Hugh Heggie: Too much power and not enough transparency
The Chief Health Officer — an unelected official — has been given too much power with little transparency, argues MATT CUNNINGHAM.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
HISTORY is littered with examples of the tyranny that can follow when too much power is placed in the hands of too few.
In the Territory, you don’t need to reach too far back to find a prominent example.
In the space of just two-and-a-half years the NT’s first Independent Commissioner Against Corruption and his office were covertly recording the conversations of people who were not under investigation, using public reports to retaliate against a newspaper editor and threatening to have a journalist hauled before a secret hearing to reveal the source of story.
Not a story about a secret ICAC investigation into a sensitive matter, but into allegations of misconduct within the ICAC itself.
North Korea would be proud.
Of the many missteps during Ken Fleming QC’s rein at ICAC, none was greater than the comments he made at Black Lives Matter protest rally in Alice Springs in November 2019.
Just two days earlier Constable Zach Rolfe had been charged with the alleged murder of Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker at Yuendumu and Fleming had been appointed to a role overseeing the police investigation.
Fleming grabbed the microphone and told the crowd: “One of the most important messages today is black lives matter. Anybody who says contrary to that is guilty of corrupt behaviour.”
At this point, many in government and legal circles realised we had a serious problem with our first anti-corruption commissioner.
But there was little the government could do about it.
Fleming was a statutory appointment and couldn’t be removed from office, even if the government wanted him gone.
He also had extraordinary powers, and over the next 18 months he showed that he wasn’t afraid to use them.
With this example blaring in the recent background, it is remarkable that the NT Government is about to hand more extraordinary power to an unelected bureaucrat.
As Thomas Morgan reported here on Thursday, new laws proposed by the Government will give the chief health officer the power to seize documents and search people’s homes for the next two years.
He will also have the power to implement snap lockdowns, enforce mask mandates, send people into mandatory quarantine and fine those who don’t comply.
These are extraordinary measures designed for extraordinary times.
For the past two years they have existed under the declaration of a public health emergency which must be extended every 90 days.
But the Government wants the powers in place for at least the next two years.
This is despite the chief health officer himself telling us just over a week ago that “the Territory is the safest place in the world, except the Moon”.
If we’re so safe, then surely these measures are unnecessary.
Even more concerning is the avoidance of scrutiny wrapped up in this bill.
Normally, the chief health officer would be required to provide a full report to the Minister within three months of the end of a public health emergency.
The Minister would then need to table the report in Parliament within six sitting days.
If the public health emergency ended at the end of the current 90-day period we would soon get an insight into the advice provide by the CHO, and how the Government had, or hadn’t, followed it.
This bill will extend that requirement for at least two years.
If the bill passes in May then the report won’t need to be delivered to the Minister until August 2024, and won’t need to be tabled in Parliament until September, which is, you guessed it, a month after the next election.
The Government is again showing all the transparency of the mud in the centre wicket area of Gardens Oval in the wet season.
It’s also a great irony that the Government introduced this legislation in the same week it debated its Territory Economic Reconstruction Commission bill.
It’s cutting red tape with one hand, then giving the Chief Health Officer the ability to implement a whole heap more with the other.
The past has taught us that extraordinary powers should only exist for extraordinary times.
We should be worried if our Government is not awake to the lessons of history.
If it is awake to those lessons, we should be petrified.