The government must restore the trust it first promised the ICAC would deliver
The ICAC was strongly supported by this newspaper and we still believe there is a place for it in the Territory, if managed appropriately. Under former commissioner Ken Fleming’s watch, however, the ICAC has been a public relations disaster.
Opinion
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WHEN legislation was introduced to deliver an Independent Commissioner Against Corruption in 2017, it was hailed as a defining moment for the NT.
The Gunner government’s media releases at the time were littered with the words “restoring trust”. On August 24, 2017, then-attorney-general Natasha Fyles claimed it was “a significant step towards delivering an ICAC to rebuild trust in government”.
The idea of an ICAC was strongly supported by this newspaper at the time of its establishment and we still believe there is a place for it in the Territory, if managed appropriately.
Under former commissioner Ken Fleming’s watch, however, the ICAC has been a public relations disaster. If anything, some of the actions of the ICAC’s staff have fundamentally destroyed trust in the government and its agencies.
Alarm bells first started to ring when Mr Fleming addressed a Black Lives Matter rally in Alice Springs soon after Kumanjayi Walker was allegedly shot dead by NT Police officer Zach Rolfe in November 2019. Mr Fleming subsequently stood himself down from the investigation, acknowledging his perceived bias was “closer to one side than another”.
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More recently, it emerged the ICAC awarded external contracts for at least 12 investigations to David McGinlay, who is the boyfriend of the ICAC’s investigations director, Kate Kelly. The ICAC’s Inspector Bruce McClintock later dismissed the complaint. This followed Mr Fleming addressing budget estimates in June where he attacked a whistleblower and threatened to order Sky News journalist Matt Cunningham before the ICAC to reveal his sources.
It later emerged that Mr Fleming hauled NT News journalist Jason Walls before the ICAC last year in an attempt to get him to reveal his source on a story. Only three weeks earlier, Mr Fleming apologised to two people who were denied natural justice because the ICAC failed to check its junk emails. Then we found out the ICAC reached an out-of-court settlement with former speaker Kezia Purick who had sued them.
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It has now emerged a private text message sent to Brett Dixon, which was included in the Darwin Turf Club report, was an incomplete version of the message that “fundamentally undermined the interpretation the ICAC put on the text in the report”.
Disturbingly, former NT News editor Matt Williams, who sent the message, was never afforded an opportunity to explain its context before the incomplete message was made public. Mr Williams was later publicly identified by a media outlet that published the identical incomplete message that the ICAC did.
The government must act on this behaviour to restore the trust it first promised the ICAC would deliver.
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