Murdoch newspaper exposes rip off conspiracy by NT News and NT MLA Dave Tollner. (extracts from The Weekend Australian, Inquirer Section, September 14-15, page 19). “The Territory government has abandoned those in greatest need”. From a report by Amos Aikman The jurisdiction with the largest proportion of indigenous people (more than 35 per cent) and four traditional Aboriginal representatives in parliament has failed to realise this unique opportunity to improve the democratic representation of the bush. Abetted by poor media scrutiny, a politics of backstabbing has won out. A new government with a plan to do things differently has sagged back into the old habits of those that went before... The CLP took power by winning five seats in the bush, four of them Aboriginal candidates with strong ties to traditional culture. It was a clear mandate for change ... For many years, one of the strongest advocates for bush people has been controversial Aboriginal politician Alison Anderson. Rarely shy to use her sharp tongue, Anderson deployed her skill and cunning against her enemies and sometimes her colleagues, and they deployed theirs against her, aided by a willing local press [The NT News]. “Darwin is a classic company town,” The Australian’s editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell says. “Government is the company and the former Labor Territory government betrayed the bush Aboriginal voters for decades by regularly underspending their federal allocations for remote Aboriginal people.” “The media in Darwin represents the interests of the government service-provider class, sometimes even to the detriment of the most disadvantages people in the Territory...” [Mitchell said]. Journalists arriving in the Territory are routinely proffered copies of former Fairfax reporter Russell Skelton’s book, “King Brown Country”, which is highly critical of Anderson. Mitchell again: “The media’s treatment of Alison [Anderson], and the treatment of her by Russell Skelton, are analogous to The Courier Mail or The Australian campaigning against Noel Pearson and the Aboriginal people of Cape York. This has never happened.” Terry Mills suffered relentless undermining as party leader in opposition, and almost from day one of the new government the destabilisation intensified through a very public campaign of leaks and unsourced stories waged in the local press. As battlelines grew ever clearer, local media developed close relationships with a faction aligned to ministers Dave Tollner and Adam Giles... Local academic Don Fuller, who guided one of the CLP bush campaigners, emerged as an NT News columnist. He penned a series of articles vociferously attacking his former CLP colleagues, including Mills. [In the NT News] Several failed coup attempts received coverage distinct from fact. Tollner, until then the main leadership contender, lost his chance of winning the top job after he threw a folder of documents at [Chief Minister] Mills during a heated exchange... For months Anderson backed Mills ... she gave way and helped install Giles in March. Almost overnight, the tone of the local media coverage changed... Giles’s media adviser, former Darwin Sun journalist Bruce Cutler, became the government’s new director of communications. ABC 7.30 NT presenter Danielle Parry resigned to take up a post as Giles’s chief media adviser. Federal Coalition indigenous affairs spokesman Nigel Scullion’s chief of staff, Ron Kelly, moved across to head Giles’s office. Kelly is a close Tollner ally. From conversations with a variety of informed sources across a period of months, a picture has emerged of Giles and Tollner’s authoritarian leadership style. “It’s all about them,” one parliamentarian told The Australian this week.
Posted on: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 08:10:43 +0000
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