EDITORIAL: Darwin Mayor Kon Vatskalis’s heavy-handed approach to dealing with conflict at council by physically banning an elected councillor who criticised the Labor Government is a perfect illustration of Territory Labor’s crush-and-destroy approach to silencing critics – but Kon is doing it in public for everyone to see and that’s where it gets messy.

Lyons Ward councillor Amye Un was on Tuesday issued a “trespass notice” signed by council’s head security guard who claimed that she was a threat to the “health, safety and wellbeing” of staff, banning her from entering the council building and all libraries.

What they based this high-level risk assessment on were select single lines from two longer Facebook posts written by a woman who grew up in West Timor and has not grasped the subtleties of the English language.

Those “threatening” lines included a post in which Ms Un called for Council chief executive Simone Saunders to resign after she sent her a letter asking her to delete a Facebook post critical of the Labor Government.

Ms Un wrote that she regretted supporting Ms Saunders for the CEO job and reminded Ms Saunders in her broken English: “You is not my boss”.

“You stab me at the back, I will stab you in the front so you know who I’m [sic],” she wrote at the end of the post calling for her resignation.

Kon and his security guard mate, in all of their wisdom and experience on general threat assessment issues, determined that was a “direct threat to stab the City of Darwin Chief Executive Officer”. Yep, clearly she was threatening to stab Ms Saunders in the guts like most criminals who have a public profile and take to Facebook to explain how they plan to carry out their crimes.

In another post, Amye wrote that Kon referring her to the Local Government Association NT over the original Facebook post criticising the government was “stupid” and said she was only being referred because of her “honesty, respect and integrity” – essentially for speaking out against the government and Vatskalis.

“Remember when you sent a soldier to war, of course everything already be preparing [sic]. Gun alredy full up with bullets [sic],” she wrote at the end of the long post.

Can you imagine the sheer terror that Kon, Simone Saunders and head security guard Reece Ravlich must have felt when they read that one?

It was so alarming Ravlich documented it as a “an indirect threat to harm City of Darwin workers”.

Yes, no doubt Amye’s been in touch with her Indonesian relatives and is currently stockpiling a massive arsenal of assault weapons for a one-woman siege on council and its employees. Thank goodness we have men like Kon and head security guard Ravlich to keep us all safe by identifying these threats before they are carried out.

The mere attempt to read those lines as a serious threat to council and its staff is laughable, if its implications weren’t so frightening on so many levels.

We need to seriously question the judgment and moral character of those at council who believe the Laksa Queen is coming to ruthlessly murder them in an act of brutal political revenge.

The bigger issue here is another assault on our democratic institutions at Labor operatives’ hands and for their own self-interest.

What they have done is not only potentially illegal and definitely immoral – not to mention carried out without affording Ms Un any natural justice – they’ve also lied to the public and potentially the police by dissecting an immigrant’s words and using them out of context to bully and intimidate her and now prevent her from doing the job that the public elected her to do.

It’s reminiscent of Michael Gunner kicking three Labor MLAs out of caucus in 2018 because they questioned his credentials and out-of-control spending. But even Gunner didn’t attempt to ban them from showing up in Parliament to represent their constituents, although he most likely would have if he had thought of it.

Labor destroys those who speak out and there’s a long list of people who have felt the wrath and never made it public.

Amye was quite right when she said earlier this week: “They Labor and they always attacking people.”

Especially when those people are criticising them.

Let’s remember how this scandal all started: Ms Un had the audacity to complain on her personal Facebook page that the Labor Government had given a $100,000 grant to former councillor Paul Arnold after he had been issued with a domestic violence order and just weeks before he resigned from council ahead of being arrested at his Smith Street photography studio for other domestic violence charges earlier this year.

Ms Un said that money should have been divvied up and given to struggling small businesses and sarcastically suggested she should befriend Small Business Minister “Mr Paul Kirby and other zombies” so she could get a government grant.

That annoyed Kon and he decided Ms Un needed to feel the full Labor treatment after she made it public that he had threatened disciplinary action against her.

Not everyone laughing at Kon’s buffoonery

Ms Un was in tears when she contacted the NT Independent yesterday to inform us of the trespass order.

For all of her bravado as the tough-talking, outspoken Laksa Queen with a wooden spoon to slap naughty politicians, at the end of the day she is a woman with horrific childhood memories of a soldier bashing her mother in front of her in a war-ravaged country, who moved to Australia for our democratic values and principles and a better life.

But she spoke out against this Labor Government and will now suffer the consequences for it.

The sad reality is that we have all allowed this type of oppression to occur, right here at home.

First the NT Labor Government banned the free press and nothing happened and now one of their former ministers is banning an elected local government member because she criticised his Labor mates.

When does the community tell the Mayor and his Labor Government cronies that we’re not going to tolerate this type of abuse of our democratic institutions and outright bullying?

We’ve taken our democracy for granted for far too long while those in positions of power in the NT abuse it and leave it in tatters in order to silence criticism with the ultimate goal of keeping their jobs. But at what expense?

Email and phone Kon and council and let them know what you think of his latest bullyboy tactics: lord.mayor@darwin.nt.gov.au and on 8930 0661 or 0499 384 233.

To paraphrase Amye, he is not our boss. We’re his boss and it’s time he gets a candid performance review before this escalates any further.