The NT News explains how the Northern Territory Cabinet makes its decisions

How does the NT Cabinet makes its decisions? We explain how it works.

UNDER normal circumstances a Cabinet submission such as one approving a $12m grant would first be provided to ministers by way of a draft cabinet document.

Such documents, with departmental comments, normally go the Ministers’ chiefs of staff, who then brief their ministers.

Draft submissions are commonly referred to as a pink document and they arrive in a Minister’s office in a sealed, brown, A4 envelope marked confidential.

They are usually for the Minister and their chief-of-staff’s eyes only and they are to alert a Minister about matters on the agenda for the next cabinet meeting.

After the pink draft cabinet documents are considered they are either locked in a secured cabinet or returned to the Chief Minister’s Cabinet office with any questions or matters of concern raised.

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Later there is a final Cabinet book containing all Ministers’ Cabinet submissions prepared and delivered to the Ministers’ offices on the Friday before Tuesday’s Cabinet.

It contains the submissions that individual Ministers want their Cabinet colleagues to consider.

All Ministers go through Cabinet documents with their chiefs-of-staff so they are properly briefed and informed about proposals to be decided in Cabinet.

Cabinet submissions also contain comments from department heads about the merits or concerns about proposals being put tocabinet for consideration.

Ministers use the comments from their department heads and the pre-Cabinet briefing from their chiefs-of-staff as a guide for their decision making.

In this case by walking the Cabinet submission in to Cabinet, as Ministers have said happened, means none of the Ministers would have had the normal opportunity to get their own pre-Cabinet briefing, which would have allowed them time to undertake their own usual forensic examination of the $12m proposal.