The NT Police Association has called for Police Commissioner Michael Murphy to resign, following revelations he engaged in misconduct and failed to manage a serious conflict of interest by hiring a mate for a senior role, which has “ignited widespread frustration and anger” within the police rank-and-file, who are once again questioning the integrity of their leadership.
Mr Murphy was forced to out himself on Thursday afternoon as the “senior public officer” who the ICAC found had engaged in “negligence and incompetence”, after nearly a week of public speculation and media reports about the improper conduct, but did not offer his resignation for breaching the public’s trust.
The misconduct was covered up by Chief Minister and Police Minister Lia Finocchiaro for more than a week, who claimed as late as yesterday afternoon – two hours before Mr Murphy revealed his misconduct – that the transgressions were nothing more than a “learning tool” for all public servants and refused to take action against Mr Murphy after she first learned of his misconduct last Thursday.
NTPA president Nathan Finn issued a statement late last night expressing police officers’ anger over the reputational damage the conduct has caused the NT Police, while Ms Finocchiaro’s office remained silent.
“This blatant improper conduct raises serious ethical concerns and further erodes trust within the ranks of the Northern Territory Police Force,” Mr Finn said.
“Our members are fed up with the lack of integrity shown and question the Commissioner’s ability to remain in his position.
“This has triggered deep anger and frustration amongst our members and brings into disrepute the whole police force.”
The NT Independent understands the recruitment process that was the subject of the ICAC investigation involved the promotion of Mr Murphy’s long-time close friend and police officer Peter Kennon, who was announced as Assistant Commissioner in April last year.
ICAC delegate Patricia Kelly’s public statement about Operation Apollo found that the “senior public officer”, now known as Mr Murphy, sat on the hiring panel for the recruitment of Mr Kennon as Assistant Commissioner early last year.
She found while Mr Murphy had verbally declared his friendship to the other panel members, he did not provide “any particulars of the extent of the relationship”.
Mr Murphy also acted as a referee for the candidate while sitting on the hiring panel. Ms Kelly found one of the other panel members also acted as a second referee for the candidate, which could have led to “perceptions of bias in the recruitment process”.
Mr Murphy also provided the candidate with his previous successful job application, prior to the candidate applying for the job. He did not provide it to any of the other candidates.
“The provision of the previous job application was a matter that should have been disclosed to the other panel members,” Ms Kelly said, adding that Mr Murphy’s conduct resulted in a “substantial detriment to the public interest and was also an inappropriate use of public resources…”
Despite these findings, Mr Murphy claimed in his statement on Thursday that all appointments in the NT Police over the past 12 months, including Deputy Commissioner Martin Dole, three assistant commissioners, five commanders and 18 superintendents were awarded to “the most meritorious and best candidates”.
The police union disagreed.
“We are calling out the Commissioner’s integrity with his involvement in not only this executive appointment [Peter Kennon], but for all of the other executive appointments referred to in the Commissioner’s broadcast of today,” Mr Finn said.
“We also have grave concerns over the potential complicity of other panel members in the Commissioner’s unacceptable conduct in not properly managing what is an obvious, serious conflict of interest. To say that the applicant was awarded the position on merit in this case is not sustainable when such a clear conflict of interest existed and was not managed.”
Mr Finn added that Mr Murphy’s actions highlighted a “lack of accountability and integrity” and that the trust police officers had in Mr Murphy “is now destroyed”.
“That is why the entire executive board of the Northern Territory Police Association is unanimously calling upon the Commissioner to tender his resignation,” he said.
Mr Murphy did not apologise for his actions yesterday, but said he accepts that he could have “dealt better” with the conflict of interest and acknowledged his role is to “ensure there is trust and confidence” in the NT Police force.
The NTPA’s strong public rebuke was in stark contrast to Police Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s handling of the situation.
Ms Finocchiaro issued a statement yesterday afternoon – two hours before Mr Murphy’s admission – in which she continued to blame the ICAC for preventing her from naming Mr Murphy publicly as the senior officer and has refused to explain for days why she did not take action, including referring the ICAC investigation for a proper criminal investigation, given the potential breaches of the Criminal Code.
The timing of yesterday’s statements indicates that Ms Finocchiaro was not aware of Mr Murphy’s intent to reveal himself when she issued her public statement on the matter.
Her office again refused to comment yesterday following Mr Murphy’s statement.
I’m not surprised the NTPA are angry. My husband and I actually feel sorry for all the great and hard working police officers out there, trying their best under some of the shittiest of circumstances who will undoubtedly get tarred with Murphy’s brutal brush.
If Murphy/any functioning adult in a senior position anywhere, doesn’t understand what a basic, easy to spot conflict of interest looks like then they shouldn’t be in that job.
If they understand it and then thought f**k it, I’m doing it anyway, tried to get away with it for a year then gets caught and is forced to out himself in public, they won’t have the integrity to resign, I’m guessing.
If, as Chief Minister with the power to take control of this disaster, you tell the world that you think it’s OK to do this and offer no consequence for such deliberate bad faith, then you throw not only the rest of the Police Force under the bus but you encourage more of the same from others.
Also, how can Peter Kennon look people in eye every day knowing that they all know how he got his job? I think that’s worse than Murphy, personally.
It makes us wonder what else has been going on in there if they can’t even get a job interview right!
Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.
They should both be sacked and forced to apologise publicly, not only to the others who applied for that job but to the rest of the Police Force.
Finocchiaro should resign too, ultimately she’s responsible and can only do herself and her party a disservice by trying to fight through this.
But I have to admit at having a giggle at how bad the NT upper echelons really are. I’m sure millions of others around the country and the world are laughing at it too. You lot genuinely don’t have a clue, do you?
Look out the Keystone Cops, the NT Cops are coming for your reputation.
*** Chris, we need a “Like” button for these sort of comments
Plus a dislike button when the wingless angel does not admit Labor appointed the commissioner.
Lia kept him on.
Wouldn’t be the first time the CLP inexplicably failed to clear house
How about a confidence vote like the police in Victoria did the other week. That resulted in their chief retiring. Maybe a good thing as the NT needs a strong leader and Mr Paton is just that.
Didn’t a former NSW Premier get the boot some time ago for failing to declare a bottle of wine as a gift?
The reverse is true here in good ole NT – Corruption is encouraged apparently.
Grow up Chris, this bloke was appointed by Labor and we have all seen the incredibly bad results of ICACs naming people.
Come on Michael, be honest with yourself mate, have pause and place your mind to be a young police officer, full of hope, integrity and drive and imagine what your actions have done to decimate every officers vision of correct and proper conduct. Mate you have tainted the very essence and drive to achieve,through good exercise of ethics and lawful conduct with your conduct!
Don’t be that person that killed future vision for our hard working police personnel ( except the ones that hide in vans- their monkeys in my opinion)!
Be a better person bud and learn and move on with your entitlements because they way this is heading you may well be sacke, as you rightfully should be. You are indeed Lucky our baking, dancing CM hasn’t the integrity or respect to act as she should!
On another and always looking for the good l note: If Lia, a qualified lawyer can’t clear a path legally through the UCAC rules, WELL l guess that’s a plus because l now know l wouldn’t want her representing me legally and a further plus would be, that should there be a legal moment one could be pleased to see the other party represented by Lia!
See, there’s always good outcomes when you take the time to assess!
Have a great weekend
If you spend a few minutes reading previous comments you’ll see our household has no uncritical love for Labor either ‘boof’.
Who appointed Murphy is irrelevant right now but we’ll run with it for argument’s sake:
Let’s imagine the new headline with new identifiers:
Police union calls for ALP appointed Murphy to resign over integrity failure while CLP Chief Minister silent on cover-up.
Does the NTPA’s request now have any less weight?
Did Murphy suddenly not conduct the corrupt sham interview process for his mate? And probably others too.
If you read ICAC’s statement Murphy himself said this:
“On reflection, I should have managed the friendship and the conflict of interest to a higher standard and on at least one occasion should have recused myself from the appointment process in order to ensure community confidence.”
‘On at least one occasion”? That’s a deliberately obtuse way of saying he’s done this same thing at other sham interviews.
Murphy was appointed Commissioner in August 2023, by ICAC’s comment he put his mate in a job in early 2024 while Labor was busy wasting the last billion of their $8 Billion budget deficit blowout and arranging the cherries on their ‘lose the election’ cake.
We don’t know what the ALP knew or when but do you think they would have sacked him after just appointing him? Very unlikely. ALP supported things like this for years, they’re no better or worse than all the other bad actors in this latest shitshow.
Lia has him now, Lia complains about being restricted by the ICAC Act but she put Greg Shanahan into ICAC after he tried to do a secret review of the ICAC Act to protect people like this FFS – read our previous comments about that if you haven’t already – Lia is currently publicly keeping Murphy and his mate in a job, Lia is ignoring all the hard working Police officers, Lia is packing the prisons, Lia lowered the age of criminal responsibility to ten years old, Lia organised secret deals with private prison group GS4, it’s all happening on Lia’s watch, would you like me to continue as there’s heaps more.…
My husband has said it once, he’ll say it again:
Boundless negligeNT
Boundless incompeteNT
Boundless unpleasaNT
Boundless sileNT
Boundless ignoraNT
Boundless malignaNT
Boundless stagnaNT
Lia is proving to be a liability to the CLP, her level of competence, indeed intelligence is questionable. This is just the latest in her poor decisions. CLP need to dump her now, or end up as a one term government.
Former NT Commissioner for Public Employment Mr. Graham Symons on 14 December 2011 in a former Employment Instruction Number 12 – Code of Conduct – in Number 7.1 – states pursuant to section 16 of the Public Sector Employment and Management Act (NT) [PSEMA] –
“7.1. In order to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the Northern Territory Public Sector, a Public Sector Officer must exhibit and be seen to exhibit the highest ethical standards in carrying out his or her duties, and must pursue, and be seen to pursue, the best interests of the people of the Northern Territory”.
Section 5F (1) of the Public Sector Employment and Management Act (NT) states “a public sector office must do the following: (a) carry out the officer’s duties as follows (i) objectively, impartially, professionally and with integrity.”
Section 5F (d) of the Public Sector Employment and Management Act (NT) states “avoid actual or apparent conflicts of interest between personal or other interests and duties as a public sector officer.”