This is a (slightly) expanded version of a piece published by Crikey on 5 June 2009.
It can be both humorous and horrible to watch a political party eat itself alive in public.
Funny because it is rare that the hubris, rank ambition, incompetence and dummy-spitting of so many are all on public display at any one time.
Horrible because, well, you just don’t really want to see human nature in such a raw state – and blood is such a hard stain to get out of your clothes.
And this thankfully all-too-rare event is being played out in the NT and you can watch and listen to it live – right now, right here in the Northern Territory – as NT Labor’s parliamentary wing munches down on each other.
I got it wrong earlier this week when I said in Crikey that you’d be lucky to get evens on a bet that the NT Labor government of Paul Henderson would make it to the end of June.
Right now his government will be lucky if it is still in power at the end of next week.
On Monday this week ex-Deputy Chief Minister Marion Scrymgour, a backbencher since stepping down because of ill health in February from her position as the most powerful elected Aboriginal politician in the country, had one foot in, the other out, of the NT government tent.
By Tuesday, after a report on Monday’s 7.30 Report by ABC Darwin reporter Murray McLaughlin, she was outside the tent pissing on it for all she was worth – accusing the government of lying to and cheating Aboriginal people.
By Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, after applying the softest of squirrel-grips to hapless NT Chief Minister Paul Henderson, she was back in the tent.
But that all went hell-west-and-crooked yesterday after the NT News ran a story on Scrymgour’s performance at the Cabinet meeting. By late morning she’d issued a statement to her constituents that she would leave the government and see out her term on the cross-benches as an independent.
The NT News report, and some egregious editorial comments, infuriated Scrymgour – perhaps because of inaccuracies but mainly because she’d lost trust in members of the government to give effect to the deal she’d squeezed out of Henderson the day before.
This much is clear from this part of her statement released yesterday:
“I can no longer rely on all caucus colleagues to implement the concessions that I won in the caucus meeting yesterday”.
You don’t have to read too far between the lines to soon realise that here she is only talking about Henderson, Lawrie, and most particularly NT Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson, with whom Scrymgour shares little apart from her Aboriginality and femininity.
Put bluntly, Scrymgour simply did not trust Anderson to implement the concessions she’d negotiated with Henderson.
Scrymgour thinks that the leak to the NT News came from Henderson and current Deputy CM and Treasurer, Delia Lawrie. Thats more than a bit of a stretch – it is hard to see what possible value there would be in Henderson and Lawrie bringing down their own government.
Word on the streets in Darwin is that the leak came from a staffer in Henderson’s office – again it is difficult to see any valid motives or reasons for such a damaging leak other than malice or mischievousness.
Henderson, after yesterday’s dummy-spit by Scrymgour, now has two very poor choices – try to keep his failed government alive by dancing to Scrymgour’s increasingly erratic beck and call or hold a fresh election ten months after the last one and more then three years before the next one is due in 2012.
If Henderson takes the first of his choices he risks ultimate and early failure. The first item of business when the NT’s parliament sits next Tuesday 9 June will be a motion of no confidence in Henderson brought on by NT Opposition leader Terry Mills.
Scrymgour apparently has given Henderson her word that she’d support him in any no-confidence motion and that she will support the money Bills for the NT Budget. But Tuesday is a long way away and the way things are going here anything could happen in that time.
Henderson will have to rely on Scymgour or the other NT Independent Gerry Woods to pass any legislation or win motions in the Assembly – and he will still require the casting vote of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Jane Aagard.
And Henderson’s second choice – call a new election – would almost certainly see him lose power and a swag of the thirteen seats Labor currently holds in the NT. Labor would be reduced to a rump – just as the CLP Opposition was before the unnecessary early election that Henderson took the NT electorate to in August 2008.
There is little doubt that Henderson and NT Labor deserve such total humiliation – the current chaos in his parliamentary party is largely a result of his ineptitude and poor political management, bad advice and the woeful performance of Labor since Henderson’s predecessor Clare Martin triumphantly led Labor to power in the NT for the first time in 2001.
While many of the failures of Labor in the NT have been felt by the wider NT electorate, it is no coincidence that Henderson’s government has been brought to its knees by an Aboriginal woman. If there is any element of its constituency that Labor in the NT has failed and taken for granted for too long, it is the Aboriginal people that make up roughly one-third of the NT’s population.
From the start Labor, rightly, saw that the keys to power lay in the white-bread northern suburbs of Darwin, and that is where it spread its largesse. But Martin, Henderson and all who advised them failed to meet even the most modest of expectations from its other power-base – the Aboriginal people in remote electorates that have remained loyal to Labor for decades. And with a number of strong Aboriginal politicians on the government benches there was at least some cause for hope that Aboriginal people in the NT would finally get a fair deal from their government.
They didn’t, and it is the supreme irony that the primary causes for the recent massive loss of the faith and trust that many Aboriginal people had in Labor have been the actions of Aboriginal parliamentarians – not least Scrymgour, and her successor as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson.
Scrymgour’s rushed and ill-founded decision in October 2008 to implement mandatory English for four hours every day in the eight remaining bilingual schools in the NT is seen by many Aboriginal people in remote townships as a fundamental betrayal of Aboriginal rights to language and culture.
And the announcement three weeks ago of the Working Future policy by Scrymgour’s successor as Indigenous Affairs Minister, Alison Anderson, is the latest example of the almost complete disconnect between Aboriginal people living in remote townships and NT Labor – particularly hose who loudly trumpet their care for and connections with their constituents in the remote dusty corners of the NT.
Scrymgour saw the Anderson version of the Working Future policy for what it is – a further retreat from the current parlous levels of service delivery and infrastructure provision to remote townships and a fundamental betrayal of commitments given to remote Aboriginal people by her and Pat Dodson, who led a consultation and engagement process that was quickly abandoned and ignored by Anderson.
For Scrymgour, Working Future was now a policy that had been hijacked and fundamentally changed by her arch political enemy, Alison Anderson – Scrymgour’s vision had been to fit the legitimate aspirations and needs of Aboriginal people in remote townships and homelands into the reality of Canberra’s demands for service improvement. Anderson’s version represented little more than a supine surrender to Canberra’s assimilationist directions that 10,000 people be moved away from their homelands to create new ghettos in an arbitrary selection of so-called ‘growth towns’.
I’ll have a lot more to say about this most interesting of Ministers in the near future.
And it is Alison Anderson who may well be the key to the futures of both Henderson and Opposition leader Terry Mills. There is the very real possibility that Anderson could follow Scrymgour’s lead and walk – not to the cross-benches – but across the Chamber to the CLP – gifting Government to the CLP.
And the last word goes to Terry “the man who could very soon be King” Mills.
On his Facebook page this morning he says that:
“A day is a long time in politics. Every day this week has been long! Wonder what today has in store? Former Deputy Chief Minister now independent member will make a statement today to explain her unusual actions of the past few days. With 11 Country Liberal, 11 Labor and two independents holding the balance of power democracy is getting workout in the Territory!”
Your comments please!
12 Comments
This government has wedged itself. Unfortunately on the other side are an opposition with no policy vision either. Anderson may well cross the floor. There’s very little in the way of policy distance between the two parties. Both have the same essential policy of 1. Get taxpayer largesse from down South and splurge it on the Northern Suburbs of Darwin, 2. Make sure they (govt) are sufficiently obedient to whatever large company/developer next wants to trash part of the Territory-insert here Natural Gas, uranium, aquaculture, tax dodging tree farm, multi gazillionaire cow barons etc etc as best fits 3. Make sure cracker night stays and itinerant recreational fishermen are sucked up to.
One can’t help but wish Scrymgour all the best, if she takes a deep breath, guarantees confidence and budget bill support as she appears to have done and then sets about building a coherent policy contract with the government over some key priorities she may well be the best thing that’s happened to Territory politics in 30 years or more. They are all big ifs of course but she couldn’t feasibly be said to have any less policy capacity as an independent that this current government or opposition. They are woeful and have nothing to offer Aboriginal people (or anyone with something other than quarry vision for the NT) except regurgitated Mal Brough chest beating. Hopefully Barb McCarthy will join her then things could really get interesting. Without the pressure of trying to sell the ridiculous offerings that masquerade as policy from the government or the senior levels of the bureaucracy she may well find a clear path to constructive reform. Labor will get totalled at the next election whatever happens. There are a few years left to get some progressive policy steps in place before Mills and his drongoes are back at the trough.
Thanks Jack…and I agree with most of your first paragraph…and I also wish Marion the best and that she succeeds in her attempts to straighten out the mess that is NT Labor, though I think that the fish is now rotten so far from the head that it is not much use to anyone anymore…and I do think that Marion will struggle as an independent – regardless of the apparent goodwill being expressed right now she will have no access to all the machinery and resources of government as an independent…but then if she can retain support among her constituents she may still be able to survive as an independent. How long it will be till the next election is anyone’s guess but as Chris Graham said today the political landscape in the NT, for better or worse, has been changed forever. And Labor will get totalled at the next election…enjoy the train wreck as it comes down the track! On the bright side there could be a lot of room for other independents and/or the Greens…
can’t agree with you entirely on the govts policy capacity. Yes they have all the “resources” of the public service etc at their disposal. Hasn’t resulted in much outside business as usual though-they don’t have the political nous to drive the policy outputs they need. Marion should take some time, go round her constituents, then come back with two or three key policy asks (might be legislation/budget related) for the next year. Other than labors policy of trying to hang on its not like they’ve got their own busy policy program that’s crowding out other ideas right now.
Anyhow-will be interesting to watch
Jack – thanks for your thoughts and i suppose what I’m trying to say is that if you apply the duck (looks like, walks like etc etc) to the NT Labor government then it certainly meets all the criteria of a democratic western government – its just that Hendo lacks any charisma or ‘feel’ for leadership and the whole lot of them just seem to be going through the motions- I’m sure if Delia Lawrie gets the chance she will try to roll him – and would most likely be a better leader than either Hendo or Martin.
But more power to Marion – as the NIT points out today, she has reclaimed her mantle as the most powerful elected black pollie in the country – and I think you are right in pointing to her electorate as a base and source for ideas – if she can hang on and be a good constituent politician she can secure that seat for as long as she wants…and as for Labor – if they hold out for the next election they’ll be dumped then – but they’ll most likely do themselves in before that time – and they’ll still be dumped…
Bob, just how close to the CLP are you? You write with an obvious anti-NT Labor slant but does this extend to a pro-CLP viewpoint as well? You certainly seem keen to see Mills parachuted into the top job and maybe you think that subtle whiteanting of the current government via your blog might help this to come about.
Tayls – I’ve voted Labor my whole life and would never vote for the CLP – but the current crop of Labor pollies in the NT will more than likely drive (and I suspect many others who live outside of the privileged enclave of Darwin) me to vote Independent, Green or to spoil my vote.
And I don’t think that Terry Mills deserves Govt (though the broader NT public obviously think he is within 40 votes of deserving it) – its just that the current Government no longer deserve to be there.
I think you misjudge my comments – they aren’t subtle and are way beyond whiteanting – and also any ability I might have to affect public sentiment towards Labor in the NT.
And as much as it absolutely galls me to say it, I think the last good (in the sense that he actually understood how to govern) CM we had in the NT was Shane Stone!
At least he wouldn’t have laid on the floor and let Canberra walk all over him…
You say that Terry Mills doesn’t deserve to be in Government but I guess what I’m wondering is whether you think he deserves it more that the current government? If so then your words in Crikey (more people may read it than you think) might well have more effect than your singular vote in any election.
Your views on the matter might well be worth questioning given you are happy to publicly wish Terry good luck in his efforts to destablise the government.
Well, just on the numbers you would say that Terry most likely does deserve Government – I couldn’t be bothered to count them but I think that his party, on the current make-up, got more votes at the last election than Labor did.
But that is irrelevant – the reality is that Hendo has his bum on the Government benches and barring some brain boilover by he, anyone in his Government or Marion he will stay there until the next election.
And the way Hendo and his crew are travelling at the moment anything could happen – at any time – and he will have to treat Marion far better than he or Clare ever had to when she was in the government – a glorious irony considering that she surrendered the title of most powerful black woman in the country to Alison and then that Alison, by dint of the homelands debacle, among other things, gives that title right back to her.
As I said – a train wreck in slow motion that no amount of pressers can get back on the rails.
And I wish Terry well only as a gesture of good will – with all due respect to him I doubt that he and his crew have enough bottle or brains between them to actually work out how to sieze power…if they did they would have started a series of relentless attacks on all of the many weak Labor links the day after they lost the last election by 40 votes…and if they had the events of the past few weeks would most likely have happened months ago.
And I’m glad that more people may read my words than I might think – I just wish a few more of them had the same willingness as you to commit them to comments!
we live in an apathetic world Bob. Despite the plethora of communication tools available to the masses there are many other more mundane matters that attract the attention. Perhaps explains why there are more likely to be crocodile, yowie or ufo stories on the front page of the NT News than any substantial political analysis (though they did decide that the Marion story deserved a front page splash).
not much more to add really, other than to say that the “masses” get the government that they deserve but also that it is perhaps the greatest folly of all to underestimate them…usually though that’s a lesson only learned in hindsight…
I guess the fundamental issue here gents is the lack of policy distance between labour and CLP. If CLP got in they would:
-strongly back uranium mining
-strongly back the gas industry
-have a pissweak environmental policy
-suck up to itinerant recreational fishers
-periodically “clamp down’ on Aboriginal people and ensure their basic services were underfunded
-sounding familiar??
Most sane people wouldn’t want the CLP in-but you can’t tell me there’s much political distance or difference in the two big parties in the NT. I think we can pretty easily all imagine someone like Kon Vatskalis making the same sort of statements he periodically does from the CLP battlements rather than labor can’t we?
Really -a unicameral parliament like that should be elected by proportional representation in some form. At least then you might get a bit of variation from the lib-lab script (admittedly it could be quite wacky variation at times).
I say go Marion-potentially the most interesting thing to happen to NT politics in 10 years or more. She might not be able to manage it sure, but she just might. There’s probably more hope in an engaged independent doing some good than either of the two party groupings for the foreseeable future.
Just a quick update via ABC News out of Darwin – yesterday, 23 June, ABC ran the following piece titled “Outstations inquiry a step closer“, noting, in part, that:
.
As Elferink rightly notes, if this enquiry does go ahead it may rip the scab off the relationships within Labor and perhaps expose a little more of the process behind the development and release of the NT government’s Working Futures policy. I also note that the deal that Marion squeezed out of Paul henderson only gained more favourable treatment for the homeland communities in her electorate of Arafura – not the many hundreds scattered throughout the other, mainly Labor-held, remote electorates.
And this morning ABC Radio is broadcasting part of an interview with the CEO of the Barkly Shire in the centre of the NT. His Council has moved to condemn the Working Futures policy, particularly the poor funding allocation for homelands.
I suspect there will be more, much more, about all of this as Working Future, and perhaps the future of Henderson’s government, slowly unravels over the coming weeks.