Matt Cunningham opinion on ICAC findings from 2020 election probe

Intolerable ambiguities are rarely discussed at the kitchen tables, market stalls and public bars inhabited by swinging voters who decide elections. They’re more likely to see this for what it was, writes Matt Cunningham.

Then chief minister Michael Gunner and Infrastructure Minister Eva Lawler address media at the Zuccoli Primary School construction site, Darwin. Picture: Che Chorley

Let’s put aside for a minute the absence of any adverse findings in the independent Commissioner Against Corruption’s report into allegations of improper conduct by the Labor Government during the 2020 election campaign that was tabled in parliament this week.

Because findings or otherwise aside, the report lays out in black and white a damning set of facts about how taxpayers’ money was used to fund specifically targeted political campaigning in seats Labor knew were going to be tight, at the pointy end of an election campaign it won by a relatively narrow margin.

The ICAC’s investigation centred on evidence, first revealed in the NT independent, that former Chief Minister Michael Gunner and his staff chartered aircraft to Minyerri, Galiwin’ku and Wadeye on August 14, 18 and 19, while the government was in a caretaker mode.

Political parties are meant to use the party’s money to cover travel and expenses when the purpose of their trip is political campaigning.

That didn’t happen in this case.

Instead, these trips were booked as “ministerial travel”, and the primary reason for the travel was documented as “community engagement”.

Perhaps there was good reason for this community engagement.

NT Independent Commissioner Against Corruption (ICAC) Michael Riches. Picture: Office of the ICAC/Supplied

However, each of these trips just happened to occur on the same day the Northern Territory Electoral Commission’s remote polling booth was due to be in town. Dierdre Chambers, what a coincidence.

If you’re still in any doubt about the primary purpose of these visits, the ICAC’s report notes email invitations were sent which bore the subject lines ‘ARNHEM – MINYERRI BOOTH’, ‘MULKA – GALIWINKU BOOTH’ and ‘DALY – WADEYE BOOTH’. We can be fairly certain they weren’t talking about attending a phone booth.

In determining to make no adverse findings, Commissioner Michael Riches noted an “intolerable ambiguity” in the rules about what constitutes a political purpose as opposed to a public purpose.

But intolerable ambiguities are rarely discussed at the kitchen tables, market stalls and public bars inhabited by swinging voters who decide elections.

They’re more likely to see this for what it was.

A blatant use of their money to swing an election in Labor’s favour.

Chief Minister Eva Lawler must know that what happened here doesn’t pass the pub test. She’s made a refreshing habit of giving brutally honest answers since taking on the top job six months ago.

Chief Minister Eva Lawler says she accepts all seven recommendations in full from an ICAC report into Labor's taxpayer funded activity during the 2020 election campaign. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

But when asked on Thursday if she believed anything untoward had gone on here, she too started obfuscating and referring to “ambiguities”.

It was an answer that would have fallen flat in every watering hole from Kulgera to Karama.

The best excuse Labor seems to have been able to offer for its behaviour is that everybody has been in on this.

Mr Riches notes a submission he received from former Chief Minister Natasha Fyles arguing that “ministerial travel during the caretaker period to places where polling is occurring is an established practice/convention”.

Mr Riches was provided a document that claimed CLP Chief Minister Adam Giles made similar trips to remote and regional areas during the 2016 campaign.

Interestingly, the Commissioner said he had not inquired into these events and he would “not express any view as to the accuracy of the information provided”.

But even if it were true (and that seems to be in question), let’s remember the reason Labor was swept to power in a landslide victory in 2016.

It wasn’t because crime was out of control, debt had spiralled to record levels or the cost of living was through the roof. Labor won 18 of the NT Parliament’s 25 seats in 2016 because they promised to restore integrity to government.

They promised to be everything Adam Giles and Terry Mills and the chaotic, dysfunctional CLP were not.

They even wrote a 36-page document about how they were going to be different and tabled it in parliament. Now, caught up in a scandal of their own making, they’re trying to claim they were just following the CLP’s lead.

They might pause to wonder why the CLP suffered an electoral annihilation in 2016, and whether the same fate might be awaiting them in three months’ time.