According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2015 is the Year of The Sheep. And it seems the conservative side of politics is taking it literally, by following in each other’s footsteps.
On Saturday night, the Queensland LNP lost their leader in Campbell ‘Can Do’ Newman, who turned out to be ‘Cannot Do’ when it came to getting himself re-elected to his seat of Ashgrove.
Newman was unceremoniously dumped by voters, but not before he led his party to what seemed to be an almost impossible defeat. How anyone can win 78 seats out of a possible 89, then go on to lose the next election is yet to be fully explained. Indeed it may never be.
Newman, incidentally, was born in the Year of the Rabbit, the namesake of which happens to be our current Prime Minister (if Julia Gillard – herself a political throat slitter of some note – were narrating this tale).
‘Mr Rabbit’, as it turns out, is also facing some leadership troubles.
Yesterday, it was the federal Liberals turn to smear sh*t on their own walls, with conservatives in Canberra openly canvassing a leadership spill against the beleaguered Prime Minister (who was born in the Year of the Rooster).
Abbott survived his National Press Club address. But it was only Monday, and a week is a long time in politics.
And now, overnight, the Country Liberals in the Northern Territory have done what the voters of Queensland did, and the pollies in Canberra are contemplating – they’ve dumped their leader.
Adam Giles – a Koori man born in the Year of the Ox, who would go on to become the first ever Aboriginal head of a state or territory government – was last night rolled in a party room coup in Darwin, after last week fending off a false start challenge.
Giles told ABC Radio in Darwin recently: “While you’re in the position of Chief Minister or anything else where you have the opportunity of advancing the interests of the Northern Territory and Territorians, it’s a pretty honourable position to be in.
“And while you’re there you do what you can, and when you’re not there you reflect on the opportunities that you seized and probably some that you let go.”
For those who know Giles, this writer included*, it was a fairly melancholy and pensive Chief Minister. But it was a decidedly more upbeat Giles who came to office by ousting his leader Terry Mills in March 2013, also in a party room coup.
Mills, like Abbott, was also born in the Year of the Rooster (there’s a bad omen for you). And like Abbott, he proved to be a desperately unpopular leader, serving less than seven months in the top job before being punted. But not before serving a patient four-and-a-half years as Opposition leader (after also ousting his leader, Jodeen Carney (Snake) in a spill, and earlier ousting Denis Burke (Rat) after several attempts).
The fact is, NT politics is brutal at the best of times. Giles lived by the sword, and ultimately he died by it. And the truth is, while Giles was a comparatively popular political figure with the punters, internally he always had his work cut out for him.
From the outset, he was stalked by cabinet colleague Willem Westra van Holthe, a Kiwi by birth (in the Year of the Tiger). Westra van Holthe was acting Chief Minister when Giles assumed the role, because Mills was rolled while he was out of the country. Like I said, brutal.
Last night, Westra van Holthe got his revenge. The official reason given (as reported by the ABC) was Giles’ “leadership style, his personal judgment, his handling of the scandal surrounding former police commissioner John McRoberts and his ability to communicate the Government's strategy to the public”.
Also out is deputy Chief Minister Peter Chandler (another Year of the Snake), who took over from Dave Tollner (is there a Year of the Goose… no wait, Year of the Horse) in mid-2014, after Tollner was forced to resign for referring to the gay son of another member as a ‘pillow biter’.
In true Territory fashion, Tollner later reportedly threatened to quit the party and leave the Libs with a minority in parliament unless he was returned to the deputy’s role. He never made good on the threat, but there’s still another 18 months to the next election.
And that was Giles’ closest parliamentary colleague. He also had to contend with rogue Labor-turned-Independent-turned-Country Liberal-turned-Independent-turned-Palmer United Party-turned-Independent-turned-Palmer United Party-again Member for Namatjira, Alison Anderson (Year of the Dog), who was dumped from the Giles ministry six months in.
In the days leading up to the Mills spill, Anderson publicly referred to Giles as a “little boy” and a “spoilt brat”, a few weeks shy of his 41st birthday. While she ultimately backed him in the leadership challenge, their relationship never healed.
Anderson would frequently make demands. Giles would frequently rebuff them, until eventually telling media that he would no longer ‘govern with a gun to his head’. She got the spear.
Anderson – once a close ally of Giles – quit the party, and took two other Country Liberal Indigenous MLAs with her – Larissa Lee (year of birth unknown) and Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu (another Ox). One of Anderson’s protests was that election promises to the bush were broken. In particular, she felt the reformation of local Shires (after they were axed by Labor) wasn’t happening quickly enough. Of course, it was Anderson, while she was Labor, who helped axe them.
Kurrupuwu was welcomed back to the party after six months, but Giles banned Anderson and Lee from ever coming back. The public brawling seriously damaged him in the bush.
It was an internal collapse laced with irony for Giles, because he was one of the brains behind the CLP’s 2012 election strategy, which targeted bush seats populated overwhelmingly by Aboriginal voters. It delivered an historic swing and government to the Country Liberals, with the help of Anderson, who Giles recruited into the CLP from the crossbenches.
Even so, Giles knew from the outset – from the moment he took over as Chief Minister – that controlling his backbench, not to mention his cabinet, was going to be his greatest challenge.
The Northern Territory – by some margin the most schizophrenically laidback yet conservative jurisdiction in the country – has for many years been governed by people of equally random proclivities.
NT parliament – on both sides – has long been made up, at least partly, of rag-tag individualists who think that the term ‘party loyalty’ is a trick you play on mates after a dozen Darwin stubbies.
Not counting Westra van Holthe, there have been six Chief Ministers since 1999 – Shane Stone (Tiger), Denis Burke (still a Rat), Clare Martin (Dragon), Paul Henderson (another Tiger), Terry Mills (still a Rooster) and Adam Giles (still an Ox).
Four of them – Stone, Martin, Mills and now Giles – have been removed by their own parties.
This, of course, doesn’t bode well for Westra van Holte, nor for his new deputy John Elferink (Snake).
On the upside, the two have at least one thing in common. Both are former NT police officers, having each served for several decades after joining up in the early 1980s. They are 'Brothers in Blue' twice over.
Unfortunately, both also have leadership aspirations – Elferink has already had one failed tilt at the top job (against Mills) but only managed to secure one vote. His own.
Both men also attract trouble while in office: Westra van Holthe sported a black eye in parliament in 2010, after getting into a punch-up at the Katherine Country Club when a man reportedly poked his wife in the chest (Westra van Holthe acknowledged to media at the time that the man didn’t touch his wife’s breasts, otherwise he would have “killed him”).
But Westra van Holthe is a veritable ‘girly-man’ compared to Elferink, who is the original walking, talking barney magnet.
In a single day in June 2014, Elferink managed to get into two separate scuffles, although sadly he only managed to ‘affect’ one citizen’s arrest.
At the first scuffle, Elferink regaled to media the story of how he witnessed a man punch a woman at a shopping centre: “I grabbed him by the lapels and I told him in no uncertain terms his actions were unacceptable (and) he might want to consider walking in the other direction,” Mr Elferink said.
“I think he realised I was earnest in my endeavours and he decided discretion was the better part of valour.”
Or he was just pissed and confused, but yes, Elferink really does talk like that. At least when the cameras are on him.
Later that afternoon, Elferink was watching his kids play soccer at a local oval when his “attention was drawn to a situation that was unfolding between a male and a female”.
Elferink later told media he “ground stabilised” the man until police arrived.
“There were some people drinking in the area and a fight broke out between two gentlemen and a lady stepped in between. She got a smack in the mouth for her efforts. As a consequence of that I intervened. This gentleman remained belligerent so I was able to restrain him until he was handed over to the custody of police.”
‘Lord Elferink of Punchaninny’ was the Minister for Justice at the time.
All of that, of course, is small beans compared to the new Deputy Chief Minister's greatest act of civil duty – the one which made him international headlines in 2012, while participating in a press conference on a Darwin street.
Then Opposition leader Terry Mills was explaining to media that if elected to government, the CLP would not tolerate drunken louts: “There is no excuse whatsoever for someone who finds themselves in a position where they resort to violence….”
Whereupon one of the drunken louts who would apparently no longer be tolerated – an Irish backpacker, as it turned out – charged up behind Elferink and kicked him square in the arse (notably, Elferink dropped the overly-officious language when caught by surprise, yelling “Ay, what the f*ck’s goin on ‘ere”).
Elferink tried to arrest a now perplexed Irishman (who some suggested thought he knew the group), while police drove by and ignored the scuffle. The drunk’s friends intervened, Elferink wrestled him to the ground for a bit, while the Opposition leader looked on, saying gently, ‘John, let him go, John, let him go’). The Irishman broke free and made good his escape, only to be tracked down by Good Citizen Elferink later that day.
The whole incident was caught on tape, and is still to this day what Elferink is best known for, not to mention the first video returned in an Elferink search on Youtube… albeit with a disappointingly low 3,600 views. The video below explains better than I can (and this other video of Elferink doing a presser outside parliament is worth watching too).
All of this, of course, is the long way of getting to the moral of the story. And in this case, it appears there may be a few.
The first is that controlling parliamentarians in the Northern Territory is a bit like herding cats. Slightly mad but loveable cats. Who haven’t eaten for a month.
Another moral to the story might be that disunity is probably death.
Unless Westra van Holthe turns out to be the Messiah, his party is doomed. And even then he’ll need to be photographed by the NT News saving a topless Swedish backpacker from the jaws of a 5-metre crocodile.
The Country Libs must surely now be regarded as a joke. They’re into their third leader in less than three years. And there’s only one jurisdiction more volatile than Queensland, and that’s the Northern Territory.
The 2012 NT election delivered a swing of just five percent, big by federal standards, but piffling by the Territory’s. The 2008 NT election delivered a swing of 9.3 per cent, and 2005 saw one of 11 per cent. Queensland, by comparison, was apoplectic at a swing of 10 per cent.
The NT goes to the polls 18 months from now, on August 27, 2016. Westra van Holthe has an awful lot of work to do, and apart from death and taxes, his only other real certainty in his political life is that his team is likely to be as loyal to him as they were to Mills and Giles.
The other moral to the story is that if you jam a couple of snakes, a horse, a rooster, a dog, two Oxen, a Tiger and a whole pile of other animals including a monkey or two into a room together, even Noah and Dr Doolittle, working in tandem on a WorkChoices-era contract, couldn't keep them apart indefinitely.
Sooner or later, at least a few of them are going to start fighting. And a couple of them will probably bite the hand that feeds them.
Animals tend to do that, particularly political ones from the Top End.
CORRECTION: Astute readers have pointed out that it's still, apparently, the Year of the Horse until mid-February. Chris Graham has conceded Chinese Zodiac is not his specific area of expertise.
* DECLARATION: Adam Giles is the husband of Tamara Giles, a former business partner of Chris Graham, the owner and editor of New Matilda and the author of this article.
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