It’s another week in the Territory and the shiftiness continues. From one of the NT’s most senior public servants banning the NT Independent in the bureaucracy, to disappearing public servant names, to the Gunner Government making the NT the diversionary tact capital. This is what has been good and what has been gammon this week.

If you have something that is good or gammon you can email news@ntindependent.com.au or call the Chief Gammoner on 0492 426 427.

The Esplanade

The Darwin RSL has withdrawn its plan for a new club to be built on the car park on The Esplanade. Now whether you thought it was a good idea or a bad one, the fact we can have a debate like this a healthy function of democracy. Apart from the usual problems with some Facebook comments, there were many varied opinions put into the public sphere about the proposal, the issue of publicly-owned green space, and how to make the Esplanade and the city better.

People being able to voice their opinion is good.

Hello hipsters

By next week Melbournians should once again be able to come to the Northern Territory without ducking into the Hotel COVID-19 in Howard Springs for a 14 day $2,500 mini holiday at His Majesty’s (the Little Emperor’s) pleasure first. With the developing area we’ve dubbed ‘Little Melbourne’ that takes in Austin Lane, Spain Place, Knuckey St, and Cavenagh St, that is cooler than a polar bear with face tattoos snorting ice, as well as some street art, and with Aussie rules football in flight, we think apart from temperatures and dew point levels being a few dimensions beyond their understanding, it would be like the politically correct warrior petals never left their clad-in-black petty bourgeoisie utopia.

Welcome back to the last frontier almond-milkers.

An Australian reunion is good.

Introducing the NT’s Chief Censor

The second most powerful public servant in the Northern Territory, Andy Cowan, seems to have taken on the official role of the NT’s chief censor, and probably of Book Burner Co-Ordinator General.

Andy, as we are told by a reliable source, gathered some high ranking public servants together and told them they were not to read the NT Independent and to spread the word through the public service that this paper is banned.

We don’t know if this was his own initiative but there are not many people above him in the hierarchy.

“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say,” Tyrion Lannister in A Clash of Kings by George R.R Martin.

He was at least smart enough to not leave a paper trail.

But just remember Andy, take our experienced word for it, there are always going to be leaks. Especially when you’re doing something people feel is weakening democracy.

And Andy, as Salman Rushdie, who knew a little about censorship, said: “The glamour of being forbidden must not be underestimated.”

So perhaps you should tell people how much you love us and any appeal we have will drop dead in the dirt.

State censorship is gammon.

Diedre Chambers, ‘What a coincidence’

Coincidently, Andy made the pages of the NT Independent himself over his trip to Disney World which was paid for by a private company.

The NT Government has strict rules around public servants accepting gifts, however he did not register the free travel as a gift, but told this paper eight months after the trip, the costs were going to be reimbursed by the private company.

But anyway Andy, what next? Some nice little public service book burning team bonding exercises?

Perhaps you could start by burning the Gunner Government’s Restoring Integrity to Government document. It’s not required anymore.

Rushdie also said: “But the worst, most insidious effect of censorship is that, in the end, it can deaden the imagination of the people. Where there is no debate, it is hard to go on remembering, every day, that there is a suppressed side to every argument. It becomes almost impossible to conceive of what the suppressed things might be.”

Welcome to the Northern Territory, the suppression comeback capital. (more on this further down).

Hopefully the ban does not extend to Good n’ Gammon Andy because that would be very gammon.

Disappearing names

This one is about self-censorship in the Northern Territory Government. It seems well paid people can be very shy. Seemingly almost embarrassed to be in their jobs.

The NT Independent has ongoing dealings with the Department of Chief Minister’s director of governance, information and reporting Kerryn Batten.

And in an article about the Chief Minister Michael Gunner’s mysterious trip to Sydney where he met a high-priced tailor in a hotel room on the way home from an official international state visit in 2017, that was kept off official travel reporting records while still being picked up by taxpayers, we used her name confirming the travel records were incomplete.

Next week, when they suddenly found more travel records, a letter explaining that they’d found the records was signed ‘Information officer’, with no name on it.

This is gammon.

She is not on her Pat Malone here

Ms Batten is not the only one shy of having her name in the media, even when she is the provider of the information.

NT Police media manager Rob Cross told the NT Independent he did not like us quoting the names of media advisors as sources of information if press releases they sent out did not have an officer’s name on it. Which they routinely did, like the information just came out of thin air.

Not long after that, the media advisor’s names were taken off press releases.

We have different ideas about accountability here, and think the public deserves to know the name of the person supplying them with information.

It is a basic tenet of transparency and accountability. These are not deep throat sources we are dealing with.

That is why we use Mr Cross’s name instead. Just to make sure he’s earning his big bucks.

We don’t understand why any media outlets publish statements from government ministers’ offices or departments with un-named spokespeople.

The NT News used to have a strict policy that statements must come with a named spokesperson.

‘Why do we let them get away with this?’

On this issue, we look to the following extract from an opinion piece from freelance journalist and former New Statesman assistant editor John Elledge in the New Statesman a number of years ago under the headline: Time to put a name to the anonymous spokesperson.

“They’re not the voice of a human being, but the voice of an institution. And that voice is the low drone of a man who thinks that if he bores you long enough, you’ll go away and leave him alone,” he wrote.

“All of which makes me wonder: why do we let them get away with this? These statements add so little information they might as well not be there at all. They’re included in stories purely so a journalist can show that they’ve covered their back.

“So here’s a thought. The ‘a spokesman said’ formulation serves mostly to allow institutions to issue statements that no actual human would make. So let’s stop using it. Let’s start naming those spokespeople….

“…And if those employees are comfortable with making those statements, then why would they need the privilege of anonymity?”

His whole piece is worth a read.

Spokespeople, who speak on behalf of others for a living, wanting to remain anonymous. Yep, that is strange.

It is almost universal now when getting responses from federal departments to have no email signature at all, like it is one big machine that people should just trust. But there is no real recourse if the information is not right because no one has put their name on it. There is no name in the email address that sent it. No name in the email signature. And usually no phone numbers. Nor phone numbers on press releases or phone numbers in the media sections of those department’s websites.

And we, as the media, have allowed this to happen. How can you hold anyone to account when there actually is no one there?

While the argument is given that the information often comes from a variety of sources through a spokesperson, we bet our favourite sweaty jocks that every response is signed off by someone senior in that office or department before it is sent to the journalist, just so it is spun to perfection and includes as little information as possible.

We would have thought people would be proud for their name to be associated with the work of their department or minister.

The nameless, faceless government spin machine is gammon.

The comeback capital

Continuing on the theme of spin doctors. There is one phrase Mr Gunner uses that is more absurd, vacuous, meaningless and senseless than most the Spin Factory comes up.

The ‘comeback capital’.

He and his ministers include it in media conference speeches and media releases like it’s a statement of fact. They hand it out like poison lollies they want us to swallow.

The NT is hemorrhaging money, with a structural problem that’s essentially not being addressed in any way that will solve it, and we continue to hear the solution is private investment.

Yet there seems to be nothing demonstrable about why the NT’s economy would suddenly comeback, and especially faster than other Australian jurisdictions, other that what seems like some brainwashed faith in the religion that is Labor.

As famed atheist Matt Dillahunty says: “I don’t have faith, faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don’t have evidence.”

It is a perverse thing that they keep on regurgitating a badly coined term that has no basis for believability. Point us to the evidence of how things have changed from pre-COVID-19 until now to bring a wash of private investment.

Just because you say it out loud does not make it true.

One of the great questions a journalist can ask is: “Do you think anyone believes what you are saying right now?”

Big. Fat. No.

One phrases the Chief uses that we do now know is true. “Throwing the kitchen sink at it”. Here he is helpfully throwing a kitchen sink. * Digitally altered image – things may not be as they appear.

Things will undoubtedly get better at some point but ‘comeback capital’?

We have some alternatives that are anchored in fact: the ‘throwback capital’; the ‘set back capital’; the ‘panic attack capital’; the ‘megalomaniac capital’; the ‘amnesiac capital’; the ‘political hack’ capital; or most accurately, the ‘diversionary tact capital’.

Dillahunty also has something to say on questioning.

“The truth has nothing to fear from inquiry.”

Just think about that when you think about Mr Gunner’s ban on the NT Independent.

The term ‘comeback capital’ sits alongside Centre for National Resilience as an assault on the intelligence of the people = buljit.