receiving for the amount of work he actually does.
Burke couldn’t even be bothered offering a defence when questioned, presumably because even he can’t say for sure what his duties are in the roles he holds because they have never been properly evaluated.
When confronted about the shonky dealings at the Waterfront by this masthead at a press conference on Thursday, the Chief Minister said she “won’t be making comment about that” before shutting it down and taking off when asked why she hasn’t already ordered a full public inquiry into this scandal.
Kirkman’s sudden resignation on Thursday, whether forced or not, has raised more serious questions and put more pressure on the Chief Minister.
When will Shields resign or be removed from all his cushy part-time gigs and influential committees that sees him collect well in excess of $200,000 a year for showing up for a few meetings? And what about all the others? When will anyone be held accountable for their actions?
The fat cats have been pulling this kind of stuff on us for decades through governments of both political persuasions and the only good news is that it’s finally coming unravelled for all to see.
Only way to fix this is a full public judicial inquiry
The lawlessness on our streets is a direct symptom of the lawlessness successive governments have allowed to continue in the highest ranks of the public service, where the protection racket for those elite few has been prioritised over the best interests of its citizens. We have lost many good public servants who could have made positive contributions to our community, but the government always seems to back in the corrupt thug bosses while letting the good ones leave town and head back down south. Most go back to their home state broken and defeated, with warnings for others not to bother coming to the Northern Territory.
How Lia Finocchiaro tries to wriggle out of this one will be something to watch in the coming days. She has now been revealed as complicit in the entire sickness that afflicts the Territory.
Her MLAs’ silence on this most serious matter is also telling and will affect their political futures.
Referring this matter to the anti-corruption body is out of the question, given that acting ICAC Greg Shanahan is a long-time mate and colleague of Shields and even if he were to refer it to someone else, he could alter the outcome by providing a specifically limited brief or terms of reference that we will never know about.
The only way to fix this is a full judicial inquiry in public with broad terms of reference that exposes the extent of what has been going on here for years. It’s going to stink if done properly, but it is entirely necessary if we are to move forward.
But don’t expect that anytime soon. We also learned recently what this CLP Government stands for, when both the Chief Minister (on radio this week) and her Attorney-General two weeks ago, not only defended politicians and senior public servants accepting gifts from vested interests, but argued it was fine because everyone has done it for as long as anyone can remember.
Which explains why Lia has treated the role of Chief Minister as a personal power trip for self-interest, appointing her own mates to important roles in the public service and the judiciary. ‘Everyone else has done it, so why can’t I’, she seems to be telling the public. We believe someone who fails to recognise the seriousness of the situation is not fit to be the leader.
This is the Northern Territory’s curse and what has inhibited its potential to succeed and grow for decades.
We need it cleaned up immediately. The public’s trust is broken.
Unbelievable. Our community is displaying the symptoms of sheer inequality disgusting and shameful at a global scale. People are actually dying as a direct result of poverty due to systemic economic marginalisation.
And these entitled bastards are skimming the cream for themselves.
And it is happening over and over again.
The status quo is not working.
Something must change if the NT is to be taken seriously.
We need to grow out of being a frontier town major party for fat cats to gorge on and corporations to take advantage of.
We have grown out of the frontier town image!
Its now deteriorated to Consequence free Clown Town on Turbo.
Calling for a judicial enquiry while the whole justice system is also corrupt is oxymoronic….
The corrupt investigation of the corrupt will of course find no cause for concern….
Gee, I wonder why you did notattack Labor when they were actually doing this?
Hey Boof, i am sure any journalist, that is a journalist that works for a organization that will allow scrutiny of the Government, would report it as soon as they knew……
God knows how the ABC Journalists and NT News Journalists have nuke-the-government stories ready to go and the Editor steps in and says NO!
Boof Would you say the following stat is accurate:
NT Independent 4 Chief Ministers 0
You took the bait @Graeme R, we suggest ignoring him and his BOOtom Feeding.
What favours has Luccio Cercarelli done for the finachiaros while Palmerston Ceo ?
Hand picked by Lia to be be Ceo of dept of chief minister.
His time as chief of Palmerston council was very questionable
With the amount of employee turnover over
I am having difficulty finding the several NT News articles about the Toxic work place at City of Palmerston as well as where the Developers where calling for executives to resign due to incompetence.
Clearly very serious action is needed to rescue the NT’s self government. This can only come from Canberra, and should be a high priority after the election.
At the risk of repeating ourselves and the similar points of many other fine commenters on here we will give you this analogy as a way to change for better, the people within it first then the system which supports them:
Some universal truths to begin with:
Consider Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, South American military juntas, Josef Stalin’s Russia, the list is long throughout human history.
Bad systems attract and reward bad people.
Bad people don’t care about good people. At all.
If bad people in power are left unchecked and unwatched they become badder people.
Bad people want to hold on to and maintain their power at all costs.
Bad people often pay good people money (or threaten them) to look the other way while they do their bad things.
Analogy:
Imagine a 2-floor share house with a big fresh water tank on the roof. The water flows down through a series of pipes from the roof to the upstairs level then to the downstairs and finally out into the flower garden.
There is a hatch in the floor, the upstairs people put a cover over it most of the time. They often look down but due to the cover, they alone control who can look up at them.
Sometimes the upstairs people change but the downstairs people are never sure when or how often and they rarely get to see the upstairs people clearly.
They don’t even really know how many upstairs people there are, even though there should only be 2. Sounds like many more at times.
The flower garden out the front is maintained by the downstairs people. It could look much better but there is often no water for the garden after everyone has taken their share of it on the way down from the roof.
It’s such a shame as it would be a beautiful garden if it was allowed to grow and could be shared by everyone in the house and beyond.
Unfortunately, the upstairs people had access to all the water before it hit the main pipes and started to make its way downstairs.
Without anyone able to see what was happening, the upstairs people had added their own side pipes to the main pipes and had been syphoning off water for themselves before it began its journey downstairs.
Their rooms had lovely pot plants, bonsai trees, exotic cacti and they had installed a bath for only them to use.
They always sounded really happy upstairs and looked healthier than the downstairs people, who couldn’t really work out why exactly.
The downstairs people, who worked as hard if not harder than those upstairs, didn’t get much water to share between them (much less than upstairs but they were not to know this at the time). That’s why the flower garden was mostly dead too.
While trying to encourage the garden to grow, the downstairs people occasionally looked up at the water tank and saw that it was big enough to provide them with more water than they were getting and it made them suspicious.
But they were unable to check upstairs because this was blocked off to them by those upstairs house mates.
So they continued on, surviving on the meagre amounts of water released to them from upstairs, lamenting the several droughts a year and the brown and dried up flower garden that could be so much better looking for everyone.
One weekend, a flash storm blew through the property. It was crazy strong! So strong in fact that not only did it break some of the windows in the house but it blew a part of the roof off, which in turn caused the heavy water tank to fall downwards.
It crashed through the ceiling of the house then again through the floor with the hatch and into the living room downstairs.
The downstairs people finally had an opportunity to see what had been going on in their house above them for all these years, deliberately hidden from them.
The upstairs people had been stealing most of the fresh water for themselves, living like fresh water kings and queens upstairs, while all below them had been suffering needlessly due to their selfishness.
After the landlord had come back and looked at the damage not only to the house but also to the people in the house, they decided to change everything so that the next sharing situation in their property ran differently and more equitably.
Here’s what they did:
~Everyone was replaced, to start afresh with new people who had no idea what had happened with any of the previous tenants and had no connection to them and how to run their scams.
~They got plumbers to check all the original pipes and fittings.
~They had those plumbers remove all the extra installed pipes.
~The hatch was replaced with a larger more open one with a ladder so all inhabitants could move freely within the whole property to share all the spaces equally.
~They installed a pipe flow system which was accessible via an app or online web page that anyone could check at any time to see how the flow of water was going and if there were any problems or overuse in the house and identify where those were exactly.
~They added additional external monitoring metres checked by people offsite and who reported back to the landlord directly.
~The landlord would explain these systems and how to use and report through them to all new tenants and house sharers.
~It was arranged for the plumbers to return to do random spot checks on the water system whenever they pleased and to report directly back to the landlord.
~Occasionally the landlord would change the rooms occupancy in the house, allowing the downstairs people to live upstairs for 3 months at a time and vice versa.
~The new House Rules and applicable Laws outside of the house, including outside monitoring for compliance of both Rules and Laws were explained to all new house inhabitants.
~Consequences for breaches of these Rules and Laws included eviction, prosecution and return of any stolen water, and these were painstakingly explained to the new house inhabitants.
~Court action was started against the previous upstairs people, the progress of which was regularly delivered to the House so they knew that the landlord was serious about what the Rules and Laws are.
~Everyone loved the new flower garden out front and enjoyed the fact that passers-by often complimented the House on the flowers and plants outside and how happy and collaborative the tenants seemed to be about their garden.
~The previous upstairs people were sent to jail for stealing. All of them, including anyone who had helped them install and maintain their pipes and illegal water system.
Change For Better: we have the power, do we have the desire to match?
Or are we going to continue with more of the Sam Old Sam Old?
Cleanup Time – by John Lennon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMvdUCZLkg
The queen is in the counting house
Counting out the money
The king is in the kitchen
Making bread and honey
No friends and yet no enemies
Absolutely free
No rats aboard the magic ship
Of perfect harmony
Now it begins, let it begin
Cleanup time, hey, cleanup time
Cleanup time, well, well, well
Thank you NT Independent for the work you do on a shoestring. I absolutely agree with you that this is what has held the Territory back for years. That comment hit home. I’m a fifth generation Territorian and I love this place with all my heart. This kind of thing has been going on forever up here – we are out of sight, out of mind; people get greedy and corrupt behaviour is normalised. I’m sure none of the people involved in this latest scandal even saw their behaviour as problematic and probably still don’t.
We are financed by Canberra and have a limited budget and huge social issues to address and yet huge sums of money seem to circulate in certain circles in Darwin. I wish the governance of this special place could be improved. Well done again, you are providing an important democratic service by reporting on these matters.
Happy Easter to all!
It is increasingly evident that Territorians are feeling angry, disillusioned, and frustrated. Faith, respect, and protection in government are fundamental rights that form the foundation of our society. In the Northern Territory, it is glaringly apparent that decades of alternating ALP and CLP governance have failed to uphold these core values, interests, and protections for Territorians.
In light of this, I am exercising my rights to respectfully appeal to the Governor-General, urging him to utilize both his executive and reserve powers. I will also call upon the Governor-General to dismiss the NT Administrator for his failure to provide adequate oversight of political matters that have eroded public trust in governance, both past and present.
Furthermore, I will advocate for the Governor-General to initiate a Royal Commission into fraud in the NT. This commission should be empowered to recoup public funds, pursue criminal charges, and audit all executive and local government appointments to ensure compliance and integrity.
As for engaging federal parliament, with a federal election on the horizon and the major parties seeking support, I plan to send my letter and evidence to every One Nation candidate across Australia. I believe the Australian public will be outraged to learn how their hard-earned tax dollars have been mismanaged in the NT. This will undoubtedly generate significant attention and demand for action.
When was the last time you saw a politician so determined to confront wrongdoing? I am just a candidate now but imagine what I could achieve as your One Nation NT Senator.
Happy Easter!
The G-G is a woman!!!
Happy Easter Sunday,
Sorry but l just had to share this!
It’s synonymous of Territorians calling out LIA and the ALPCLP!
Google “ Warriors come out to play” YouTube has it!
Enjoy
No matter . . . as Minister for Tourism and Hospitality explains: NT News 20/04. “As we continue our commitment” . . . . her portfolio was on the front foot. Positivism has a place. But it must always be grounded by realities. And right now, a great deal of content questionable? Truth is . . . the game is up. And that is a reality. Both ALP and CLP again have failed we all Territorian(s). Evidence? NT Independent has questioned, exposed content that cannot be over-looked. Such exposures may not be addressed within NT. But post Federal Govt Elections? Concerns, content, now available. Can no longer be over-looked. And that is our Territory responsibility as citizens. Corruption. Unattended. Will destroy “ALL”?
Federal investigation required, with jail sentences for those found guilty as well as seizure of all their ill gotten assets.
Did anyone listen to the 0830am 22 April Tuesday ABC interview with Adam Steers and the CM?
Adam: “Any investigation into the contracts at the Waterfront?”
CM: “Nothing to do with me….”
Adam: “Your da CM of the NT…”
CM: “you need to talk to the Minister Bimbo Boothby responsible for the Waterfront, !”
Total cop out and the CM could have definitely put an end to the biggest ethical controversy in NT politics! What controversy you ask? Well “The MY-Husband-has-been-receiving-a-eye -watering-sweet-deal-under-the-opposing-government-as-well-as-under-my-current-administration” controversy. That one. The question of why and for what in return, is being asked by many upset CLP voters!
The current Chief Minister is fatally wounded, and needs to ‘exit stage right’ and and not take the entire CLP Party with her down the gurgler. Thats how it works in ‘civilized’ jurisdictions.