By Phil Scott

OPINION: Major public assets including the Darwin Port and TIO are sold off, yet Territory debt balloons to $13 billion. Wages don’t go as far anymore. Housing’s scarce and increasingly unaffordable. Hospitals are on rolling Code Yellows whilst schools have rolling teacher shortages. Communities aren’t any safer and the same old parties who created it all have no effective solutions.

For decades, Territory and federal decision makers have failed Territorians through counterfeit leadership, offering false solutions that bypass reality.

What follows is not for business-as-usual leaders. It’s for you who see the opportunity for better, who know authentic leadership means confronting reality and adopting values and priorities that will meet the challenges we face, so that life for people improves.

You work, you don’t avoid your income tax obligations, yet 30 per cent of large corporations earning billions, pay zero tax. In 12 years, Santos hasn’t paid a cent in income tax despite $52 billion in sales. Across seven years, INPEX has made $53 billion, not one cent in income tax, Petroleum Resource Rent Tax or royalties. Yet they put their signs on stadiums, sponsor festivals and donate generously to the major parties. Join the dots and you see a system structured to benefit major corporations, not people, not you.

You may be a public servant in a dysfunctional, toxic department. You know what works but your expertise is squandered.

You may run a small business. You’ve watched subsidies, contracts and the INPEX boom flow to the big end of town yet the promised prosperity has never trickled down. If supported, your business plan would employ and upskill a workforce for a fraction of the capital the major parties gift to the major corporations.

You may be a health worker, fatigued and underpaid, needing respite amid a workforce shortage in a health system that’s failing its patients and staff. As a veteran, you’ve experienced government neglect first hand. As a teacher, you know how outcomes could improve but education is underfunded and understaffed, and you don’t see the leadership.

You may be a community services worker who knows the prevention and early intervention responses that would address poverty and violence against women and children, yet programs that work are defunded with political cycles.

You may be a tradie ready to build but successive governments can’t get their act together. Or you work in tourism or hospitality, where years of ministerial junkets have returned… what?

You may be Aboriginal, enduring the harm done to First Nations children in the child protection and justice systems, and the failure to close the gap despite decades of major party promises. You know every child thrives with family, on homelands, speaking language.

You may be a young person, indebted for a higher education while AI takes jobs and you see little prospect of ever owning a home. As a migrant, your knowledge and expertise isn’t valued.

You may be a Labor true believer tired of power brokers overruling your vote, wondering what 20 years of Territory Labor delivered and realising that the promise of Labor is only that, promise. Or you’re a Conservative who values integrity and prudent decision making but sees cronyism, fudged community safety statistics, misspent public funds (like Acacia, prawn farms, ship lifts) and no plan to get the NT out of debt.

You may be a parent worried about the world we’re leaving our children. Or simply a decent person, raised by grandparents who fought against genocide in Europe, appalled by that in Palestine and our representatives too cowardly to speak out or act. You know leaders must stand for something, as your forebears did.

Or you’re simply a Territorian who’s seen enough corruption, incompetence and politicians stitch up deals then leave for plum jobs in the industries they oversaw.

How’s it all working out for you?

Democracy is supposed to be one person, one vote, but major party donors buy media, buy influence, buy politicians, and buy votes. Politics as usual works for corporations, not us. How confident are you that the same parties that created our problems will solve them? That doing the same thing will have a different result next time? Do nothing and nothing changes. This is what they want.

If you’re angry and frustrated, you’re not alone, but there is an alternative.

We all know leaders amongst us. You work and volunteer alongside them. They’re people of high calibre; kind, generous and respected, with the courage to stand for something positive and constructive; the vision, intellect and discipline to make difficult decisions; and the integrity to put public good before personal profit. They organise and get things done.

We’re a year or two out from the next election. Now more than ever is the time to ask them to step forward. Not for a party that hand-picks candidates and forces them to toe the party line, but as an independent, picked by their community to put their community interest first, not their party’s.

We are ready for better. Share this article with the leader you respect, then together contact Voices of the Top End. Let’s organise and support communities to represent themselves, not through parties, but as communities, the way democracy should be.

Phil Scott is a community builder, democracy advocate, past independent candidate and volunteer for Voices of the Top End.