EDITORIAL: The extraordinary revelation last week by the NT’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner that the government directly politicised funding to his office goes to the heart of our dark democracy in the Northern Territory and sums up the current “integrity crisis” gripping the Territory at the hands of the Finocchiaro CLP Government and the lack of respect it has for Territorians and its independent, statutory institutions.

It also provides another firm reason why the Chief Minister should have nothing to do with the establishment of the new Integrity and Ethics Commission – separate from the fact she would be under investigation right now, if we were a proper jurisdiction that had a proper anti-corruption commission.

In a seemingly unnoticed article, Jesswyn Yogaratnam told the ABC last week that his office, the independent Anti-Discrimination Commission, was informed by the CLP Government that it would not be granted any new funding to address its backlog of cases and investigations unless it could prove it was “rebuilding the economy”, “reducing crime” and, last but not least, “restoring the Territory lifestyle”.

These three inane lines were the CLP’s and Lia’s election campaign slogans, the last of which always had the smell of Trump-style dog-whistling. But the slogans survived the election campaign and have now become the CLP’s mantra, repeated ad nauseam in government press releases alongside the “year of action” nonsense, spouted out at press conferences by CLP politicians like Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby who have nothing else to say, and even inserted into ministerial responses to emailed questions about every issue facing the government.

So now, unless the independent Anti-Discrimination Commissioner is prepared to get down on his knees and kiss the Chief Minister’s ring and pledge to Make the Territory Great Again, his office, that carries out an integral statutory function by investigating and preventing discrimination will continue to be starved of critical funding.

This is not an isolated incident.

We’ve known for decades that every NT Government, both CLP and Labor, perverts and pressures independent bodies for their own ends, but this might be the first time a commissioner has stood up and called it out publicly for the inappropriate and corrupt behaviour it is.

It is little wonder the Territory’s integrity bodies are almost completely dysfunctional and have lost the confidence of Territorians.

Lia Finocchiaro has run a ‘with us or against us’ government since being elected, a government that self-admittedly doesn’t listen to expert evidence when creating laws, rams those uninformed laws through Parliament on urgency – bypassing proper democratic processes – and labels anyone who disagrees with it an enemy of the state, or as she says, “offender apologists”.

Do we need any further proof we’re currently living in a tropical dystopic nightmare run by an authoritarian dictator?

We thought this type of garbage was taken out with the Gunner-Fyles Labor Party, but it appears the CLP is doing its best to keep it going at the expense of the Territory’s future.

The real ‘offender apologists’ are the CLP, who look the other way while serious integrity and corruption matters are raised, including just yesterday with the NT Environment Protection Authority.

The sacking of Larrakia elder Richard Fejo this week from his role as chair of the Australia Day Council NT – a body that celebrates the Territory’s cultural diversity and “promotes Australia Day with respect and integrity” – for his criticism of the CLP is another example of the government’s integrity crisis.

This removal tactic may not come as a surprise, only because we have grown accustomed to bad governments ousting people from statutory roles, even unpaid ones, if those people dare criticise it. A similar situation played out last week when the Victims of Crime NT board publicly rebuked their CEO for daring to criticise the government out of fear its funding would be cut.

We just accept all of this now, although it amounts to serious integrity breaches by our government.

Boothby previously stated the government was reviewing all board and committee positions, presumably with the intent to fill the roles with their cronies, which we already saw occur at Legal Aid NT, raising questions again about the integrity of our crucial public bodies.

How many more boards can Alastair Shields be put on? We’ll no doubt find out soon and if not him, then another bureaucratic fat cat or politically-aligned hustler who is more interested in benefitting themselves and the government than making the Territory a better place.

If you don’t think this message is getting around to statutory bodies, public servants and even committees and board members about how to play the game and conduct business under Supreme Leader Lia – and just how serious she is about the three mantras – look no further than a press release issued by the Seafood Council NT this week about its plan to suspend mud crab fishing during the peak spawning period to support long-term sustainability.

The Seafood Council said it was happy to work with the CLP Government to promote “economic development”, with the focus on “enhancing the iconic lifestyle we enjoy in the Northern Territory”.

They would have had the holy trifecta in that statement and really pleased the Great Leader, if they could have found a way to argue spawning mud crabs somehow reduce crime.

You can count on the Seafood Council getting a nice, juicy grant some time soon for whatever it wants because they know how to play ball, kiss the leader’s ring and promote the government’s propaganda.

Chief Minister suffering from major integrity deficit amid wider integrity crisis

The other reason that all of this is troubling – beyond the surface-level, authoritarian red-flag warning-sign stuff – is that Lia is currently in the process of restructuring other critical independent statutory bodies into one “super commission”, involving the ICAC, the Ombudsman/Information Commissioner and the Health and Community Services Complaints Commission.

She should have nothing to do with this considering she recently rejected an independent investigation into her husband Sam Burke’s questionable activities at the Darwin Waterfront Corporation and a company he was director of that received untold amounts of taxpayer cash.

Finocchiaro’s outright refusal to refer the matter for a proper investigation was a shocking conflict of interest that she let slip on ABC Radio late last month.

In any other jurisdiction, she, Burke, Shields and their other cronies would be under investigation for all of the unresolved Waterfront business, as well as her breach of the Disclosure of Interests Act, by failing to disclose for two years that Burke was a director of a private company that was being paid taxpayer funds through the Waterfront.

But now we’re letting her reconfigure our integrity bodies in whichever way pleases her.

Equally as troubling, she only called for the review into how the three integrity bodies were functioning in July, despite claiming since at least late last year that she was working on a plan to deal with the ICAC’s dysfunction.

Why wasn’t this review called last December when she installed long-time bureaucrat and great mate of the senior public servants who have been the subject of referrals to the ICAC for years, Greg Shanahan?

Lia told us last week it was his intent to leave the role on August 31, which she would have known when appointing him.

Why was he installed at all and why was the review not ordered until July – eight months after he was permitted access to everything the Office of the ICAC has?

We understand she has claimed the review could not commence until the Michael Riches investigation was finalised, but that inexplicably took 11 months, when it should have taken one, and was made public in May – two months before she ordered the review.

The integrity agency review, conducted by ICAC Inspector Bruce McClintock and Judge Graham Hiley, was characteristically contradictory, as the Centre for Public Integrity rightly pointed out this week on ABC Radio.

On one hand, it warned that conflicts of interest were created when the Ombudsman’s office and the Health Complaints Commission were previously merged, but then recommended merging them again, throwing in the ICAC for good measure. What could go wrong with these bodies all in the same office conducting different investigations they need to carry out independently, while fighting in-house for funding scraps?

Then McClintock and Hiley suggested the new super commissioner could be a part-time job. We couldn’t get three guys we paid $500k a year full-time to do the job properly.

The only commonality the report found experienced by all three bodies – as well as the Office of the Auditor General – was the starving of funds that contributed to its dysfunction. The Auditor-General has already raised this issue with the government and the public repeatedly, but to no avail.

That’s because this government does not recognise investment in integrity bodies as crucial to the future of the Territory – it views it as a threat to its day-to-day business model.

What we don’t know at this point is how the new super commissioner will be hired and by whom, or what the legislation underpinning the new commission will look like and what type of investigatory powers will remain or how badly they’ll be watered down.

At this rate, we suspect the new super commissioner will be the first applicant who pledges to the Supreme Leader to Restore The Territory Lifestyle. And the function of the role and details will not be explained to the public before the CLP rush the legislation through Parliament on urgency, with no time provided for oversight or public scrutiny.

The Northern Territory’s reputation has taken a beating over the years, a place where widespread corruption has become an identity we didn’t deserve and can’t shake, which has delayed the economic and social advancement of this jurisdiction for decades.

Corruption is the ‘Territory Lifestyle’.

There’s no need to restore it, it has never been cleaned up and won’t be while this CLP Government continues to condone and foster it.