EDITORIAL: Education Minister Eva Lawler’s tired defence for the broken Northern Territory education system she and her cabinet colleagues have overseen for the last seven consecutive years – and 18 of the last 22 – is typical of this government that can’t accept responsibility for anything or even admit there’s a problem anywhere in the Territory.
Lawler was responding to a damning series of reports in the The Australian this week that painted an accurate picture of a crumbling education system and an out-of-touch government that misuses federal money at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society, which has led to – amongst other social ills – the ongoing crime crisis plaguing the Northern Territory.
Instead of accepting responsibility for the education shambles and the massive disparity between urban and remote schools, Ms Lawler told ABC Radio the national newspaper’s series of well-researched reports they spent a year completing were “a miscalculation” – essentially untrue – but could not point to any particular facts being wrong.
This was after she refused to answer questions posed by the reporters before the stories ran.
Instead, she did what we’ve grown accustomed to seeing this Gunner/Fyles Government do best: disengage and then try to discredit, while mixing in a few straight lies for good measure. Blame the facts and claim it’s all untrue and that they are “working real hard in an incredibly complex environment”.
Unfortunately for Lawler and her cabinet colleagues, if they are working hard and trying their best, it’s nowhere near enough.
It might be that deep-down Lawler does truly want to see a properly functioning education system here, the problem is she clearly has no idea how to achieve that and has failed miserably trying. None of her cabinet colleagues have the sweetest first clue either, and not just when it comes to repairing the broken education system.
But when will they admit there’s a problem that needs to be fixed?
There’s a reason 12-step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous have been successful for the last century around the world.
Those programs involve participants admitting first that they have a problem and then examining past errors with help from a sponsor, before making amends to the people they’ve wronged, learning to admit when they are wrong, ultimately leading to living a new life with a new code of behaviour that results in helping others with similar problems or afflictions.
At what point does Lawler, Fyles, Manison, Worden and everyone else in that cabinet room and backbench finally admit they have a problem?
Is it when we’re all living in huts hunting rats with sticks with no electricity and no way out? That day is fast approaching, by the way, thanks to these jokers and their unhealthy compulsion to lie and shirk responsibility.
What we have seen over the last seven years is a group of unqualified people with no particular skill set or talents thrown into crucial positions where they are responsible for spending billions of dollars from the rest of the country to provide critical services that match those interstate, at least in appearance, while keeping the community safe.
But this group of egomaniacs has never been sure how to do that due to their previously noted shortcomings and have relied on unelected, conniving public servants to tell them how to do their jobs. Just so happens those advising them have similar limited skill sets.
What the Territory is left with is a group of massively overpaid incompetents keeping the Territory barely afloat while everything above water is breaking and disintegrating before our eyes.
A cabinet reshuffle as Fyles is planning next month is not going to help. We’re beyond that now.
And it’s not just the education system that’s crumbling down around us all.
The major findings and themes of The Australian’s reports into the NT’s education system apply to just about every aspect of this government’s approach to governing, that has seen federal money repeatedly misused for selfish political gains.
Earlier this month, we reported that this Fyles Government was intentionally underfunding what its own taskforce said was needed to combat domestic and sexual violence by $160 million. Their interagency taskforce called for $180 million over five years as absolutely necessary if they were serious about combatting domestic violence, so this government gave them $20 million over two years, blamed the Federal Government for the lack of funds and washed their hands of the situation, while Kate Worden told us all she was “working really hard” and was “very passionate” about the issue.
Again, it’s not enough if that is the best they have.
Despite claiming the crime crisis is the result of “complexities” that involve a lot of different areas, properly funding education and anti-domestic violence programs are two major areas that could reduce crime almost immediately and this government had the opportunity to address both but chose not to because it was too hard.
Lawler actually had the temerity to tell ABC Radio this week that suggesting that the ongoing poor delivery of education in the bush leads to crime across the NT – as experts told The Australian – was a “simplistic answer to something that is very complex”.
Her own cabinet colleagues have acknowledged this before, but this week, Eva forgot all about that when she was busy blaming facts and deflecting responsibility.
Like party elder and former chief ministerial adviser Charlie Phillips summed it up recently in this publication: This Labor government has developed a four-step template to deal with crises arising from its dysfunction, inefficiency and alleged corruption: 1 Deny. 2 Cover up. 3 Delay. 4 Accept no responsibility. We can probably add bold-faced lying to the template.
Eleven months out from the next election, Territory Labor’s messes have finally caught up with them and exposed this group of incompetents for who they really are.
There’s another step in the program that Fyles and her woefully incompetent ministers should be aware of. It’s the step involving recognising a “higher power” that can provide strength and restore sanity.
While they seem to think it’s the Federal Government (and really this latest scandal involving outright mismanagement of education is another reason for a federal administrative intervention), the real higher power is the voter.
After the mess these bozos have created for us all, we’re thinking the voter is not going to be as merciful as the Almighty come August.
Territorians, unlike those Labor tribe members, can clearly identify the problem.
It’s all incredibly sad. When NT Labor was elected in 2016, it was set to replace the dysfunctional disaster of the Giles CLP mess. They came into ‘power on the promise of making things better. That hasn’t proven to be the case. The political back-flips on fracking in the Beetaloo Basin, the Middle Arm fiasco, and the disastrous financial situation we now face have put the NT at risk of becoming insolvent. Gunner running away because it was all ‘too hard’ was just another nail in the coffin of the NT government.
Territorians had such high hopes. The problem with our ‘two party’ system is that when one party gets thrown out because they are incompetent, we get stuck with the ‘other’ party that may be equally incompetent.
We can identify the problems but we need to also identify the solutions. Simply voting for the ‘other mob’ is no guarantee we’ll fix the broken model of government we currently have.