ANALYSIS: It was as a CLP backbencher during the chaotic and scandal-plagued Giles CLP days, that Lia Finocchiaro first gained a reputation inside Parliament House for micromanaging staff, planning everything – including committee lunches at taxpayer expense – so thoroughly nothing was left to chance, and for 100 per cent committing to becoming a career politician.

During those dark days between 2012 and 2016, when the Territory’s reputation was being trashed on a weekly basis by the government of the day, Lia was quietly drafting a personal 10-year career plan, outlining the steps she would take to become Chief Minister. Through a series of bumbling incompetence by others and her own tenacity, it all came true and on time, when she was elected the Territory’s 14th Chief Minister last August.

But as of Friday afternoon, as she hunkered down in the bunker, cancelling an International Women’s Day speaking engagement in an effort to ride out the political crisis that threatens to claim her leadership, she surely did not anticipate what transpired this week anywhere in the plan.

That’s because despite the best laid plans, life will throw you unexpected events that will come to be the true test of your character.

The Chief Minister’s failure to front the media yesterday and reassure Territorians that action was being taken to restore the public’s trust in the NT Police force was the latest in a series of political missteps, each one more shockingly stupid and incompetently bizarre than the one before it, going back to last Thursday when Lia was first shown an ICAC report that confirmed her Police Commissioner engaged in misconduct, which she then chose to cover up and write-off as a “learning tool” for other public servants, committing to keeping Michael Murphy’s name from the public arena.

It remains a mystery how she could see evidence of misconduct from such a senior position that requires the utmost integrity and trust and just brush it off, especially considering she had called for a parliamentary inquiry into a “crisis” in the NT Police seven times while leader of the opposition – a pledge that was curiously dropped the day she was sworn in as Chief Minister.

There is no question Murphy needs to resign or be sacked following the ICAC’s investigation that found he mismanaged a conflict of interest amounting to “negligence and incompetence” and a misuse of public resources.

An incompetent and negligent police commissioner cannot stand.

He’s also lost the confidence of his police officers and of all Territorians for his latest misconduct, involving hiring a mate for the assistant police commissioner role, raising suspicions about all of his other appointments and bringing the already bruised and battered police force into further disrepute.

Let’s not forget Murphy has already been exposed as a liar and a coward, engaging in multiple episodes of disgraceful conduct in his short tenure as the NT’s top cop, including lying to the public about when he first learned of the racist TRG awards, the failure to act on them, the cover-up for the five lying officers who misled a coronial inquest and the fact Murphy misled the Coroner on two separate occasions last year, at two separate inquests.

There was also that time one year ago, when he fronted media and pretended he wasn’t the “senior officer” accused of racially abusing staff at a Chinese restaurant 20 years ago because there was a suppression order in place gagging the media from naming him at the time.

All of this was, and is, grounds for dismissal.

Murphy is a dead man walking after the rank-and-file called for his resignation late Thursday night.

But after the way the Chief Minister handled this week’s revelations, her political future remains in serious doubt as well.

Right now, both senior public officials have breached the public’s trust.

Chief Minister’s ‘advice’ this week highly suspect from all angles

Territorians have a right to expect their highest elected public official will act ethically and move “swiftly and decisively” on findings of improper conduct against a senior public figure.

There is more in the full ICAC Operation Apollo report about the extent of Murphy’s improper conduct than what was released in the public statement last Friday, which the Chief Minister knows about.

Why she chose to cover the entire scandal up is unclear and it was not because the ICAC told her she could not do anything about it. If the ICAC said that, then acting commissioner Greg Shanahan needs to be removed from his role too. But that does point to a long-running malady in the NT, where senior public servants control the elected ministers and dictate to them what their actions will be.

Lia Finocchiaro is the Minister responsible for the ICAC and had many options at her disposal, which would have been laid out for her in the Solicitor General’s advice that was provided to her this week, which she only sought on Monday – four days after first learning of the misconduct – and has refused to publicly release.

The public is left with further questions about the whole tawdry affair, with her actions this week needing to be assessed against other outstanding issues for a complete picture, including why she abandoned her previous call for an inquiry into the NT Police, why she backed in the five lying officers and why she is currently protecting Murphy after more than a year of him dragging the NT Police into continued crises of confidence.

Why did her position on the problems with the police force disappear the day she was elected?

Her office’s botched attempts to deal with this latest serious integrity failure at the highest levels of the government defies common sense, as well as the handbook for cleaning up political scandals.

Lia could have come out straight away, taking strong action to restore the public’s trust by sending Murphy a ‘show cause’ letter, accepting his resignation or sacking him, and referring the misconduct to an interstate body for a proper criminal investigation.

She could have included a couple of whacks at Labor at the same time for hiring Murphy, under possibly questionable practices as well, and finally establish the public inquiry into the NT Police that is long overdue.

The communications failures on this have been unprecedented and will probably be studied in a university political science program someday for how not to handle a political crisis.

The enormity of the failure to address the issue raises serious concerns about who is advising her or if she is doing this on her own. Is her communications director telling her to stay silent at a time of crisis, or is it her chief of staff? Or, as some political observers posited this week, maybe she is still taking advice from her father-in-law Denis Burke, who is widely known for a severe lack of political acumen, as the CLP chief minister who oversaw Labor governing the Territory for nearly 20 years.

The communication breakdown was so noticeable on Thursday, the Chief Minister’s Office appeared not to be aware that Murphy was preparing his big reveal statement.

Lia put out a statement at 2pm saying she could not name Murphy, followed by Murphy issuing a statement two hours later to say it was him.

There is nothing strategic in making the Chief Minister look weak, uninformed and completely oblivious to what is happening in her own department as Police Minister.

But the kicker was the footnote later added to Murphy’s statement, which indicated it had been updated a little more than 10 minutes after it was issued.

This is the line that was added: “Since publication of the ICAC public statement, I have communicated with the Minister for Police and kept her informed as to the progress of the recommendations [for improvement in hiring processes].”

We’re not even sure whose arse this was supposed to cover, but it shows us they weren’t communicating about the reveal, and if they had been communicating at all, it’s almost laughable that at no time did Lia tell him to explain his actions in the tainted hiring of his mate as the assistant commissioner, choosing instead to empower the man who committed the improper conduct to fixing the very hiring practices he breached.

This has nothing to do with the Jamie Chalker debacle, this is a catastrophic failure of leadership

Some CLP people, including the Chief Minister privately, are comparing the Murphy scandal to Natasha Fyles’ botched sacking of former commissioner Jamie Chalker, which they’re using to quietly claim to her ministers that Lia needs “more time” to explore her legal options.

This is inaccurate and misleading, given there was never an ICAC report showing Chalker committed misconduct, although there probably should have been.

A more appropriate comparison by way of police commissioner scandals, is the 2015 John McRoberts affair, where then-acting chief minister Peter Chandler held a press conference upon learning of allegations the then-police commissioner involved himself in a criminal investigation into a woman with whom he was having an affair.

It appears Lia the backbencher, with her notebook and grand plan for dominance, was not paying attention to one of the only occasions that shambolic government did something right.

Chandler faced the public, stated that McRoberts had lost the confidence of the government and that his position was no longer tenable and accepted his forced resignation.

“The government acted swiftly and decisively when it became aware of the matter,” Chandler told reporters at the time.

“The integrity of the commissioner of police must be beyond reproach. The government has considered the available facts in this matter and believes that resignation is necessary to maintain public confidence in the NT Police.”

The Murphy scandal won’t go away just because Lia has hunkered down in the bunker and cancelled speaking engagements.

The longer she drags this on, the more reputational damage she causes the NT Police, the Northern Territory overall and her own CLP MLAs, all of whom are now tainted for not speaking up at any time or taking action when their leader was found to have covered up misconduct.

We didn’t think it would only take six short months for the CLP to be back rolling around in the dirt with dogs, but here we are.

It’s going to be a long three-and-a-half years, especially with a Chief Minister who can no longer be trusted to make decisions in the best interests of Territorians.

Christopher Walsh is the editor of the NT Independent and formerly held roles as senior political reporter at the NT News and investigations producer at ABC Darwin. He is also co-author of ‘Crocs in the Cabinet: An Instruction Manual on How Not to Run a Government’ about the last CLP government.