EDITORIAL: DIPL chief executive Andrew Kirkman will not resign and will not be sacked, Chief Minister Eva Lawler has now confirmed, after a judge found he misled the court, attempted to blackmail a female staffer, inflicted a mental health injury on her and acted in an “aggressive, threatening…and inappropriate manner” during a meeting that was secretly recorded.

Add Kirkman’s name to the growing list of high-ranking male public officials behaving badly this Chief Minister has defended in the face of common sense, community principles and basic decency.

“I want politicians to be held in high regard,” Lawler bemoaned at a press conference on Monday, about her new ministerial conflict of interest controls, just seconds after refusing to show leadership and take action on Kirkman for his conduct.

“I want politicians to be seen as people with integrity…”

Just not herself – or anyone connected to her government.

With those comments Lawler shows she is either completely ignorant of the concept of integrity or hoping Territorians are. Why would politicians be held in high regard by the community when they cover up, deny facts and apologise for racists, bullies and misogynists at the highest levels of government, as she has done repeatedly and hypocritically over the last seven months?

Let’s remember that Lawler was appointed Chief Minister in the wake of Natasha Fyles resigning over an undisclosed shares scandal, with Lawler immediately promising to restore integrity to this scandal-plagued Labor Government.

We can only judge her on her actions to date. Those actions show us she has failed miserably, without exercising the slightest bit of integrity, with the focus on getting re-elected trumping principles.

How can a head of government continue to look the other way on serious misconduct and transgressions and still claim she has principles?

Lawler was not counting on integrity in government becoming an issue at this election as it was in 2016, when the scandal-plagued Giles CLP government was handed one of the worst electoral defeats in the Territory’s history.

But here we are again.

A series of events over the last seven months since taking on the top role has shown Lawler completely and utterly unwilling to take any action to restore integrity, not only to the government, but also to the police, the public service and the Territory as a whole.

She has shown she suffers fools gladly and will protect and defend anyone for just about anything.

First there was Attorney General Chansey Paech buying shares in a grog wholesale company that distributes booze to Alice Springs bottle shops while a minister and playing a key role convincing Cabinet about the need to let the remote community booze bans end, while seemingly failing to tell his Cabinet colleagues about his conflict of interest, in contravention of the Ministerial Code of Conduct.

Lawler did nothing.

Then there was Police Minister Brent Potter’s racist, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic social media posts that the Chief Minister defended the day after she called people who share racist social media posts “cowards” and swore that she would not tolerate it. Until it was one of her Cabinet ministers.

That was followed by Police Commissioner Michael Murphy lying to the public about when he knew about racism in the police force and actively covering it up after it was raised with him.

Again, Lawler did nothing.

Then there was ICAC Michael Riches, who was accused by his wife of domestic violence and then several female staff members of “inappropriate conduct”. Instead of taking action, such as ordering an independent investigation that would take two weeks to complete, Lawler pushed the Riches scandal back until after the election.

And now Andy Kirkman, one of the last of the so-called “schoolyard six”, who for decades ran the Northern Territory in their senior executive roles with impunity and little regard to what elected official was in power, has been exposed of bullying and threatening a female staffer and the Chief Minister says she won’t do anything about it. This is despite her saying on Thursday his conduct was “not appropriate”.

She was the minister responsible for DIPL at the time of Kirkman’s offending. She says that Kirkman has been referred to the Office of the Commissioner for Public Employment – the same body that cleared him of any wrongdoing in the same matter three years ago – suggesting they might come back to suggest Kirkman undergo “counselling”.

There’s a large group of ministers and senior public servants who could do with a little “counselling”, including the Chief Minister.

Lawler has exhibited zero integrity while in office and is doing whatever she can to push scandal back until after the election.

She fails to grasp it’s this kind of conduct that makes people not respect politicians.

Even in the darkest days of the Giles CLP government, they knew they had to take action against senior officials when they screwed up, in order to maintain the public’s confidence in the Territory’s institutions.

Lawler has shown us she would rather see those institutions come crumbling down – including the police force – if it means she might be re-elected to her $350,000 a year job.

As a political science expert said at the time of Potter’s scandal, it’s how the party responds to the scandal that determines what they’re made of.

Lawler has an established track record of simply not responding to scandal. Which says it all about her integrity.