NT Election 2024: Voting as a legal duty but done with a resigned ...

“There’s-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer,” Slim Dusty sang.

Gordon Parsons, who wrote the song in the mid-1950s, could obviously not have envisaged the 2024 Northern Territory general election when he thought there could be nothing worse than a beer-less pub.

The build up to the Territory election seemed like the real Build up; a political sweatbox with stifling, soaring political hubris that depressed any ability to take action, and with the clouds coming over to give the promise of a relief that never comes. And it just goes on and on.

Some Territorians would consider that in voting, they are faced with a political party cult monster that grew out of democracy; the beast with two backs.

Add to that a sprinkling of Greens and independents that find it difficult to get elected in the democratic system we have.

Around some polling booths, party members and the public the NT Independent spoke with, seemed unsure what the result of the election would be, with an assumption the CLP will win but maybe with more independents voted in.

But the mood of the people, outside of a resigned disillusionment, is hard to pick.

Mark Hatton was voting at the Parap Primary School on Saturday afternoon, and said he had come down to vote with his son, who was voting for the first time.

He said he had been looking forward to voting, and wanted a change of government, primarily to reduce crime and to “turbo-charge” the economy.

“It actually really feels quite civil and everything is really quite a peaceful experience to do the voting this time,” he said.

“So, yeah, everything’s been feeling good…because you can just walk in, pick up the cards that you want to, and then make the vote, and there’s no one necessarily trying to potentially just give you any influence, and that it feels really easy to get in and do it.”

He is referencing how the hoards of party people, and independents’ supporters, who hand out how-vote-cards, are caged like wild animals – in a 10-metre exclusion zone from the front of the voting centre.

The animals are not as happy about the human voters seem to be.

“I have been looking forward to voting. Yeah, so I’m looking forward to a change,” Mr Hatton said.

“Seeing the jails over full, and with crime continuing to occur at the level in which it is, I think there needs to be a change of direction.

“I hope, I hope so [that the CLP will make a difference], because I don’t like the way that the police force has been treated. I think that’s been very disappointing.

“And I hope that these things will be changed.

“I’ve believed that there is a move for change, and I’m hopeful to see that that will happen.

“I’m pro-development of the Northern Territory, and like to see that things will progress.

“I think that it’s been stymied in many ways over many years. And I think that if we could further turbocharge economic development in the Northern Territory, I think that would be a good thing.

“And I think that the CLP are probably the best placed party to deliver that.”

But not everyone necessarily believes there is much of an option when presented with a choice between Labor and CLP, with one person dramatically telling the NT Independent we were at “end stage democracy”, which was really a battle between good and evil – the major parties versus the independents, who had woken up to the parties’ distortion of the system.

The Athenians were the residents of the most famous of the Greek city states to develop democracy, over a period of time beginning in 507 BC, when they created a system of popular government which ran the majority of the next 200 years.

The Greeks respected wisdom like current day political parties value self interest.

They sought to free people by taking the power out of the hands of one person, like a king, and put power in the law.

The rule of law – which was not restricted to democracies – meant even the rulers had to follow the law, which was supposed to prevent arbitrary abuses of power, and made people more driven by reason and less by emotions.

It was an expression of equality under the law.

But we are in the Northern Territory.

And especially since 2012, there has been an erosion of integrity, and if you expand out the rule of law to include being held to account for ethical and conflict of interest breaches, there is a loud and clear demonstration that those in power, and those who are obedient to, and enable, those in power, thinking senior public servants, and senior police, are held to a much lesser standard.

So it seems we have kept the power out of the hands of one, but slowly over time we have put it in the hands of two; almost interchangeable parties, where power and influence are the guiding principles – getting driven around in white Lexuses – and the law, as far as the white collar part of is concerned, is for others.

Just in the last year 18 months or so, you could see senior ministers, department heads, police commissioners and the corruption commissioner, all appearing immune from the consequences of their actions.

Even the first Alice Springs curfew – the act that Chief Minister Eva Lawer did that may have been one of the steps that stopped Labor being wiped out at this election – may have been illegal, with questions raised by legal groups and the police union, with the Emergency Management Act intended to be used for natural disasters, such as cyclones and floods.

While we have not dipped back to the tyranny of the elite, we suffer from a culture of a power elite where there are too many self-enrichers and grifters.

Like all things humans touch, that Athenian democracy was messy and there were injustices outside of the fact that most people were not part of the democracy. And there are deep problems with those who are drawn to power, who and how parties select people to vie for power and what they do when they obtain power.

Brian Klaas is an associate professor in global politics at University College London, and in his book Corruptible, he examines this along with the systems that permit it.

“The story of who gets into power is also linked to who we need to keep out of power…” he writes.

“…In the modern era, but it’s important to zero in the dark triad of traits, Machiavelliansim, psychopathy and narcissism.

“It’s a minority of power seekers who are high on those traits…

“There’s an innate tendency in human beings to sort ourselves by how much we want power. Some of us don’t want it all. Some of us are absolutely obsessed with it.

“The interaction between the individual and the system either dials up those individual personality traits, and attracts those people attracted to power, or it can, or acts, those traits and tricks people, and might not consider themselves naturally daunt a bower, but who are very good at wielding it.

“…It’s interesting also to turn the mirror back on ourselves. Power is relational; we talk about seizing power but ultimately – at least in democratic societies – you need the followers to be powerful, and it’s important therefore for us to understand the cognitive biases that mean that we (as a society) keep gravitating towards people who are clearly unfit for the job.”

Modern critics would likely say that ancient Greece had restrictive qualifications for political involvement, while some in the ancient world viewed democracy as being too inclusive.

Plato argues the organisation of the city must be confided to those who possess knowledge.

The Athenians liked men (participation was only open to adult, free male citizens – perhaps 30 per cent of the population) who had wisdom that was applicable to the real world.

“Cherish wisdom as a means of travelling from youth to old age, for it is more lasting than any other possession,” Bias of Prine is credited with saying.

Knowledge and wisdom, and the lack of it, is a problem of both the voter and the people who are running the place.

You would think we have enough Greeks in the Northern Territory to have a strong democracy.

They had Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; we have Mamouzellos, Vatskalis, and Manicaros.

Moderns critics could argue our democracies now are systems that the masses actually do not want to be involvement but are stuck with.

Mitch Peacock was voting at the Darwin Entertainment Centre, and said he had no preference to vote, he was just doing it because he legally had to.

Because of course, the laws and consequences apply to some.

“It is just interesting that all the advertisements are just picking on each other,” Mr Peacock said.

“It doesn’t really say what they are fighting for. It is all just smoke and mirrors. That is the general feel of it.

“We are in a bit of a tight spot, the economy seems to be struggling a bit, and we are having a bit of an identity crisis as to whether they want to continue the mining boom, the defence boom, and all that.

“Or they want to cut all those ties which will probably make the economy suffer.”

He said as an ex-Victorian it was hard for him to say if he was confident about the Territory’s future because it felt so “unstructured”.

“It seems reactive, not proactive at the moment,” Mr Peacock said.

“I am not 100 per cent sure [if the CLP would be different}, I feel it is a bit like the Australian government; no matter who gets in there are always going to be issues.

“There are people who are left out.

“I don’t really feel like it [voting]makes a difference, “

Former Northern Territory independent politician Gerry Wood recently wrote an opinion piece where he argued for a “consensus government”, which operates in two Canadian territories and where, instead of parties, all members are independents, and the members who don’t become ministers hold a significant balance of power.

There should have been a section at the bottom of the ballot papers, where the people of the Northern Territory, like the Assembly of citizens of ancient Athens, were able to write their ideas to strengthen our democracy, or draw dick pics, each to their own knowledge and wisdom.

Cleisthenes, who is sometimes referred to as the father of Athenian democracy, allied himself with the popular assembly against the nobles and imposed democratic reform; and so the general assembly of all Athenian free men was created, with each man having one vote in a direct democracy.

What would he think of the Northern Territory election?

“There’s-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or bland, than to stand in the election booth with ballot paper in hand,” he may have written.