Another week in the Territory and a further slide into terminal decline, or bright new hope with a bright new government from a party that totally screwed the buffalo last time it was in power?

No better time than now to wallow in the misdeeds, malfeasance and asinine behaviour of our elected leaders who are now non-elected, and the new mob of good o’l boys, and explore that sweet corruption-incompetence nexus that makes us all feel at home in the Great Territory Lifestyle. Find out the most clownish deeds committed in the NT this week.

The new Territory boss

It was only dead people who didn’t shudder a little when Shane “Boss Hogg” Stone gave a four-and-a-half minute self-aggrandising speech while introducing Chief Minister-elect Lia Finocchiaro at the Good Ol’ Boys bar at the CLP election victory party.

It could be unprecedented in Australian politics that a party president gave a speech before the elected leader.

Shane Stone is originally from Bendigo, and so is the Chiko roll.

Both are presumably full of cabbage. However we would contend that of all things to come out of Bendigo, the Chiko roll has done the most for Territorians (our apologies to trouser manufacturing icon Fletcher Jones who would have supplied many with Territory rig back in the day), and even after sitting in a bain-marie for a day one of those bastardised spring rolls would be more appealing than Stone’s speech.

The Australian said: “… it appeared he thought it was all eyes on him when he made what should have been Finocchiaro’s moment all about himself.”

We know people in the party were groaning, especially when he referenced Graeme Lewis. The now deceased Lewis, was a party founder, and also a co-founder of the CLP “slush fund” Foundation 51, with evidence showing the private company had contributed to the CLP’s activities with cash that had not been properly disclosed.

There was not a better way to kick off the new CLP Government than to remind Territorians of the shonky fundraising efforts that led to what was then considered the worst-ever NT government, during the Mills-Giles-Westra van Holthe-Giles years.

Obviously that government has a challenger with the Gunner-Fyles-Lawler years, but it was not what Finocchiaro et al would have wanted: one of the CLP ol’ boys fondly remembering some CLP ol’ boy behaviour that had been criminally investigated.

However, Finocchiaro did nothing to relieve concerns that the good ol’ boys were in control, when asked about the speech on Katie Woolf’s radio program on Monday she said words to the effect that she was happy with Stone’s “introduction” of her. A moment to publicly smack Stone on the snout was missed.

Stone denies he wants to be the next NT administrator but one commentator said: “…It is very important that you start preparing the speech for Shane when he becomes the first State Governor of Stone, that place that was previously known as the Northern Territory”.

Shane “Boss Hogg’ Stone was out on the campaign trail kissing hands and shaking babies.

Off with the birds

There were a lot of embarrassed people when the election night results came down.

The most absurd and out of touch political pundit had to be blogger extraordinaire and noted twitcher Bob Gosford, who made the classic gambler mistake of betting with his heart not his head.

Old Bobbie G had the worst tip of the campaign when he told The Guardian:

“I don’t think anyone hates this government. And governments get thrown out when people hate them.”

Where’s Bob been for the last eight years? Off with the birds apparently. He also called for Labor to win on his ‘Northern Myth’ blog.

He implicated another in his delusions, passing the pipe to CDU professor and karate expert Nathan Franklin, who also used his great political prognostication skills – and the ways of the Tang Soo Do – to determine that Labor would walk away with a third term.

According to the university’s bio, Franklin studies and lectures on Indonesian politics when not respecting the complicated tenets of his karate movement, but what the hell, we’re basically a banana republic, so some media ran with his ill-informed comments.

We could sense the good Dr Franklin knew what he was talking about earlier in the campaign when he said the only way for a politician to win in the northern suburbs was to give away free food in the park.

Where do these people come from? Oh yeah, the Labor Party.

Maybe Bob Gosford can now run the Opposition from outside Parliament. He already has the credentials. Before making his prediction, he stated that anyone who claimed they could predict the outcome was “a fool, a liar or both”. Labor’s been run by fools and liars for the past eight years. He’ll fit right in.

Local clown daddy Ashley Mango-caros, and Narcissus clown, Shane Stone. Picture: file image

‘Who’s your [business] daddy’?

The award for best prediction goes to noted meat conveyor and former Cattleman’s Association boss Ashley Manicaros, and we have to admit Ashley’s prediction is the greatest we have ever seen – which we’ll explain below – and should surely go down in a record book somewhere.

Since the career elevation from unemployed drifter to “election analyst” at the Mango Man’s blog, Ashley Mango-caros has had his finger on the pulse of the community. In fact, not to brag, but to be humble, Ashley and his boss Mango Man subtly pointed out that the local political Nostradamus successfully predicted a Darwin City Council by-election one time, which was apparently mentioned to pump up his credentials.

But his biggest prognosticating moment came on Saturday night when the numbers were coming in and showing a CLP majority. Hot damn, Mango-caros had called it:

“I said they’d win 14 and tonight on the count they have 15….who’s your daddy!!!” he wrote to the Mango Man, in what appears to be a strange, private, possibly sexual, message that was later posted online.

It really is hard to say how he nailed this one, given how long ago he made this prediction.

Back in 2016, when Mango-caros was at the NT News and forced to work what would become the CLP’s political bloodbath, he came into the office early on election day with a spring in his step, telling all the journos that forced-to-retire CLP pollie Dave Tollner had shown him the goods the night before: secret polling that proved the CLP would win a majority and retain government.

The CLP won two seats that night.

Hats off to Ashley Mango-caros for successfully predicting the outcome of the 2024 election way back in 2016…and probably again in 2020 (if anyone was listening). Thirty-three per cent of the time, he’s right every time.

Clowns to the left, jokers to the right

Speaking of corrupt politicians going away, it was with a sigh of relief that long-time independent Goyder MLA Kezia Purick retired ahead of this election.

Too bad she stuck around to run independent candidate Belinda Kolstead’s campaign into the ground.

Kolstead is probably kicking herself for hitching her wagon to that fallen star. The two were inseparable during the campaign, with Purick bizarrely sitting in on an ABC interview Kolstead did where she answered questions for the candidate.

Lugging around a bunch of corrupt dead weight was too heavy a burden for Kolstead and she was destroyed by voters, who overwhelmingly selected the CLP’s Andrew McKay.

Somebody should have told Kolstead that Kezia didn’t retire because she did such a great job for her constituents that everyone loved her – like everything else with her, it was self-interest – she retired because she knew she’d lose and lose badly (are you taking notes Natasha Fyles?).

Purick just barely survived a 23 per cent swing against her in 2020 and the writing was on the wall. Kezia was ruined by the findings of corrupt conduct made against her by the ICAC and will most likely go down in Northern Territory history as the only politician with a report on her corrupt conduct still live on the ICAC’s website.

That’s quite an achievement given how dysfunctional the Office of the ICAC is.

We wish Kezia well in managing the early onset of Relevance Deprivation Syndrome that she will undoubtedly suffer through for many years with no known cure. We hope all Territorians spare a thought for the many more self-interested, expired pollies who, like Kezia, will now be touched by this insidious affliction.

Michael Gunner with some words he did not understand. Based on this actual photo from Labor’s restoring integrity to government document, we should have known what we were going to get.

Restoring clowning to integrity

Eight years is hell of a long run for one single clown performance. But like all good things, the Gunner-Fyles-Lawler restoring integrity to government clown show has come to an end. It was not worth the price of admission. And what a shit show it was.

We will let you take a few moments here to reflect on your on personal favourite low points of the last government because we cannot be arsed rehashing it all here.

But when doing so, remember that the Labor government came to power with a document called Restoring Integrity to Government: Trust and integrity reform discussion paper.

“The government I want to lead will recognise that trust in public officials and process requires the leadership to build an integrity framework that not only guards against corruption, but one which reinforces and elevates the public over the private interests,” Michael Gunner wrote.

“Open, transparent and accountable government is the best way to maximise the health and prosperity of the whole community. Not only is it the right thing to do, but is a smart thing to do.

“…Restoring integrity of government requires leadership at the highest level of government through actions, not just words.

“Scrutiny, accountability and transparency is a crucial feature of a healthy democratic society. It protects against corruption, and wrongdoing, and produces better decision making for better benefits of the community.”

After that, Gunner banned the NT Independent from press conferences, and obtaining information from ministers and departments. He later ran from editor Chris Walsh at a press conference in a public space, and changed the venue to Parliament House so he could exclude the NT Independent, using taxpayer-funded security guards as his shield.

The discussion paper seems now like a document written as a meta parody piece. Gunner could read it out as a stand-up comedy performance.

It was hard to imagine the improbable coincidence of all the madmen and women of the Mills-Giles-Westra van Holthe-Giles administrations coming together at the one time to form government, but equally improbable that it could have happened a second time.

But in comparison to each other, the CLP were just a bunch of fun loving criminals, Labor were self-righteous, moralistic hypocrites.

It really defines how they are as a group that no Labor MLAs, or recent former MLAs, showed up for Woolf’s Week that Was radio program on Friday – instead it was left to federal Labor member for Solomon Luke Gosling to carry the can for the Labor humiliation.

It is the cowardice that defined them as a government, and harked back to the time when none of the ministers turned up to the Darwin Cup after the Darwin Turf Club grandstand scandal.

And now, in a final fit of irony, the party that unashamedly stole federal money earmarked for Indigenous disadvantage in the bush to buy votes in the northern suburbs has lost pretty much all of the northern suburbs and become an Opposition of four bush members and one queen clown from Nightcliff who helped make it all happen.

That’s what happens when a party puts its own self-interests above its core values and principles and the people it was elected to serve. Territory Labor is in ruins.

We will end on a quote from Jimmy Fallon.

“When I see professional clowns, mimes, people who make balloon animals, or members of the last Gunner-Fyles-Lawler governments, I think of their relatives and how disappointed they must be.”

The only thing the Labor government did in eight years was create this.