Crocs in the Cabinet

by Ben Smee, Christopher A. Walsh

Goings-on in Northern Territory politics from 2012-2016 may read like satire, but it is all true. These are stories you couldn't make up. This book is an instruction manual on how NOT to run a government.

In the Northern Territory, politics isn't a numbers game, it's a blood sport.

The recent goings-on in Top End politics make the Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull skirmishes in Canberra look positively civil and Bronwyn Bishop's travel expenses like small change. Not since the night Malcolm Fraser lost his trousers has the Australian political scene provided such entertainment. Laying bare the backstabbing, scandals, power struggles and flawed characters that took the Country Liberal Party from the Northern Territory's dominant political force to near extinction in four short years, CROCS IN THE CABINET may read like a satire, but it is all true. You have to read it to believe it.

Find out exactly how bonkers the NT parliament really was, as you read of ...
- a drunk Territory minister, a seedy Tokyo 'cabaret' club, a $5000 bar tab and taxpayer-funded credit card. Priceless!
- the lewd videos a masturbating minister sent someone, not his wife
- the anguished words 'WE ARE IN LOVE!' echoing from the floor of parliament
- a Chief Minister defying a coup by throwing his phone in a pool
- the 'gone fishing' MP who chose baiting up instead of turning up
- the minister, charged with assault, who sold her 'MY HUSBAND IS HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH MY NIECE' story to TAKE 5 magazine.

Two of the NT NEWS's best journalists, Walkley Award-winning Ben Smee and award-winning Christopher A Walsh, show that the NT NEWS is not just crocodiles and quirky front pages - its hard-hitting investigative journalists also deliver a memorable bite.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Australia

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2016

Reviews

[Callum's Column · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This is not a political book. It's about politicians, but it's not about politics. The Mills and Giles CLP government failed for many reasons, but not because of ideology or its political leanings. This book is about the fall of an empire—about the power struggles, missteps, and flawed characters that took the CLP from the Northern Territory's dominant political force to near extinction, from an election win in 2012 to holding just two seats in Parliament four years later."

The authors begin the book with the above passage. Over the next three hundred pages, almost no major political figure from the CLP government escapes scrutiny. Corruption, affairs, incompetence, and deceit are all laid bare. While such behaviour is unlikely to be unique to the Northern Territory, there is a “rogue frontier” element here that lends these actions a certain local mythology. Scandalous behaviour is not entirely surprising and is even, at times, framed as endearing within the Territory’s narrative of isolation and distinctiveness from the rest of Australia.

The book is an easy read, written like a long tabloid. The authors often reproduce articles they had written for the NT News at the time of particular scandals, with some additional context. However, there is little analysis of why such behaviour was so prevalent within this particular government. For someone new to the Territory, a more thorough exploration of the political landscape would have been helpful. After all, writing a book about politicians inevitably involves writing about politics, despite the authors’ insistence to the contrary.

[Anet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this, mouth agape, at the sheer audacity of elected representatives

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first heard about this book last year, I thought it would be amusing to read. From down south in Melbourne where politics is for real, what I saw in the media about the antics of the recent CLP government looked like high farce, and Crocs in the Cabinet, Northern Territory Politics, an instruction manual on how NOT to run a government seemed like light-hearted entertainment. After all, the population of the entire NT is smaller than many local councils; it’s hard to take their government and its pretensions seriously, I thought.

But through a well-timed slap to my condescension, by coincidence yesterday I read an anguished article by twenty-something Alex McKinnon in The Guardian, entitled ‘Morrison and Co are kneecapping my generation’s future. And laughing about it. This article, triggered by the Question Time antics of the Turnbull front bench, is a salutary reminder that politics isn’t an amusement, it’s about people’s lives.

To see the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/02/11/c...

[Bert · Rating 4 out of 5]

haha muggles are crazy

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read

This book was a bit difficult to follow as the timeline jumped around a bit and I wasn’t very familiar with NT politics. The book needed to be written though, and the authors were obviously some of the best people to provide an overview being journalists from the NT News. As outrageous as some of the incidents this book highlights are, it saddens me to reflect that this exact behaviour of incompetence, fraud and general disregard for the betterment of Australians is rife across the country - at least Darwin has some level of media to try to keep the system somewhat honest.

[Hannah Ekin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining tabloid driven tale of the previous CLP government. Lots of good info on the personalities, power struggles and scandals who drove the crash and burn of the Mills/Giles gov and ended with kind of hopeful thesis that the NT population has grown up and no longer has the time for the immature cowboy antics of that CLP gov. Some outline of what policy stances were successful and which ones crashed and burned, but mostly entertaining and focused on scandal rather than politics, as promised by the NT News journo authors.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. A summary of the CLP’s scandal-plagued time in government between 2010 and 2015. Lots of casual corruption, bad politics, and bad policy. The book is written by two NT News journalists who got so many scoops over the five years from public servants, staffers and politicians who either had an axe to grind or were so outraged by the corruption/incompetence they say they went to the media. The CLP were reduced to two seats in 2015, not enough to be the formal opposition. Shows how bad they were, but also how electorates with 5,000 voters can produce wild swings…

[T.S. Flynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadly, they're not making this stuff up!

[Mirko · Rating 1 out of 5]

It reads as if it was written in three days.

[Brionee Noonan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life in the NT under the CLP was a disaster.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, they do politics differently in the top end. The sheer disregard for integrity in politics is gobsmacking. Kudos to the journalists for pursuing and telling the story. The events in this book could pass as a Betoota Advocate article except they actually happened.

[Katharine (Ventureadlaxre) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is perfectly summed up in the byline. Written by two award-winning journalists from the NT News, it collects the political history that swept the Northern Territory from about 2012 through until now-ish, listing every single embarrassing or just straight up weird event that occurred in this time. The back of the book has a list to get you started:

a drunk Territory minister, a seedy Tokyo club with a $5,000 bar tab and a taxpayer-funded credit card.
the lewd videos a masturbating minister sent someone (not his wife)
the anguished words 'WE ARE IN LOVE!' echoing from the floor of parliament
I could go on, but that's enough to be getting on with, isn't it?

The thing that's possible hard to understand about the NT political system is how small the area really is. The population of the Northern Territory is small, and suddenly a lot smaller when you eliminate everyone who isn't crazy or egotistical enough to bother with politics. One in five Territorians works in a government job, and most can tell you how many ministers or CEOs they've gone through in the last five years. This book provides the commentary on what else was going on behind the scenes if you weren't paying attention (or just lost track at the time when everything was even messier than usual over a few weeks), and as the Territory is so small it's easy to know a few people mentioned in the book if you live up here.
The book sounds like it should be boring (surely we're depressed enough at the state of politics in Australia, America, Brexit... let alone in a place few people care about), and yet it keeps you reading because it really is just that much of an emotional rollercoaster. They sum it up as 'This is Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail meets Fawlty Towers', and they've got that right.

Many people follow The NT News on facebook, twitter and instagram because they tend towards the weird and zany hilarious posts... if you like those, get this book to see their slightly more serious side. You won't be disappointed.

[Jarvis Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The definitive political history of the disastrous 2012-2016 reign of the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory, by two of the key journalists who monitored the government's dysfunction on a daily basis.
There are plenty of ripping anecdotes here, particularly about some of the CLP's most colourful characters like Dave Tollner and John Elferink.

The journalistic style and the pace at which it was published after the election means there is not a lot of deep analysis of the structural reasons for the dysfunction; rather it is attributed to dysfunctional personalities and relationships. There is some new material here but the use of large slabs of previously printed NT News articles (the paper the journalists write for) was a bit clunky and packed impact for someone like myself who observed events as they happened. They will no doubt help provide context for readers outside the NT however.

Overall, an enjoyable, easy read - I finished it in a day.