EDITORIAL: Local Government Minister Chanston Paech has taken action….about 18 months after he would have first been made aware of serious problems in the Barkly Regional Council.

So, when he told a press conference on Tuesday that by suspending councillors, and placing the council into management, it sent the “message to the people in the Barkly” that he was “standing with them”, we could imagine more than a few people in the region may have thought “you’re bloody kidding yourself mate”.

It sent more of a message that the Mayor Jeffrey McLaughlin situation was deeply embarrassing, and required (relatively) quick action to put an end to some national embarrassment, while remote Aboriginal disadvantage in regard to council services was something that could go on unaddressed for more than a year.

If you have not been made aware of the Clown Prince of the Barkly’s latest circus act, gather round kids. The NT Independent brought to light two videos on October 6 and 7 taken in Tennant Creek, believed to be made in August. One shows Mr McLaughlin sitting on a 12-year-old Indigenous boy while another man – who has been identified as Tennant Creek resident Graham Kirk – threatens to bash and kill him. The second was similar but also showed Mr McLaughlin swearing at the boy.

National coverage of the story followed and his actions led to calls from national child protection bodies and others for Mr McLaughlin to stand down from his mayoral role or be sacked.

Putting the council under management was a necessary step – above any clowning by the mayor – but only one step that needs to happen, and one step that came a long time after it should have.

The Minister’s move should be coupled with the public release – with redactions if necessary to protect victims – of the so-called “Justitia Report”, the findings of an investigation into council misconduct undertaken by the Justitia law firm in Melbourne; an investigation forced upon the council by the NT Local Government Unit in August last year.

Two of four councillors who quit in December, along with two staff members who were interviewed for the investigation, have called for it to be made public and said it was their understanding from the start that it would be.

But there is a bigger question here. If the Local Government Unit, and the Minister, knew things were so bad in the council in August that they needed to be investigated, why did they let the council essentially deal with it themselves, through a third party they were paying?

We are not suggesting the Justitia law firm did a bad job – we hear there are some damning things in the report – but why did the government not take control of it themselves, so they could manage the investigation and have control of the final report?

Their actions defy belief.

The NT Independent and ABC Alice Springs have been reporting for about a year about what has been going on at the council, that festering sore, that affected remote Aboriginal people more than anyone else.

It was a mess that Mr Paech knew all about, and began being told about, according to sources, probably from about May 2022. His knowledge only would have been enhanced by the Justitia report.

Yet in his Tuesday press conference he told the media: “I’ve had concerns around deficiencies, and this will allow us to go through and have a look and identify if there are any, what they are and what the course of action is”.

This also defies belief. If there are any deficiencies? The Local Government Unit was so concerned about what was going on that it ordered the council to investigate itself last August. And in December, the Department of Chief Minister and Cabinet “invited” Mark Blackburn to sit in on a confidential session of a council meeting. He was the man the previous Gunner Government installed to manage the Palmerston Council when the minister suspended councillors in 2016.

The Local Government Act specifies that once a council is suspended, the Minister must appoint someone to investigate the council. He did that as the minimum.

But in this case, the failings of the Local Government Unit and the Minister to act in a timely manner should be the subject of another investigation.

The NT Independent knows this is not the only NT council that has serious, festering problems that affect the local community. At least one other has its problems not made public yet. It will be interesting to find out what the Local Government Unit and the Minister did there.

Peach’s motives not about helping the community

Mr Paech told the media the recent behaviour of the Mayor had nothing to do with his decision.

Well, that seems like a very large coincidence. It also seems disingenuous or most likely a lie.

The Fyles Government’s continued tactic of foisting their own version of reality on people, that is never actual believable – hopefully even to them – only makes people not trust them further. Remember Chief Minister Natasha Fyles’s Howard Springs “wear and tear” saga, the “no petrochemicals” at East Arm claims, or how Treasurer and Education Minister Eva Lawyer said that people came up to her on the street to congratulate her on the economy, or that young people in remote areas who fail to receive a proper education do not commit crime?

The Barkly Council has been embroiled in chaos since at least May last year, with more than 100 staff leaving in 2022 under former chief executive officer Emma Bradbury. This was the result of unaddressed allegations against her of bullying and mismanagement, of a bungled investigation into a sexual harassment claim made by a young woman in a remote community, the mayor being accused of breaking the confidence of staff complaining against the CEO, and a failure by members to investigate workers’ complaints.

The NT Independent has been told by multiple sources that the father of the young Indigenous woman who made the allegation against the older male employee has said council never responded to his complaints about its investigation, despite another law firm the council engaged to investigate how it investigated, highly critical of what council did.

There is so much more.

Some council members conspired in December for that investigation report not to be considered by a council committee that was to receive it, instead only discussing it in confidential sections of their meetings.

Then in March, the story was that legal advice prevented them from releasing it publicly, despite the mayor having said in December it would be released, with possible redactions.

Did the council somehow not discuss with the lawyers who they employed to undertake the investigation, what they proposed to do with the report when it was finished and what was legally allowed?

That whole part of the saga has all the credibility of Mr Paech telling the press conference the council’s suspension had nothing to do with the recently revealed videos of the mayor sitting on top of an Indigenous child.

If suspending the council has nothing to do with the recent behaviour of the mayor, what exactly happened between mid-December – when the council started burying the report the government had insisted upon, resulting in four members quitting council in 24 hours – and now, for the Minister to suddenly be concerned enough about the council’s “fiscal management and service delivery obligations” that he now decides to act?

It is likely the answer is nothing, except that the Local Government Act does not allow him to get rid of the mayor as an individual. It could be when the mayor defied his demand to resign, and worse still, started to publicly talk about the crime crisis in a town that gets little media attention, while also bringing a shameful national focus on the NT yet again, potentially Paech did the only thing he could to shut him up, which was sack the whole council.

Evaluation of the facts would lead one to believe the other problems of council were not the real reason.

Did Mr Paech, a proud Aboriginal man and politician, care when there was a massive failure of Barkly Regional Council services to remote Aboriginal people last year? It seems he did not.

Often for politicians, the truth is something that is an inconvenience, best dealt with by another spin-doctored “line”. Why did it take him 12 days to announced this action, if it was all about the mayor? Maybe it took the government that long to come up with the spiel as to why it was not about the mayor.

Maybe even they were worried it was too big of a lie for the public to swallow.

But we assume, given the reporting, no journalist at the press conference the NT Independent was barred from attending managed to challenge the Minister’s spin-doctored “truth” with the facts from the previous 18 months.