There’s an election on. Get ready for some bullsh*t, writes Matt Cunningham

WITH the Territory election only months away, we need to be prepared to hear bullsh*t and spin coming from every politician’s mouth, writes MATT CUNNINGHAM

We need to be ready for a world of spin from our current and would-be pollies in the lead up to the 2020 election . Picture: Keri Megelus

TRUTH often goes missing during election campaigns.

From Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign ahead of the 2016 Federal poll, to the coalition’s “retirement tax” rhetoric this year, our politicians show a willingness to twist the facts and bend the truth that increases rapidly the closer they get to an election.

We’re still more than nine months from the next election here in the NT, but there’s little doubt the Labor Government has already moved to an election footing. It’s been a difficult three-and-a-bit years in office for this Government. With a flailing economy, a falling population and its internal division, Labor has little to sell as far as its achievements go. It appears, therefore, to have settled on an election strategy of positioning itself as a party that’s just slightly less bad than its opposition. Rather than talking about its own achievements and plans for the future, it wants to talk about the CLP. And if what we saw from the Government this week continues until the election, the bulldust meter will have been blown up by the time we get August 2020.

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On Monday, Chief Minister Michael Gunner and his deputy Nicole Manison stood outside Landbridge’s new six-star hotel at the Waterfront. The first line the Chief Minister delivered was this: “We know that it hurts coming out of that Inpex construction phase and the CLP didn’t have a plan for that period.”

That was a pretty remarkable statement to make considering the only reason the hotel is being built is because of the CLP’s decision to lease the Darwin Port to Landbridge.

Since then, Labor politicians have dined out on criticising the Port deal.

As recently as August this year, South Australian Labor MP Nick Champion was calling for the Port deal to be scrapped.

We need to be ready for a world of spin from our current and would-be pollies in the lead up to the 2020 election , writes Matt Cunningham. Picture: Keri Megelus

And just a month ago, Territory Labor posted an ad on its Facebook page that said: “Don’t forget, the CLP sold Darwin Port”.

Don’t also forget that if the CLP hadn’t leased to Port to Landbridge, Mr Gunner and Ms Manison wouldn’t have been able to stand out the front of Landbridge’s hotel and spruik about the 150 ongoing jobs the hotel will create or the boost it will give to our tourism industry.

Perhaps this was part of the CLP’s post-Inpex plan?

Perhaps that plan was was also to develop the onshore gas industry and create a gas manufacturing hub in Darwin - a plan it inherited from the Henderson Labor Government, but one that had a handbrake put on it when Labor won power in 2016 and introduced a fracking moratorium.

That moratorium has now been lifted and the Labor Government supports fracking. Which made a comment in a media release put out by the Chief Minister on Thursday seem more than a little odd.

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“The CLP are only campaigning for nuclear energy and a dirty, dangerous plan for fracking,” it said. Excuse me?

Let’s leave the nuclear debate for another day, but surely fracking is fracking, and fracking under the CLP would be no dirtier or cleaner than fracking under Labor.

Having belatedly given its support to the onshore gas industry, Labor can hardly try to take the high moral ground on environmental issues.

And where does a comment like this fit in its plan for the post-Inpex economy? It’s hardly a smart way to promote investor confidence. As Government discard Ken Vowles pointed out on Mix FM yesterday, the fifth-floor spin doctors appear to have completely lost the plot.

Part of Labor’s problem is that it is at its most comfortable when in opposition. Throwing cheap shots from the sidelines is much easier than governing. This might help explain why, of all the things the Chief Minister could have posted on Facebook on Thursday, he chose to have a crack at Terry Mills, reminding his followers it was even years since Mills had put up our power prices.

But perhaps we should be happy that someone is playing the role of the Opposition, because the actual Opposition appears to have gone AWOL. Until Friday the Opposition had put out just two media statements for the entire month.

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Its strategy of lying low after the last election was a good one. But it needs to stand up and defend its record on issues like onshore gas and the Landbridge deal. And it will soon need to show how it can be a credible alternative government.

In the meantime it’s been left to former deputy chief minister Dave Tollner — through his weekly radio appearances — to fill this role. Speculation is growing that Tollner is considering a tilt at CLP preselection in the seat of Fong Lim. It begs the question; would this be a dream come true for Labor, or its worst nightmare?