This thesis explores the theory of Arcadianism and combines it with the practice of populism, applying both to the Country Liberal Party and its application of policy following self-government in the Northern Territory with particular emphasis on, but not limited to, land and development. The thesis introduces two further elements: invention of tradition and character or 'imagined community'; and race, which round out the proposition that there were four elements to the CLP's successful and enduring reign of governance in the Northern Territory. As a matter of political history, the thesis argues that CLP policies resulted in marginalisation and exclusion of the Aboriginal community from the rest of the Northern Territory population – the latter exclusively identified as 'Territorian' - and that this was a deliberate and direct result of the CLP's entrenched opposition to the Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act (Cth). Abstract p. viii. ; Introduction -- Literature review -- Constitutional history -- The parties -- Economic management -- The CLP and racism -- The Strehlow Collection -- The CLP and the Legal System -- Identity and heritage -- General elections -- Conclusion -- Reference -- Appendixes A - C ; Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Law, Business and Arts, Charles Darwin University. 2011
1. Title slide -- 2. The Darwin Oval (Darwin Fire Brigade) -- 3. The Darwin Oval (A display by parachutists) -- 4. The Darwin Oval (An army band) -- 5. The Darwin Oval (A royal guard) -- 6. The Darwin Oval (The Administrator) -- 7. The Darwin Oval (During the ceremony) -- 8. The Darwin Oval (The Chief Minister) -- 9. The Dawin Oval (The new Northern Territory Flag) -- 10. The Darwin Oval (The Northern Territory flag) -- 11. The Darwin Oval (As the flag is raised) -- 12. The Darwin Oval (The Australian Air Force) -- 13. The Darwin Oval (The final event) -- 14. Nightcliff Primary School (In celebration) -- 15. Nightcliff Primary School (Special concerts) -- 16. Bathurst Island (The new Northern Territory Flag) -- 17. Bathurst Island (Two Children) -- 18. Bathurst Island (As part of the celebrations) -- 19. Finke (Flag raising ceremonies) -- 20. Final Slide. ; Visual material. Acknowledgements Photographs : Dennis Milkins and John O'Keefe. This is a production of The Northern Territory Department of Education ; Made available by the Northern Territory Library via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT).
Made available by the Northern Territory Library via the Publications (Legal Deposit) Act 2004 (NT). ; This work was published online on the authors blog. It has been reproduced with his permission.
"This paper examines recent local government reform in the Northern Territory from two perspectives. The first is a quantitative perspective on population and finances, which focuses on the mixing of diverse interests in the recent changes. The second is a more observational perspective gained from working with one pre-reform local government and now the new larger local government that has replaced it. The paper argues that the recent changes are generational in nature in a number of different ways. It also argues that the greater challenge for the new local governments may be their vast geographic scale, rather than their mixing of diverse interests."--Abstract. ; Introduction -- Population and financial analysis: mixing diverse interests -- The problem of scale: an observational approach -- How did it happen? the idea of generational change -- Conclusion -- References
In 1992 I was pleased to conumss10n Dr Dean Jaensch and Deborah Wade Marshall to compile a history of the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory to celebrate its first 20 years and for the work to be published on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Legislative Assembly in November 1994. This period, 1974-1994, marks a time of important development of the Northern Territory as a body politic. The story unfolded in this volume is essentially one of progress which spans the inception of representative democracy achieved with the first fully-elected Assembly in 1974, the measure of responsible government gained at the time of self-government in 1978 to the commencement of the Seventh Assembly and the completion of the new Parliament House building. This important period of constitutional development has laid the foundation for the future Statehood for the Northern Territory. I believe that there would be no-one better qualified to write a history of the Northern Territory Parliament than Dr Jaensch. He has a long history as a commentator on Territory politics and electoral issues and is a distinguished researcher, editor and author on politics and political history. Dr Jaensch's work is complemented by Deborah Wade-Marshall's contribution. Deborah is a long-term Territorian with a sound background in research and she carried out her research and co-writing work on this book from the Parliamentary Library. The main purpose of this project is to attract the interest of Territorians in the work and role of the Legislative Assembly in its first 20 years. The finished work is a narrative and analytical study which will inform the present and future voters about how the Northern Territory Parliament operates and its central place in the constitutional development of the Northern Territory. This work is not only a comprehensive compendium of the history of the Assembly, its Members and the precincts, but an accurate assessment of the role the Assembly has in the context of the Territory and the Australian political environment. It also contains a wealth of statistical and biographical detail and will be a valuable research tool for students. As a measure of the development of the Legislative Assembly since 1974, my personal recollection is of the primitive accommodation and limited support facilities which Members tolerated in the early days when even basic photocopying facilities were unknown and all back bench Members shared a single office with two telephones. Those privations are now remedied by the completion of the new Parliament House building which will serve parliamentary democracy in the Territory 'for the next 100 years. No doubt, Members, their staff and constituents will take extreme pride in the development of the Parliament during these 20 years. When reflecting on the past 20 years of the operation of the Assembly, we must not forget the efforts of the former Members of both the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly and the important roles they played in the political and constitutional development of the Territory. This work provides a natural completion to the Short History of the Legislative Council which was written by Fred Walker, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly from 1974 to 1977. The written history of Parliament in the Northern Territory now spans the 'shirt sleeves Parliament' held in a war-time shed to the newest Parliamentary building in the Commonwealth and chronicles a developing Territory rapidly taking its rightful place among the States. As my term as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly is drawing to a close, I am able to reflect happily on my involvement with the Assembly during the past 20 years and, in particular, during my time as Speaker, I shall fondly remember my association with Dean Jaensch and Deborah Wade-Marshall during the period they worked on this book.
This book grew out of my long-standing interest in Northern Territory politics and constitutional development and my association with statehood policy-formulation as a Ministerial Officer for the Chief Minister in 1986 and 1987. Both Chief Ministers for whom I worked, Ian Tuxworth and Steve Hatton, were supportive of my historical research and made available the resources that enabled me to assemble the necessary archival and interview material on which the book is based. While it should not need to be stated, the historical analysis and interpretation herein are mine alone. In any case, the bulk of the study deals with events antecedent to 1986. Many other people made this book possible, not all of whom I could possibly mention here. But, in particular, I would like to thank the fifty or so people - all in some way major participants in the politics of self-government and statehood - who freely offered their recollections and often documentary material. Without their involvement, such a recent historical process, constrained by the usual archival limitations, would have been difficult to deal with in any adequate academic way. My appreciation is also extended to all those people - in many depositories in both Canberra and Darwin - who assisted me with the location of relevant information. Finally, to Dee Sarev, colleague and friend, who contributed so much to the preparation of the manuscript, I owe a deep debt of gratitude.
There is a tendency in academic studies and in the media for inordinate attention to be paid to the competitive and conflictual face of government and politics in federal systems. This is so for a number of reasons. Conflict is played up by representatives of governments because it is easy to blame 'the other side'. State leaders play the game of 'Canberra bashing' because their local media appreciate it, and because it rallies their constituents behind them. Conflict becomes the public face of federalism, too, because disagreement and argument are more newsworthy. This is true of most reporting of politics. The public image of relations between the Northern Territory and the Commonwealth government is certainly no exception to this general rule. In fact, it has often been said that these relations are even more conflictual than is usually the case in Australian federalism, because of the long history of 'benign neglect' and 'colonial' domination of the Northern Territory by the Commonwealth of Australia, and because of the fact that since self-government was given to the Northern Territory in 1978, the Commonwealth government has held back for itself a number of significant responsibilities. A recent discussion of Northern Territory government and politics sums up the standard view: The relations between the Commonwealth and the state governments can normally best be described as a stable condition of mutual suspicion. But relations between the Territory and the Commonwealth go beyond even that. The Northern Territory government exhibits a hostile suspicion towards Canberra that appears to verge on paranoia but in reality reflects the longer term economic and political difficulties faced by the Territory. 'Canberra' assumes an importance in Territory politics that is unique among Australian states, 'Canberra' is the fulcrum of Territory politics. This is so for both constitutional and economic reasons (Gerritsen and Jaensch 1986, 152). This study sets out to paint a fuller picture of the place of the Northern Territory in the Australian federal system. In so doing it seeks to redress the balance somewhat by concentrating not on the public face of federalism which is played out in parliament, in press releases and in election campaigns and which subsequently dominates media reports, but on the private face which is daily life for public servants and politicians. This is the world of intergovernmental relations in which representatives of the Commonwealth, states and territories work alongside one another and are in frequent contact with one another making and implementing public policies across the whole spectrum of government activities. Most of these representatives are public servants; some are ministers. Public servants as a whole do not have a high profile so much of this activity is out of the public eye, unrecorded and hence unreported. Government is a collective term for a large number of individuals: a team of ministers supported by thousands of public servants and other government employees organised into departments and agencies. Intergovernment relations means, therefore, any contact or joint activity between any part of two or more governments. In the Northern Territory's case it may be an informal meeting between the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister (Paul Everingham recalls a fleeting conversation which he had with the Prime Minister between two passing cars in Darwin); it may be a telephone call between a Northern Territory public servant based in Darwin and a Commonwealth public servant based in Canberra; it may be two such officers located in Alice Springs or one of the smaller Northern Territory towns or communities cooperating in a joint program. Some of the relations are formalised: a meeting of the Premiers Conference and Loan Council in Canberra; a workshop for technical experts anywhere in Australia; a Northern Territory Treasury submission to the Commonwealth Grants Commission or to the Industries Assistance Commission. The possibilities are endless. Intergovernmental relations encompass a web of activities, which the professional literature disarmingly calls interaction. This study is about all of these relations. The four major chapters are about the most important elements in the Northern Territory's intergovernmental relations: (i) intergovernmental meetings of many types between ministers and/or officers; (ii)the role in intergovernmental relations of the Northern Territory's central agencies: the Chief Minister's department and the Treasury; (iii) relations which take place in the Northern Territory between a part of the Northern Territory government and a part of the Commonwealth government which is located in the Northern Territory; (iv) the part played in intergovernmental relations by Northern Territory Government representatives in Canberra, including Federal parliamentarians and lobbyists. The aim of this study is to describe as many aspects of the relationship as possible and to generalise about them. As there is not one relationship but very many, generalisation is difficult and potentially dangerous. However, rather than focus on one or two departments, institutions or policy fields the study aims to explore the diversity and variety in the relationships. Where a choice has had to be made, depth has been sacrificed for breadth. Participants whom I have interviewed will all know much more about their particular field than I do, but I hope to have gained a perspective of the whole which very few, if any, participants possess.
As a consequence of the constitutional development which has occurred in the Northern Territory since 1976, a veritable administrative revolution has taken place. The devolution of State‐type functions from Commonwealth to local control and the legal establishment of a Northern Territory government on 1 July 1978 necessitated fundamental changes to the administrative structure. However, the pace and scale of change, so dramatic a feature of the period between 1977 and 1979, were much less pronounced in 1980 which was a year of relative stability. In political terms, the highlight of 1980 was the Legislative Assembly elections in June which resulted in the return of the Country‐Liberal Party government. Its continuation in office was an important factor in ensuring a climate for administrative stability.
