Last week’s NT Police Association’s annual conference was hyped as the place and time for both the union’s executive and the Police Minister to take action and address the damning findings that 80 per cent of officers surveyed have no confidence in the Police Commissioner to continue in his role.

Instead, members were treated to two boring speeches with the same old tired pledges to bring about “change” that would address some of the issues officers had raised in the survey, without applying any actual change.

Those issues, as far as anyone hearing the speeches from Paul McCue and Kate Worden would understand, related to the low morale that needs to be improved, the high attrition rates dealt with, action taken on the long-delayed mental health and well-being report, recruiting and hiring more officers, and ongoing EBA negotiations.

Those are all important issues. But there was a bigger issue that they shied away from, that neither wanted to address with any certainty.

When asked by the NT Independent to name the single biggest issue for the overwhelming vote of no confidence in Jamie Chalker indicated by members in the survey, Mr McCue admitted it was Chalker’s handling of the Yuendumu shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker and subsequent charging of Constable Zach Rolfe with murder.

It is an issue that the current Commissioner cannot fix by attending weekly meetings with the union executive, it is not an issue he can fix by meeting with the Minister, it’s not an issue he can even fix by meeting with members, as he has suggested.

How can he fix his decision and actions from three years ago that breached the trust of every serving officer, the NT Independent asked Mr McCue.

“It’s a difficult one,” he responded.

Because there is no way to fix it. The 80 per cent of members who responded to the survey know that and those who chose not to answer also know that.

Chalker let down every single officer employed in the NT Police force when he pursued the murder charge against Zach Rolfe that a Supreme Court jury found there was no case for.

He also breached the public’s trust in its police force and government by continuing to pursue the matter while the facts of the case pointed elsewhere.

The message that he sent by pursuing the charges against Rolfe when the facts did not warrant it was that the Commissioner, the leader of the once-proud NT Police force, did not have his own officers’ backs when push came to shove and was willing to put an honourable cop on trial for the sake of political expedience; to lay the blame on one single person rather than address the shortcomings of those in charge who failed to follow proper process that led to that tragic shooting death.

Chalker only officially came into the job two days after the shooting. He could have easily assessed the situation with clear eyes, accepted that the shooting death was the result of poorly managed procedures and taken swift and decisive action to fix that. There was an abundance of evidence available to draw that conclusion.

Instead, he took the coward’s way out and pinned it solely on one young officer, hoping he would either be convicted of murder or if found not guilty at least leave the NT and end the government’s public relations nightmare.

The people of Yuendumu are right to be angry and bitter over the death of Kumanjayi Walker. But their anger needs to be focused on the multitude who failed and caused the circumstances that led to his death, rather than on one cop who was defending himself and his partner after being stabbed.

If the true test of leadership is admitting mistakes and fixing them while taking responsibility, Chalker has failed miserably.

In the aftermath of the flawed decision to charge Rolfe with murder, Chalker has lied to the public, suppressed evidence, bullied his subordinates, implicated his executive team in his misdeeds and brought the NT Police force into disrepute.

He promoted one officer who lied about the incident at the trial and failed to discipline two others who appear to have tampered with witnesses, suppressed or misdirected expert testimony and misled the court for reasons only known by them and their boss. Then he allowed the three of them to block Constable Rolfe from properly coming back to work with their outlandish claims that they would be “triggered”.

As difficult as it is to atone for a mistake you made three years ago, using that time to instead cover-up, double-down and continue to lie and mislead the public rather than fix the underlying problem is astonishing even by NT politics standards.

And he’s been allowed to get away with it in front of everyone with nobody taking any action.

This is the kind of stuff that happened before the NT Independent existed, the kind of stuff people like Chalker would get away with behind closed doors where he could exert his power over a weak government with the public being none the wiser. But not now. It’s been laid out for everyone to see.

The Chief Minister and Police Minister need to publicly explain why they are putting up with it.

We can only judge a person by their actions. Rolfe’s actions were judged by 12 jurors in a Supreme Court who found him not guilty of murder.

Jamie Chalker’s actions while Commissioner of Police have now been judged by more than 80 per cent of current members who responded to the survey and the many more who have left the force outright because of him, and even those who did not respond for fear of reprisals.

The NT Police do not have any confidence in Jamie Chalker to continue leading. There is no way to repair this.

Surely the only person who doesn’t get that is Chalker.

His continued presence in the role undermines the public’s trust not only in the NT Police force, but also its government.

And when he leaves, which surely one way or another will happen at some point, the person who replaces him, even in the interim, cannot be anyone involved in the current executive. They too have shown themselves to be cowards who have breached the public’s trust every time they allowed Chalker to continue to embarrass himself and all the Territory’s serving officers with his dishonourable actions. After all, they signed their names as supporters of his legacy of incompetence and corruption.