In the wake of celebrations to mark Territory Day 2018, guest contributor Hugh Tillity offers a controversial perspective on self-government in Australia's Northern Territory, suggesting it is time to 'hand back the keys' to Canberra.
The parliament among the palms: Nerve-centre of a functioning administration, or monument to a failed experiment?
It’s seven o’clock in the evening on Territory Day 2018. Today is the fortieth anniversary of self-government in the Northern Territory and the good people of Darwin are celebrating by setting fire to things.
Bungers are exploding all around. Children scream and dogs bark as fire trucks roll through suburban streets extinguishing spot fires started by the crackers. The dedicated professionals in the Emergency Department at Royal Darwin Hospital prepare for a long night and wonder just how extensive the casualty list will be this year.
Is today the day when a child is so badly hurt that the NT Government will have no alternative other than to ban the infantile practice of exploding fireworks? There is a good reason that this action has been taken long ago in the more mature and sophisticated jurisdictions to the south.
The smell of gunpowder hangs heavy in the air, along with a lingering feeling that self-government in the Territory has failed. It may well be time to ‘hand back the keys’.
In Canberra, where roundabouts are plentiful and shops hard to find, there are bucketsful of capable administrators who are unimpeded by four-year electoral cycles. They have no truck with absurdly romantic notions of Territorians as croc-hunting, frontier dwellers. Nor do they pine for the silver bullet – be it space-base, waterpark, or super-sized crocodile, constructed entirely of empty VB cans – which will put the economy back on its feet.
They are middle-class, middle-aged men in grey suits who work dispassionately – if unimaginatively - through the problems and come up with the best available solution. Men without advertising spiels. Men without extravagant dreams of unimaginable prosperity for the denizens of the Gateway to Asia. Men who just do a job.
And in the Territory, we need people to just do a job. No more pandering to pipe-dreams. We need an end to the desperate desire for dramatic development. We can’t eat hyperbole. We need less reaching for the stars and more balancing of the books.
Like the original settlers at Port Essington we’ve struggled hard and unearthed a few good performers along the way. But like those same pioneers, we too must admit defeat and come to terms with the fact that the venture has gone belly-up. There is no shame in making a strategic retreat once one’s best efforts have proven inadequate. But to blunder on indefinitely is the political equivalent of trading insolvent.
A bright young woman with impressive educational qualifications was recently promoted into the NT cabinet. She has been a very good teacher - though not a principal - in the bush. Her new job is to manage an education department with a billion-dollar budget and four thousand staff. Reflecting on the lack of managerial experience of this new minister, our American cousins may well call this a ‘sub-optimal’ approach to government.
There is a school of thought which has it that here in the Deep North the administration of education is essentially the province of bureaucrats – that all the money is already earmarked to pay the salaries of teachers and public servants, so it doesn’t much matter what the minister does.
Not so. The single greatest problem facing the NT is the failure of Aboriginal children to get a good education. They don’t go to school, they don’t learn, they don’t pass exams, and consequently they don’t enjoy the same life choices as their non-Indigenous contemporaries. The vicious circle lies unbroken.
Education policy is our most pressing problem, and our finest minds must be tasked with finding a solution. The young woman mentioned above may well be one of these minds. In a larger jurisdiction she would be nurtured rather than thrown to the wolves.
This is not a party-political matter. The limitations of our tiny population, and the tyranny of distance confront governments of both political persuasions equally. Successive administrations have lost control of the Territory budget as the deficit heads for the stratosphere. Interest payments on our massive and ever-growing debt hang like a millstone around the neck of an economy whose time is at hand.
The Territory’s former Chief Commissioner of Police has new accommodations at the Darwin Correctional Centre where he is serving a gaol sentence for perverting the course of justice. High rates of assaults and burglaries are an indication that all is not well in a community. But the corruption of a society’s systems and institutions is portent of mortal danger.
In Darwin, our economy lies bedraggled and beaten, mugged once again by the harsh reality of the boom-bust cycle of resource-based investments. Retail in the city lies in tatters, as itinerants beat out the death-march on improvised percussion instruments. Property prices plummet, in lock-step with business confidence. The Inpex party lasted for five years – as stated on the invitations - and we all had a good time. But the party is over now and the only thing on the horizon is thunderheads.
The NT’s own-source revenue struggles towards a pitiful 30%. We are kept afloat only by GST money showered on us in abundance by a generous commonwealth. The NT - with 1% of Australia’s population - receives 4.7% of the nation’s GST distribution. Good thing too.
It’s time for us to swallow our pride and beg Canberra to ride to the rescue. It’s time for us to beckon the grey-suited men. It’s time for us to offer contrite apologies for our profligacy, tug on our respective forelocks, and hand back the keys.
