The release in federal Parliament yesterday of the report into last year’s Montara oil spill off Australia’s north-west coast is just the latest chapter in a saga of NT government incompetence:
“Industry, government and regulators must be absolutely committed to a culture of high safety standards and environmental protection within a framework of continuous improvement.”
Mr Ferguson also told Parliament the Northern Territory’s Department of Resources failed to adequately regulate operation of the oil well.
“The commissioner found that the Northern Territory Department of Resources was not a sufficiently diligent regulator, adopting a minimalist approach to its regulatory responsibilities,” he said.
“The way in which the regulator conducted its responsibilities gave it little chance of discovering PTTEP poor practices.” …
“At the heart of this matter is the failure of the operator and the failure of the regulator to adhere to this regime.
“Montara was preventable.
“If either, or preferably both PTTEP AA or the Northern Territory designated authority had done their jobs properly and complied with requirements, the Montara blowout would never have happened.”
Mr Ferguson says the Government will move to have a single, national offshore regulator of the industry.
The conclusion eerily echoes that of the Howard government in 2007 after the appalling child abuse revelations of the Little Children Are Sacred report led to the federal Intervention. As Indigenous academic Marcia Langton more recently observed:
Those who did not see the intervention coming were deluding themselves. It was the inevitable outcome of the many failures of policy and the flawed federal-state division of responsibilities for Aboriginal Australians. It was a product of the failure of Northern Territory governments for a quarter of a century to adequately invest the funds they received to eliminate the disadvantages of their citizens in education, health and basic services. It was made worse by general incompetence in Darwin: the public service, non-government sector (including some Aboriginal organisations) and the dead hand of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) all presided over increasingly horrible conditions in Aboriginal communities.
As a very recent Four Corners program graphically showed, the NT’s administration of child protection has not improved perceptibly since then.
Then there’s provision of power in Darwin, where it was revealed a couple of years ago that blackouts occurring with third world frequency were a result of decades of neglect of the electricity infrastructure by successive NT governments of both political persuasions:
DAVID COADY: The 2006 report by industry expert Stephen Blanch found there was a “run to fail” mentality at Power & Water. There were inadequate spares and the oldest substations needed to be replaced soon. The government’s response was a one billion dollar infrastructure and maintenance fund – $200,000,000 of it has already been spent. …
DAVID COADY: The Electrical Trades Union and the government say the CLP chronically underfunded utilitieS for decades. While the authorities try to work out just how much it’ll cost to deliver a reliable power supply, the advice to customers down the line is keep a torch and radio handy. Most aren’t impressed.
MEREDITH ELLIOTT – PUB MANAGER: I don’t come from Darwin but I’m learning that it’s very different from the southern states. A major capital city in any part of the world I would think that that is not an option not to have electricity. We’re not in a third world country.
In fairness, things have improved a little since then, but the fact that infrasructure was allowed to decay to that extent is an indictment on governments of both major parties.
Then there’s the federally funded SIHIP program (remote Indigenous housing) administered by the NT government:
The SIHIP program promises to build 750 homes but last year a consultant claimed the program was floundering and would deliver less than half that.
In response, the program was reassessed.
A report by Territory auditor-general has found the original cost estimates for building new houses and refurbishing existing houses were unreliable and the program lacked proper management.
The report says there were delays in developing information systems, an absence of key staff, a weakness in governance and delays in completing key planning documents. …
When the report was recently finalised, a total of seven new houses had been completed under SIHIP.
A further 81 were under construction, while 186 refurbishments or rebuilds had been completed and 111 commenced.
“While the target for new houses is considered to be achievable, that for refurbishments may prove to be challenging,” the report states.
Then we come to education where the picture is just as bleak, mostly but not entirely due to poor results and even poorer school attendance in remote Indigenous communities, although opinions about responsibility and appropriate remedial action differ widely:
In all literacy and numeracy tests only 30 to 35% of Northern Territory students met national minimum standards. When those who did not participate are added, half the students in the Northern Territory failed to meet national minimum standards. In the rest of Australia less than 15% of students failed to meet the minimum standards.
Murdoch journalist Nicolas Rothwell (long-time NT correspondent for The Australian) labelled the Northern Territory a “failed state” this time last year in the wake of a series of political fiascos that reduced the Labor government to unstable minority status. At the time I thought his hypothesis was extravagant and slightly hyperbolic, if understandable. But the ongoing incompetence of the NT government makes it impossible to sustain an argument that they deserve still more chances to lift their game. If Tasmania is the leach on the teat of the Australian economy with just 60% of its total revenue derived from the Commonwealth, what metaphor adequately describes the NT which is reliant on the Commonwealth for 80% of its total funding? Self-government is a failed experiment.
This is a conclusion that any thoughtful NT resident would be very hesitant to reach. After all, neglect and underfunding of remote areas of the Northern Territory long predates self-government, and chatting with old-time Territorians reveals that the former Commonwealth administration before self-government in 1978 was remote and out of touch to say the least. But there comes a point where terminal failure has to be conceded and fundamental questions honestly addressed. We should remember that the NT population in total is smaller than quite a few local government areas elsewhere in Australia, so there’s no shame for anyone in accepting that it was simply a mistake to imagine that such a small place could adequately sustain a workable full set of state government-type bureaucracies. I have reluctantly concluded that it’s time for the Commonwealth to:
- repeal the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act 1978;
- develop Commonwealth operational bureaucracies in areas including health, education, roads, power and water (to operate in other territories including Norfolk, Christmas and Cocos-Keeling Islands as well);
- preserve elected municipal and shire councils and devolve local government-type powers (local roads, parks, gardens, building and planning etc) to them. Those are the functions which most affect people on a day-to-day basis and the constitutional principle of subsidiarity suggests they are most efficiently and fairly controlled at local level. State government-type functions, on the other hand, are clearly beyond the capacity of the NT at its current stage of development.
I can’t see much weight in the arguments against.
Ken;
The same people who currently work on these things will still be working on them. They will probably recreate the procedures they know and love. But for shits and giggles the NT will now find it even harder to compete against NSW and Victoria for Commonwealth attention because it has no unitary voice over and above the pitiful representation we enjoy in Parliament — which incidentally your proposal would probably cause to be reduced.
Jacques
There is no reason why abolition of self-government should cause the NT’s representation in federal parliament to be reduced:
(1) There is no particular partisan incentive to do so given that the Senate always splits 1:1 and at the moment our reps representation is also split 1:1;
(2) There’s a more than plausible argument flowing from the High Court’s decisions in Roach v Electoral Commissioner and Rowe v Electoral Commissioner that reducing the NT’s federal parliamentary representation would be beyond the Commonwealth’s constitutional power. These decisions rest on the proposition that constitution sections 7 and 24 require both houses of parliament to be directly popularly elected by “the people”. The reasoning proceeds on the basis that any legislation changing the existing federal franchise must be proportionate/appropriate and adapted to maintaining that system of democratic representative government. Just as the Court held that disqualifying prisoners from voting however minor their offence or short their term in prison could not be viewed as appropriate and adapted to that purpose, nor could disenfrachising people who had recently moved house but not changed their electoral enrolment when an election was called, so too it is unlikely that the Court would uphold removing the franchise of 250,000 Territorians.
BTW The “pitiful” representation the NT enjoys in the House of Reps is more than we would have if the same federal electorate size rules were applied here as apply in the rest of Australia (the NT’s population falls just short of justifying 2 Reps seats). However it’s true that our Senate representation is less generous proportionately than Tassie which gets 12 Senators for a population of 500,000 or so whereas we have 2 for 250,000.
I should also repond to Patrick’s comment:
I actually think the arguments aganst abolition of self-government are still fairly strong i.e. it’s a close-run thing IMO despite the undeniable ubiquitous incompetence.
(1) As Jacques suggests, you’d still need pretty much the same number of operational bureaucrats, police, teachers etc to run the place. The only direct savings would be in senior executive service bureaucrats and NT politicians and the resources and infrastructure that supports them (Parliament House could be subdivided nad refurbished and would make a great up-market shopping centre containing DJs, Myer and high end specialty shops);
(2) However, hopefully the Commonwealth could create a more competent operational bureaucracy, and attract better quality staff through offering a strong career path with transfer “up the pole” to Canberra etc.
(3) As I pointed out in the primary post, much of the housing and infrastructure deficiences in remote communities stems from the pre-self-government period anyway. While one may argue that Commonwealth funding since then has been generous enough to make it reasonable to expect greater inroads to have been made by now, the NT government can’t be completely blamed. They’re just carrying on a long tradition of benevolent neglect.
(4) As canvassed in the primary post, many of the problems in remote communities stem from particular aspects of Indigenous culture, practice and belief. These factors have proven largely impervious to change anywhere in Australia. No-one has any magic answers, but 1/3 of the NT’s population is Aboriginal so the proportionate impact of these intractable problems is so much greater here. Again it’s unfair to blame the NT government for that (although I think successive governments could and should have tried harder).
BTW There is much to be said for experimenting with a new quasi-federal model here in the NT, with “local” government being given a somewhat larger range of powers and functions than applies in the States e.g. perhaps including local water and sewerage services and a wider range of roads and transportation regulation functions. Perhaps even policing could be locally controlled as in the UK and US. OTO areas like health and education would be controlled by the Commonwealth but with substantial local devolution of day-to-day operational management albeit under clear performance-based funding and accountability rules (as with the recent Rudd health reforms before they were partially gutted in COAG negotiations). To frame it in “management-speak” I’m proposing a flatter management structure!!!
One of the major advantages of this sort of regional responsibility and “case mix” funding (as it’s called in the health area) is that it would help to overcome a major systemic problem with NT governance ever since 1978. Nicolas Rothwell canvases it in his article. Because most of the acute needs on which the NT is funded are in remote communities but most of the votes and seats are in Darwin and Alice Springs, there is an inbuilt incentive (more for CLP governments but enough for the ALP to feel the pressure and succumb to it more than they should) to short-change the regions and pork barrel Darwin (and to a lesser extent Alice Springs). Replacing the current model with a regional model with “case mix” funding (and equivalent concept in education) based on need, and with each region given some autonomy but being accountable for using that funding effectively and efficiently to achieve clear targets, should largely reverse that perverse incentive to pork barrel the urban centres. There might also be other ways to overcome this perverse incentive short of the radical option of abolishing self-government.
I am not certain why the Feds would be any better at regulation than the present Department of Resources.
If the Feds put the same resources into regulation, the outcomes would be the same. That is, unless you have a specific argument against the competence of the persons inside the DR. If you have such a specific argument, then surely it would be simpler and cheaper to argue for those who you consider incompetent to be replaced, than to have the whole NT taken over by the Feds?
If on the other hand, the Feds were only able to get a better outcome by increasing resources to the DR, then would it not be cheaper just to increase the payment to the NT by that amount, rather than the cost involved in change of jurisdiction?
Ken;
I think you have the right on the numbers in the Commonwealth Parliament and I withdraw that argument; but I still stand by the point that local councils, no matter how empowered, will find it harder to lobby Canberra for attention than the NTG can.
Abolishing self-government would not necessarily resolve the issues. I think that it would merely move the deckchairs around and lead to a period of instability in the meantime.
emess
If we were talking only about the Montana oil spill issue, or even only about a specific NT government department, then I would agree with you. However, if you read my entire post and also Nicolas Rothwell’s article you’ll see we’re talking about a much more widespread, longstanding and entrenched culture of waste, incompetence and mismanagement. Nor is it just (or even mainly) a question of inadequate funding or resources. In fact the NT is very generously funded and has been for years, but much of the funding is misdirected or otherwise spent wastefully.
Nicholas Rothwell makes a similar case to yours, Ken, and comes up with a similar diagnosis: rearrange the formal lines of power. Maybe that would be a circuit-breaker that gets the system to work better, but I doubt it. The same people would be present in the same places, squabbling over the same money in the same fashion. They would merely have their paycheque sent out with a different logo.
Ken,
You have quoted some anecdotal stuff. Go to the Power and Water annual reports where they actually quote SAIF and SAID figures before you assert stuff. You will not find power outages to be that much different to other states. Similarly, when you have the number of lightning strikes that Darwin has, or the lack of redundancy that characterises ANY relatively small system, then you also see some reasons for apparent system failure. However, also, a little more than superficial digging will elicit the fact that most of the power engineers and system maintainers come from ‘down south’ – which is presumably exactly where they would come from if the NT was run by the Feds. The Blanch report quite accurately tslked about a run to fail mentality in Power and Water. What you do not mention is that there is a philosophical argument world wide about whether it is better to run to fail and then maintain, or have a much higher cost preventive system. This is a valid argument, and personally, I am on the side of preventive maintenance. However, that does not mean that there is universal agreement with the Blanch assertions.
I am not sure how putting the NT under the Feds would resolve any of the above. I am not a power engineer, but in other areas when I visit down south, from what I observe, I frankly do not think that there is any reason for a claim that these jurisdictions perform any better. For example, I am familiar with a very large water utility down south where I worked for over twenty years. Power and Water is light years ahead of that particular utility which serves well over ten times the population in the NT.
The statehood push is a bit of a worry, to say the least. The NT government is only interested in getting its statehood agenda through without considering the failures of self-government (caused mainly by a small, scattered population and an insufficient economic base?). The fact sheets cover a bizarre range of topics – if this is to set the standard of debate, we’re in trouble.
I wonder if rejoining South Australia would be an option? Obviously there would still be Federal funding issues but from a Territory perspective it would work better than direct Federal control. There would be significant administrative synergies and the South Australian government does have some experience in governing remote areas. Dare I say it – they have a more mature political system.
No doubt people in South Australia would have kittens if this option was put on the table!
Look , I think s122 is the way to go..who the bloody hell had the temerity to build a dual carriageway to freeway standard 40km S of Ine Creek and 40 km N of Katherine ..
If you are in Darwin OK, the recent gerrymandering of seats that puts the majority in the Darwin area at the expense of everywhere else is a sign of a government thats failing dismally …