Shares scandal the final nail in Natasha Fyles’ lame leadership

Natasha Fyles flying out of Sydney on Tuesday. Picture: Liam Mendes

The official reason for Natasha Fyles’ resignation was her failure to declare shares in a mining company. But her leadership had been on life support for months.

When she took over from Michael Gunner 17 months ago, Labor was still a warm favourite to be re-elected in 2024. Since then the party’s fortunes have nosedived.

Fyles and Nicole Manison had fought a bitterly contested battle for the leadership when Gunner resigned. Fyles won after convincing Kate Worden – from Manison’s right faction – to flip. In doing so she became the left faction’s first chief minister. Worden was rewarded with the Police and Territory Families portfolios. But the party’s shift to the left would prove problematic. Senior staff departed in droves, with Gunner leaving Fyles surrounded by inexperienced advisers with little political nous. Some believe that’s exactly what she wanted. “She has been extremely poorly advised, but the reason for that is her refusal to take advice,” one former Labor staffer says.

Within two months of taking the leadership, the first chink in Fyles’ judgment was revealed. The Stronger Futures legislation that had banned alcohol in Aboriginal town camps and smaller Indigenous communities expired in July last year. Many expected Labor to pass legislation to continue the bans. Instead, it let the rivers of grog flow.

Over the next six months, rates of alcohol-fuelled harm rose sharply, particularly in Alice Springs. But despite the overwhelming evidence, Fyles refused to budge. Even as Anthony Albanese’s plane was landing in Alice Springs in January, she was sticking to her line that the bans were a “race-based policy” that would not be reintroduced. Four hours later she was forced into an embarrassing backflip.

Her credibility suffered another blow when residents evacuated from flood-affected communities caused significant damage at the Howard Springs quarantine facility in March. Despite photographic evidence of hundreds of smashed windows, Fyles would only say there had been “wear and tear” at the facility. It took her deputy, Manison, to rightly correct the record and confirm there had been “senseless destruction” at the facility.

In April, Fyles and Worden bungled their attempt to sack police commissioner Jamie Chalker. He was sent a letter telling him he had to go. One of the reasons given was that he had asked for the Australian Defence Force to come to Alice Springs in January – something that never happened. Chalker, whose contract was to expire in September, refused to leave quietly. He threatened legal action and the government was forced to pay him almost a million dollars compensation.

As youth crime continued to plague the Territory, the Fyles government raised the age of criminal responsibility. It insisted there were “more consequences than ever” for young people caught doing the wrong thing. Many voters appeared to believe otherwise. Last Thursday police were forced to taser a 15-year-old who charged at people with a machete at Darwin’s biggest shopping centre.

A Redbridge Group poll in the NT last month gave Labor a primary vote of just 19.7 per cent. With an election just eight months away, Labor powerbrokers were beginning to panic. When the story about Fyles’ South 32 shares broke , it gave them the ammunition to strike. “We should have done this six months ago,” one senior Labor figure remarked.

Matt Cunningham is Sky News Australia’s Northern Territory correspondent. This article was first published at skynews.com.au