A blundering colonial relic addicted to perks

THE latest crescendo of political turmoil in Darwin highlights in stark fashion the failure of the Northern Territory’s governance model. It is not just the present chaos — tragedy masked as farce — but the pattern of the past decade and a half that highlights the system’s breakdown.

A challenge stands before the federal political establishment today, as its leaders come to realise that the Territory is all but incapable of running its own affairs in a stable fashion.

What to do? Close it down, and reimpose direct federal control, or hope for the best, turn a blind eye and wait out the bloodletting until a stable alliance of factions wins out in Darwin’s palatial parliament building?

The seeds of the crisis were sown with self-government in 1978 and the political architecture chosen: a single-chamber Legislative Assembly of 25 members rules over a vast land mass with barely 220,000 people, more than a third of them Aboriginal.

Resources in those first days of self-administration were limited, and the reconstruction after Cyclone Tracy was still under way. The expectation was that a standard kind of modest, managerial local politics would emerge. For two decades, the Country Liberal Party held sway almost unopposed, with majorities so vast the positions of its successive chief ministers were stable. Labor then won office by a narrow margin in 2001, and began a decade-long reign. This change of political stripe coincided with the arrival of a rich stream of GST revenues, and a great expansion in the scope and powers of the public service. The pattern of the parliament also changed: over the past decade and a half the assembly has often been finely poised between the rival parties, with the result that individual MPs and factions have gained great power. Labor’s electorally successful first chief minister, Clare Martin, was betrayed by a rival: the party won a slender majority at the following poll and was then held to ransom repeatedly by its powerbrokers. Labor only secured a stable platform for the last two years of its most recent term by striking a novel deal with an independent, and setting up a special committee of review to play to that independent’s desire for consultation. From that time on, every MP has been aware of the power of a single vote or small bloc to compel and blackmail an elected government.

Once faction and discord enter into a small chamber, they rule and run rampant. The Country Liberals won back power 2½ years ago, but their leader Terry Mills, was soon pulled down by his factional enemies. The regime that replaced Mills never escaped the shadow of its initial act of political assassination: it rewarded loyalists, and gave ministerial posts to incompetents; it fomented a cult of personality, and abused parliamentary procedures with abandon. It was addicted to propaganda, and surrounded by the murk of scandals. It had a fondness for backgrounding against its own. In short, all the darkest characteristics of a dictatorship were able to flourish in a provincial government despite the continuing semblance of democratic procedure. This debacle is not merely the result of bad choices made by picayune political grandstanders. It stems also from the virtual absence of a homegrown bourgeois or educated class in the NT to fill political offices; from the vast size of the bureaucracy, which administers in its own interest; from the extraordinary level of funding pumped in by Canberra — $4 billion annually, providing for ample pork-barrelling. Another striking element is the virtual absence of civil society: almost everything is controlled and funded by the government, with the result that dissident voices are few, almost non-existent. Patronage and revenge are the key principles of the power system. There is no informed public, because the NT media has long since been submissive: the local ABC has played an inglorious role over the past two decades, first intertwining itself with Labor and then ignoring conservative policy fiascos. The tabloid NT News relies heavily on governmental advertising, and cheerleads eagerly for the hand that feeds it. Without an informed public, rumours swirl, but the truth about the routine perversions of governmental procedure rarely filter out. This is the pattern of a failed state inside contemporary Australia, of a colonial regime blundering along without supervision by its neglectful masters. The present shadow-play of threats and ultimatums is the standard fare for Darwin politics: perks and privileges come first, the long-suffering of the NT’s cities and the remote outback are nothing but an afterthought.

Nicolas Rothwell’s partner is Northern Territory MP Alison Anderson.