Some of our planned legislative changes
Published now due to the Murphy situation
09.03.2025
We were going to hold off for a considerable time to properly research and assess what our legislative agenda and its implementation would look like in real life.
It is abundantly clear that the current smorgasbord of policies, guidelines, advice papers, legislation, codes of conduct, employment conditions documents and fancy looking Government web sites full of managementspeak waffle do not stop us being forced to watch and listen to the latest example of corrupt senior management in NT Police. Or anywhere else in the NT Government machinery for that matter.
For some reason we are left with politicians who are supposed to be there to govern the Territory for all of our benefit but instead mismanage the Territory and its workforce resulting in detriment to all of us.
How do we stop this slow moving train wreck you may ask?
There has to be IS a better way to manage obviously corrupt employees.
There has to be IS a better way to attract decent, honest, transparent and responsible politicians and senior management to the NT.
There has to be IS a better way than just accepting being force fed more garbage from the charlatans, the snake oil sales people and conmen and women in positions of power, pulling in huge salaries and very generous benefits packages during the last 10-20 years and beyond.
Change For Better
The current ex-NT Police Commissioner Michael Murphy debacle, amid reporting from various online news media here in Australia and in other countries, has encouraged us to publish some of our more pertinent legislative change ideas now so that you can see exactly where our new political party:
Change For Better is heading.
More importantly, we aim to show you exactly how we are vastly different to the two main parties and why you should ditch them for good and help us deliver a new NT political system of authentic, legally backed honesty, integrity and accountability that punishes the Murphys of the world and their enablers in Government, in full public view with the backing of the people. If we don’t deal with this properly then like weeds, they’ll just keep growing back and eventually take over again, strangling everything else in the garden.
Political Will vs Political Won’t
We Will
Change For Better
NT politics forever. The two big parties time and time again have shown us that they and their cronies/mates/supporters Won’t.
If people can’t or Won’t do it on their own then
we Will Change Legislation For Better Behaviour.
These creations and amendments will enhance our economic situation by reducing a large chunk of waste in NT Depts.
The first piece of new law comes from a plan in Wales in the UK to do just that, here:
‘Elected politicians and candidates in Wales who deliberately lie could face serious consequences, including being removed from office/losing their seat, under proposals in the Welsh Parliament called the Senedd, aimed at restoring trust in politics.’
Research in Wales found more than 2/3 of voters, whose trust in politicians had been completely destroyed, supported a law that criminalising political lying.
Change For Better
would immediately pass legislation like this encompassing the following two ideas:
First: to create a new criminal offence of deliberate deception in order to gain public office or to knowingly assist another in their deception.
Second: to introduce a new civil action against those who lie, with financial sanctions.
Had our legislation been active now Lia Finocchiaro, in protecting a corrupt NT Police Commissioner, who himself has already protected racist and lying police officers from consequences, would be exposed to one or both of these new offences due to this:
‘….[Lia Finocchiaro] had called for a parliamentary inquiry into a “crisis” in the NT Police seven times while leader of the opposition – a pledge that was curiously dropped the day she was sworn in as Chief Minister.’
You don’t get to ‘curiously drop’ pledges and requests like this anymore as soon as you get into power Lia.
If would-be politicians knew they could easily lose their newly won seat in this manner they would either stop lying or they would be quickly and publicly out of a job. A big win for the voting public while letting the rest of the country and world know that we won’t tolerate this kind of duplicitous behaviour.
We have high expectations. It’s ridiculous that Governments have to legislate for honesty but if that’s what it takes to stop people stealing the political and financial benefits gained from lying, then that’s what we would do. Happily.
NT Political moral standards and values have crashed in a pile at the bottom of a septic tank. There is no sincerity, accountability, transparency or empathy.
The only consistent thing is how bad everything is.
Visionary leadership NT Style is: making criminals out of ten year olds.
Change For Better
is brave and decisive enough to pass our ‘Keeping ‘em Honest’ legislation on day one and make it retrospective to cover the four years we spent trying to get into power in the NT, just so you all know we are 100% serious about what we say and how we expect people to conduct themselves, including ourselves. We have to live by the same rules as everyone else, a concept seemingly missing from most NT politicians’ mindsets.
As an added bonus to these new honesty and integrity laws is our suggested tweak to The Crimes (Superannuation Benefits) Act 1989 (Cth):
‘This enables for the forfeiture and recovery of employer-funded superannuation benefits from Australian Government employees who have been convicted [or found guilty by a competent independent body] of a corruption offence(s) and sentenced to more than twelve months imprisonment.
The public policy behind the Act is that Australian Government employees should not receive publicly funded superannuation benefits in circumstances where they have acted corruptly in the course of their duties’.
Let’s make a new Act specifically for the NT. If you fail in your application for Deputy NT Police Commissioner for example, because the most senior panel member wanted his mate in instead of you and was willing to break the rules in order to make it happen, then you can sue both Murphy and Kennon civilly for psychological damage it caused, recovery of lost wages and benefits in addition to any other consequences they have to face.
Pay your own legal bills
This leads us nicely onto this next section we’ve named: the ‘Hylton Hayes Amendment’.
Not only would all kinds of Murphys not be able to get any legal help from Government solicitors to defend themselves should you sue them – as what happens now
it’s Change For Better time to use your own money to fund those proceedings
but if you win compensation then they have to pay for that out of their own money too.
As it currently stands, if you sued your boss for example, for psychological injury due to his bullying, incompetence or deliberate corruption denying you and your family the promotion you deserved on merit, then the Government solicitors, whose salaries you also pay with your taxes, will be sent en masse to do everything in their power to destroy you financially, mentally and physically.
From our experience, they don’t follow the Model Litigant Rules either as they’re supposed to, primarily because there are no consequences for not doing so. Same shit different NTG Dept.
*Change For Better will repair this broken part of the system too by the way.
If you prevail and win a settlement, the Government pays, not the person who wronged you. There is zero incentive to behave properly because the Government sends in their legal army to defend you and they/us tax payers cover all the costs of battle.
This is what happened with Eva Lawler’s best friend, a Regional Director for Education called Hylton Hayes. So close were they that she mentioned him by name in her inaugural speech to Parliament after she was elected. Hayes had campaigned for her along with Michael Gunner at his side.
For many years he had terrorised lowly teachers in the NT by his targeted bullying and mismanagement. Lawler knew all about him and his dastardly ways. He cost the Government an absolute fortune in legal bills, caused tonnes of disruption to education for thousands of mostly First Nations students, poisoned many schools with his toxic management, ruined loads of teachers’ careers and was eventually sacked from Dept of Education by then CE Ken Davies for an alleged affair with one of his principals.
Hayes was sued by an employee who was almost bankrupted but paid not one cent from his own pocket, the NT Government paid for everything including expensive barristers flown in from Sydney to help the three lawyers there from the NT.
Hylton then started a new Consultancy Firm: ‘Hylton Hayes Consultancy’ not long after finally losing his NT Government job and almost immediately was given a secret no tender contract to perform work for Dept of Education that did not need to be done, for $19000.
After being outed by the media, Independent MLA Yingiya Mark Guyula tabled questions in Parliament and Hylton Hayes lost his secret contract pot of gold. The Dept lied to Parliament in their answers but yet again, no consequences for any of those liars.
Rotten To The Core
No doubt this is just the tiniest tip of a very large and dirty iceberg that we are not only going to expose fully but will legislate against aggressively so that none of this ever happens again. Think of a Government Heads On Sticks Act (NT) 2025 and you’ll get a feel for where we’re positioned in our political thinking on this important issue.
And Change For Better would add in what we have named a ‘Phil Brennan Amendment’:
Our founder Ferg Ferguson has plenty of legal experience of fighting the NT Government and winning. After blowing the whistle several times against Dept of Education Ferg accepted another legal settlement this time for defamation.
A few years after blowing the whistle and resigning Ferg was informed in writing by the OCPE, Craig Allen (a personal and close friend of previous Dept of Education CE Gary Barnes who was in charge when Ferg’s principal threatened to kill him and burn down his house for reporting her to the pre-ICAC Office of Public Interest Disclosures – yes really), that Ferg was now ‘ineligible for further employment’ in the NT Government. Talk about whistleblower retaliation!
Yet Phil Brennan after admitting knowingly lying about Ferg online in order to permanently blacken his reputation and who was forced to publish an apology in the NT News, walked out of his General Manager of HR job in Education and was given a new job 200m down Mitchell Street in the Dept of Health with the help of his wife Megan Howitt who worked there. Similar in kind to how Murphy does did his employing. Soon after, Phil and Megan both then took a year’s paid holiday to travel round Asia to escape the political heat and their jobs were waiting for them on their return of course. No ‘ineligibility’ labels for either of them.
Change For Better
will write or amend legislation so that the Phil Brennans of the world can’t attack whistleblowers and/or employees or do something corrupt, lose their job over it then the next day waltz into another high paying job in the same Government. One strike like that and you’re out, in our game.
We don’t tolerate this rubbish.
Why do you get to continue to benefit while whistleblowers and hard working lower level employees continue to suffer?
Not on Change For Better’s watch you don’t.
Think how quickly this kind of deterrent legislation, with proper consequences and enforcement vehicles, would stop most corrupt behaviour from within the whole of the NTG before the ink was even dry on the paper!
The ALP and the CLP haven’t passed anything even remotely like this in the past because they want to protect their own shocking behaviour and that of their mates, yes Andrew Kirkman we’re looking at you.
We see it around us, reported everywhere, ad infinitum: The whole system is broken.
And yes you should be angry but use that anger to get activated.
Let’s collaborate to Change it For Better.
Join us, support us, tell all your friends about us and we can start to dismantle this Crappy Kingdom of Corruption in the Northern Territory, one turd at a time until they’re all flushed away. Never to return.
No more. It ends with us.
We’re not scared to be that Change For Better. Are you?
PS: other creative legislative ideas include taking a scalpel to some of the following or giving birth to completely new Acts:
Information Act aka FOI Act
Public Sector Employment Management Act (PSEMA) – adding an appeal option against forced transfers, level the often abused financial imbalance of free Government solicitors when you are involved in a legal case brought by one of your employees, more to come…
OCPE Act
Real Whistleblower Protections Act
ICAC Act – undoing most if not all of Greg Shanahan’s secret ICAC Act review which protects powerful people. remove recommendatory aspect, give it real teeth and funding.
Lobbyists Register or Restrictions of Lobbyists Act
*extending backwards the statute of limitations for a wider variety of unlawful or illegal behaviours, whistleblower retaliation being one of those at the top of that list.
Teacher Registration Act
Darwin Waterfront Corporation Act
*strengthening legal consequences for all acts of nepotism, deliberately ignoring conflicts of interest, corruption, mismanagement, fraud. bribery.