EDITORIAL: Hush money, cover-ups, lies, institutional racism, domestic violence allegations, and more lies – this is what the two men running the agencies tasked with investigating our public officials and keeping the streets safe have been caught up in personally over the last fortnight, while the Chief Minister cannot say for sure what she is doing to restore integrity to her broken government.
Yep, there is absolutely nothing wrong in the Northern Territory. Just ask Eva Lawler.
Asked this week what she would do to restore integrity in government following the latest two scandals, Ms Lawler mumbled something about talking to the public and then said it wasn’t fair to “bundle up” what the Police Commissioner and the ICAC have done. She’s probably right, we should step back and take an even broader perspective if we want to see the true crumbling state of the Territory at this crucial moment.
With just over two months to go to the election, nobody seems to want to do anything to address the glaring integrity crisis that has infected the heart of our democratic institutions and continues to spread from the top down.
The NT Independent revealed last week that ICAC Michael Riches failed to disclose domestic violence allegations made by his wife which compromised the function of his role, while this week it was revealed he offered her $20,000 in hush money to drop the domestic violence order because he was afraid of losing his job if it was ever made public.
Not exactly the beacon of integrity needed for the role.
Last week, our Police Commissioner was found to have covered up racism in the police force and lied to the public about it, while also overturning disciplinary action against a senior officer who shared a photo of a half-naked Aboriginal woman who was bleeding from an assault to a police group chat where racist and misogynistic comments were made. Again, where is the integrity in any of that?
The national anti-corruption conference, slated to go ahead at the end of July in Darwin is going to have a lot to talk about when the experts come to town.
They inadvertently picked the perfect backdrop for their conference and if attendees want to see how a banana republic within an otherwise civilised country functions, all they have to do is step out of their waterfront precinct hotel room and breathe it in.
If Murphy and Riches were our only integrity issues, we might be able to continue to function, if both did the right thing and left their respective roles now. But it is looking more and more likely the two have dug their heels in and won’t do the right thing, reminiscent of another police commissioner who wouldn’t leave last year after causing irreparable harm to the police force until he got his payout.
Our last Labor chief minister Natasha Fyles resigned over undisclosed shares in companies she made decisions about; the chief minister before her, Michael Gunner, resigned under a still unresolved cloud of suspicion for misusing public funds for campaign purposes at the last election; then there was the revelation that former chief minister Fyles’s senior adviser was a lobbyist for Tamboran, the same company the government signed a massive gas deal with two months ago before it was given the proper environmental approvals by the government, which just happened to come this week.
The chancellor of our major university Paul Henderson, who still has massive influence in the Labor Party and with Ms Lawler directly, refuses to disclose his connections to gas companies he has lobbied for, while the man running that institution of education, Scott Bowman, does not understand what a conflict of interest is, let alone how to manage it, and secretly attempted to get a Federal Senate committee to suppress opinions from respected academics who disagreed with his support for a massive industrial and gas hub that benefits the aforementioned chancellor’s mates.
Then there are the unresolved issues involving our current government ministers. The lack of integrity is contagious.
Attorney General Chansey Paech bought shares in an alcohol distribution company shortly before his government allowed grog back into dry remote communities with no safety net in place. Profiting off their misery. Nothing was done and he maintained all of his roles, including as first law officer of the Northern Territory.
Then there was Police Minister Brent Potter who bought shares of his own in a now-failed major prawn farm project while a ministerial adviser for the minister responsible for the project. Again, crickets.
After he survived that scandal by bullshitting his way through it, it was revealed he had shared racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic material for years through social media right up to just before Labor hired him as an adviser on the fifth floor.
Again, nobody did anything.
These issues have all been made public in the last eight months alone – and do not include all the scandals and outright corruption and misconduct we’ve witnessed over the last eight years of Labor rule – but what else would we expect from a party who wrote character references for a child rapist to get him a reduced sentence, then made it illegal for anyone else to write reference letters for sex offenders?
Lawler needed to lead but failed to maintain integrity in the system; Opposition hiding in the shadows
The current Chief Minister could have shown leadership at any point over the last seven months, but chose instead to keep Paech and Potsie in Cabinet, so it was little surprise that Murphy and Riches would also be defended. Her integrity was already compromised.
Murphy needed to investigate the racist awards as soon as he heard about them and not lie about it. Riches needed to disclose the domestic violence allegation against him so it could not be used as leverage if anyone found out – and plenty of people were talking about it for months – which raises questions about everything he has done since at least last May, including his flawed report into Labor’s election travel rorts, and possibly every investigation he terminated or chose to investigate but made no findings on, over the last three years.
When Murphy said this week he knew nothing about the domestic violence allegations against Riches, we were sceptical because our Police Commissioner has serious credibility issues after his recent conduct was exposed.
We shouldn’t have to question the credibility and integrity of our Police Commissioner in a functioning jurisdiction.
Or the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption’s.
Both roles require the utmost professionalism and highest levels of integrity.
But here we are. Sleazy politicians looking after themselves at the expense of Territorians, other public officials carrying out their duties for their own gain and two men in the highest and most important roles tasked with ensuring accountability on those officials, refusing to resign despite irrevocably breaching the public’s trust.
The Chief Minister keeps defending the indefensible and looking the other way when serious breaches of integrity occur, which flames the ongoing integrity crisis, because the leader of this jurisdiction shows us she just can’t be bothered doing the right thing either.
Meanwhile, in the middle of this integrity crisis, Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro, who wants to be our next chief minister has been hiding out all week making dolmades for Glenti while Rome burns, refusing to explain how she will restore integrity to government if elected, preferring instead to issue multiple press releases about raw ABS data nobody gives a shit about.
Who is going to show some integrity and get us out of this mess?
We might have to ask the experts when they arrive next month for the anti-corruption conference. Maybe the Baroness Casey of Blackstock can help? (She was personally invited to attend the national corruption conference hosted by Riches before his unpleasantness was made public).
We need to return to a functioning democracy that the public can have confidence in. It is looking more and more likely our federal politicians will need to step up now and secure some federal assistance. This charade of a functioning government has continued for too long.
A government that has failed for years to keep its citizens safe from crime, failed to provide basic levels of services, racked up unfathomable debt levels and gutted the economy is untenable.
All of it comes back to integrity in government.
You cannot run a government after the public has lost all faith in the functions of its democratic institutions.
Mr Walsh – you are a living legend.
Lawler l, Murph, Potsie and Riches should do what Shoyer does – Say nothing and keep getting paid his $300+K salary for keeping thier secrets.
All CLP have to do is turn the telly on come election day.
How about all the Territorians who went to Fleming & Richies run ICAC or its predecessor, Brenda Monahan run Office of Public Disclosures, and magically…where run out of town?
How about them? Their careers ended, rental leases where broken, lives disrupted, kids pulled out of school for the mad dash back to safety on the other side of the Northern Territory border.
Nobody in the NT should be wondering why nobody wants to come and work here. Even the International Students, once graduated, leave the NT at the first opportunity.
Disclosing wrongdoing in the NT will end your career! ICAC will not investigate anything, and so far, nobody has fronted court or been charged with anything. My understanding is that the only legal activity at ICAC NT has been former staff suing them!
Please send any unused fiction books or old board games to ICAC’s office, I understand the level of boredom by the thumb twiddling investigators is at a all time high!
“You cannot run a government after the public has lost all faith in the functions of its democratic institutions.”
Eh, yes you can. They’re doing exactly that and doing nicely for themselves and their mates thank you very much.
Michael Riches was chosen to run NT ICAC for a reason. I bet they’re really pissed off that he couldn’t keep his ‘conciliation settlement offer’ secret otherwise he’d still be there, still pumping out…..very little in the way of meaningful findings or God forbid, consequences of any description.
One of the problems with the NT and Labor is that its biggest and most powerful voting bloc are public servants. Keep them happy with a bloated public service, high wages, heaps of paid holidays, government contracts for mates, so-called Captains Pick employment opportunities and the freedom to bully whoever you like – even to suicide for one poor Dept of Health worker, check previous coroner reports if you don’t believe me – and they’ll keep voting for you. This bloc is far bigger than everyone else put together and they all reside mostly in Darwin. So Lawler and her cronies will continue to get away with whatever they like, for as long as they like, as long as the Darwin public servants vote for them.
It’s the perfect example of ‘quid pro quo’: Something that is given in return for something else or accepted as a reciprocal part of an exchange.
The question should not be, how bad can it get, the question now is: what can be done about it?
It’s a question playing out in the USA and the UK right now although the UK does have at least a few more major political parties in the mix for their upcoming general election on 4 July.
Sadly when the CLP were in power they were as bad if not worse than the current Labor mob, which is probably where Lawler and Co are taking their cues from.
So, how do you break the 2-party duopoly (a situation in which two companies/political parties own all or nearly all of the market for a given product or service)?
More choice is the only answer and somehow break up the public service voting bloc in the process.
They need to keep the current scoundrels employed as it’s the perfect favour to call in when it’s their turn in the future to be exposed.
House of Cards 101.
In order to restore integrity you must have had integrity and lost it. The NT Labor government had no integrity since it promised us a honest and transparent government. Lets hope no one voting in August believes that Labor has restored its integrity.
CLP is sitting back ,popcorn in hand watching the territory version of a blend of Shakespearian tragedies as they play out. It seems to be high time for external, non-political, bodies selecting our senior police and ICAC officials.
We are seeing these tragedies played out daily while the territory burns, riots erupt and houses get burnt in towns and communities. Forget about Europe and the Middle East as we have our own battlefields raging while the fat cats are too busy protecting their own empires.
Integrity?? not in any politicians dictionary anymore.
Yeah sack the lot. What will we be left with? More of the same. Let’s just secede to South Australia. Really there is no other answer. Too many people who went to school with each other, related whether by blood or marriage etc. I doubt SA would want a bar of us TBH. So it’s great to call for these things but also provide some solutions. Crickets….chirp, chirp…
How does seceding to SA or handing the keys back to the Feds solve anything? It doesn’t. The only solution is for people to step away from their keyboards and get involved in making change. Forget independents, that’s not the answer and history has proven it time and again (parties are an evelution of independents). The duopoly is here to stay so pick the party that best aligns with your ideals and start participating in making the change at that grass roots level. Sitting back and whinging won’t change anything, although it will help ensure we fall into a cycle of one-term governments that will be even more catastrophic for our decimated economy and health services.