The Country Liberal Party has two months to find 1500 members to avoid being deregistered as a political party by the Australian Electoral Commission, but it’s unlikely they will have to prove anything before the impending federal election is called.
UPDATED: CLP president Jamie De Brenni has resigned and been replaced by Fiona Darcy the party has said, but the change comes at a tumultuous time, with the future of the party under threat, and amid internal allegations that inappropriate behaviour against women over the last couple of years was not being investigated.
ANALYSIS: There appears to be a much more sinister culture in Territory Labor at play these days and that’s an outright ‘accept-no-responsibility-for-our-actions’ and ‘cover-it-up-at-all-costs’ mentality that is quickly suffocating the party and divorcing it from its core Labor values.
NT Young Labor president Harvie Stiller has been involved with the Labor Party since at least 2019, contrary to media reports, and was photographed with federal leader Anthony Albanese just days after appearing in a video that showed him snorting a white substance, the NT Independent can reveal.
WATCH THE VIDEO: The president of Territory Labor’s youth wing has resigned from his job in Federal MP Luke Gosling’s office after a social media video surfaced showing him snorting a white substance that appears to be cocaine, the NT Independent can reveal, raising further questions about an alleged drug culture inside the Territory Labor Party.
EXCLUSIVE: A Territory Labor-aligned marketing company that helped run Michael Gunner’s 2020 election campaign was awarded $60,000 of public money in the lead up to the election through a COVID-19 stimulus program it was originally rejected for, documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws show.
The Country Liberal Party remains an “old boys club”, with female members being threatened and formal complaints about bullying not being addressed more than a year after they were made, party members have told the NT Independent.
The Chief Minister’s Office has blocked a Freedom of Information application into its handling of the ‘cocaine sex scandal’, which sought documents relating to when the Chief Minister first became aware of an email that detailed explicit messages and allegations about a senior staffer, an MLA and a sex worker.
The Country Liberal Party faces being stripped of its federal party status by the Australian Electoral Commission following the resignation of Senator Sam McMahon, despite the party president’s claims of being affiliated with the Nationals.
Parts of a secret review of the NT ICAC Act commissioned by the Gunner Government have been released through a public “discussion paper”, including recommendations that politicians not be investigated by the ICAC for unsatisfactory conduct and that individuals found to have engaged in misconduct not be publicly named.
UPDATED: The Country Liberal Party says its vice president has been ‘reprimanded’ after telling a group of vaccine protesters that the party’s “strategy” is to support the vaccine mandate but that many members don’t believe in it, then encouraged the crowd to run for the CLP at the next election to “kick all of these fools” out of Parliament.
Chief Minister Michael Gunner has refused to answer written questions from an independent MLA about when he became aware his brother-in-law and former deputy chief of staff approved the use of taxpayer money for Labor’s 2020 election campaign travel, in contravention of rules meant to protect against the misuse of public funds.
