The Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration found ministers should resign or be dismissed if they contravene standards of morality, however the Chief Minister’s failure to sack Brent Potter shows the government does not prize ethical responsibility and sets the Territory on a course to fail under such leadership, writes Dr Don Fuller.

Recently, in the Territory, there have been two glaring failures of ministerial responsibility that serve to highlight the approaching alarm and apprehensiveness many feel concerning the governance arrangements in the Northern Territory.

The first involved Northern Territory Deputy Chief Minister Chansey Paech, who defended himself after revelations he invested in an Alice Springs liquor distribution company just months before advocating the lifting of alcohol bans in the region.

The Arrernte man was Attorney-General and Indigenous Affairs Minister when he owned the shares and was a strong advocate for lifting the 15-year-old alcohol bans in Alice Springs town camps.

Shortly before the alcohol bans were repealed, Aboriginal health organisations and frontline services urged the NT Government to delay allowing alcohol back into communities on the basis the communities needed more time to prepare.

At the time, Mr Paech was one of the NT Government’s leading advocates against replacing the bans, labelling the alcohol restrictions ineffective and racist.

This presents as a clear and unacceptable conflict of interest by a government minister.

He only divested his shares when he was appointed Deputy Chief Minister in December, after Chief Minister Natasha Fyles was forced to resign over her own shares scandal.

Current Chief Minister Eva Lawler told reporters she would not be calling for Mr Paech to resign.

“He declared his shares and that was the difference between Natasha and Chansey,” she said.

However, this statement from the Chief Minister was at odds with the important requirement that elected members in the NT are required to disclose shares promptly in public disclosure records when they are acquired. It therefore raises the reasonable question as to whether Paech would have divested his shareholder interests had not Natasha Fyles resigned over her share holdings and whether the apparent obfuscation in declaring his shareholdings to cabinet was in fact, deliberate.

In addition, was the explanation of the current Chief Minister deliberately designed to be a ‘smoke-screen’?

Beside this, Northern Territory Police Minister Brent Potter also breached parliamentary rules around shareholding disclosures in an NT government backed project.

Mr Potter purchased more than 8,000 Seafarms shares in June 2021, while he was a ministerial advisor to former deputy chief minister Nicole Manison, who then held the portfolios of agribusiness and aquaculture.

The NT Government had hailed Project Sea Dragon as a game-changing booster for the Northern Territory’s ailing economy. Mr Potter said he “absolutely had no inside knowledge” about the company that he’d gained from his taxpayer-funded role before he purchased the shares. However, more than three months after selling his Seafarms shares, Mr Potter had not updated his register of interests, as is required by legislated rules.

Beside this, Potter now stands accused of making a number of racist and highly unethical comments throughout his careers that have caused serious community concern.

One week after Northern Territory Police launched a review into the extent of racism within its ranks, the minister in charge faced major accusations of hypocrisy and dishonesty over damaging Facebook posts after revelations he shared posts from 2013 to 2019, featuring racist, homophobic and misogynistic language.

Now deleted social media posts from Potter and family members, show the use of the ‘n’ word, that he targeted Jews, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and quoted a Nazi general.

This has caused significant distress to communities not only in the Territory, but throughout Australia.

In what further served to question Potter’s competence and ethical behaviour, he attempted to deflect blame for such serious derogatory slurs on the fact that as an Australian Defence Force veteran, he used “military-themed cynical and satirical humour that would not be understood by those who haven’t served”.

This served to further inflame representatives of returned servicemen and one would have thought senior members of the federal Department of Defence.

Such irresponsible slurs are likely to have a serious negative impact on relationships between Defence, one of the few growth industries in the Northern Territory, and the Territory Government.

In Westminster-style governments in Australia, individual ministerial responsibility is a constitutional convention requiring that a cabinet minister bears the ultimate responsibility for their own actions, and that of their ministry or department. While such conventions are not established by legislation, in all well governed jurisdictions they are regarded as essential to the proper and ethical functioning of government and are keenly observed.

Ministerial responsibility is essential to the parliamentary system, because it ensures the accountability of leadership to the parliament and through elected members to the wider population. It is therefore the central means by which a democratic government is held accountable to the people.

If serious ethical misdeeds are found to have occurred by a minister, the minister is expected to resign or be dismissed by the leader. There are a number of examples of this occurring in other Australian parliaments. It is also possible for a minister to face criminal charges for wrong-doing under their watch.

As the Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration found, there are circumstances in which a minister is expected to accept personal responsibility and to resign or be dismissed.

For example, where the minister’s behaviour contravenes established standards of morality, resignation or dismissal is the appropriate action.

Surely, if any such case was clear given such requirements, it is that of Potter.

The principle is considered essential, as it is seen to guarantee that an elected politician is answerable for government decision-making.

However, in a government that does not prize ethical responsibility, but rather their own survival, there are often attempts to avoid parliamentary conventions that lie at the foundation of responsible, democratic government.

The Territory currently demonstrates such a lack of ethical and responsible leadership in government.

In a further worrying development of the demonstration of ethical governance in the Territory, the Chief Minister has refused to this stage, to act on Potter’s serious transgressions.

What can be expected following this serious slide in the ethics of good governance in the Northern Territory?

The evidence is clear that there is likely to be higher levels of corruption, limited economic development and retarded growth and employment in the Northern Territory. A number would argue that such indicators are already obvious.

Less and less companies and organisations will be prepared to risk an environment so badly governed and uncertain, with the accompanying unacceptably high levels of risk.

This can be expected to undermine government revenues further and in turn limit the capacity of the Territory government to protect and develop their residents through the further hollowing out of education, health and police and justice systems, for example. Basic infrastructure such as power, roads and communication systems are also likely to be affected.

Very importantly the risks are likely to be even more troubling for the Territory.

The particular demographic structure of the Territory means that rapidly increasing social problems – associated with marginalised Aboriginal societies who are untrusting of government and who are also dealing with collapsing Aboriginal law, culture and social structures – are likely to increase further, with very serious implications for residents of the Territory.

Such increased social dislocation, with the associated problems of disharmony and violence, are likely to gather pace with an important section of the NT community unable to develop strong, ethical and reliable linkages with leadership in government.

Ethical and responsible leadership is vital at the senior levels of parliamentary democracy and government to set the necessary standards and examples to individuals, institutions and organisations in society.

Successful democratic governments also require and encourage a high level of community participation rather than operating as a closed, self-interested, separate, ‘them and us’ club.

There is likely to be nowhere more important in Australia that this occurs rapidly than in the Northern Territory.

Without such leadership, the NT is bound to fail and the compounding negative consequences are likely to be increasingly severe for Territory residents.

This will continue until Northern Territory political leaders appreciate they are elected to serve all members of the public in an ethical and responsible manner, rather than their own private interests.

Dr Don Fuller holds a first class Honours degree and PhD in economics from the University of Adelaide. He has worked as a senior public servant in the Territory and as Professor of Governance and Head of the Schools of Law and Business at Charles Darwin University. He grew up in Darwin and attended Darwin High School.

Dr Fuller was also an adviser to the former CLP MLA Maralampuwi Francis Xavier, was briefly the senior private secretary to Chief Minister Paul Everingham, and is a former member of the CLP and the ALP.