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Newly-appointed NT Treasurer John Elferink has banned departmental staffers from supporting their minister during Estimates hearings. Will this shed more light on government processes or draw a veil across democracy in the NT?

Mills and the CLP got smart – and got some smart advice and advisors – and realised that government in the NT was theirs for the taking – not by the usual head-butting over seats in the northern suburbs of Darwin but by concentrating on what had long been accepted as Labor’s heartland, the bush seats. And they didn’t forget that they only needed one seat to get them over the line. By close of the count Saturday night the CLP had taken government.

Many years ago I had a T-shirt produced by local Darwin artists Chips Mackinolty and Therese Ritchie. On the front of the shirt was a woman talking to her husband about a request from their child, who was standing before them resplendent in one of those cheap cowboy outfits we all had as children. From the foggy mists of memory she was saying something along the lines of “Johnny wanted a Cowboy Outfit for Christmas. So I got him the Northern Territory Government.” Colin Holt’s show, “30 Years of Chief Ministers – the official portraits we should have had” runs from 8 July to 4 August at the Alice Springs Public Library.

Bess Price, prospective Country Liberal Party candidate for the Federal electorate of Lingiari: “Well, I’ve always voted Labor…but I believe…but I believe Territorians deserve and demand better leadership…and a better future…”