By ERWIN CHLANDA
Rebel Parliamentarian Alison Anderson expects to be dismissed from the Alice Springs branch of the CLP but she says she will wear this as a badge of honour for someone whose main focus is representing her electorate.
She says she will put her case to the party’s management committee but does not expect to be able to keep her membership in the ruling party. Ms Anderson says she is not losing sleep over it.
She will now move to the cross benches together with Top End bush Parliamentarians Larissa Lee and Francis Xavier. The three, as a tight group, will vote on legislation on its merits, on “good policy”.
No deals have been done with Labor nor independent member Gerry Wood.
Ms Anderson says the reason for the rift is entirely the government’s failure to keep election promises for the 18 months it has been in power, involving “heaps of money”.
She says there is a long list of unfulfilled promises – including football lights at Hermannsburg, men’s sheds at Santa Teresa and Ampilatwatje, where senior men can educate young men, and sealing of the Santa Teresa road. So far just $10m has been allocated for the road, enough for just 10km of the 85 kilometers.
In Alice Springs shops are closing, there are no major projects: “Nothing is happening.”
Ms Anderson says the trio’s “suggestion” that bush MLA Bess Price, elected with keen support from Ms Anderson, be removed as a minister was not a personal issue, but related to Ms Price’s “non performance”.
PHOTO: Ms Anderson and Mr Giles in more harmonious days.
Only surprise is that it took so long.
Regardless of what one may think of Alison and what she may have allegedly done in her past life, she is for the community and for the benefit of the community.
Adam Giles and David Tollner have opened up a Pandora’s box in which “Hope” has long gone and the beginning of the end of the CLP being in government. Only a fool would run against Alison in the next election – long live the Queen for certain the King and his cohorts are dead!
Is anyone perfect. Thank you, Alison, for all you did for the town camps.
If Alison is working towards bringing down another government. I would like her to remember what the neglect from the last Labor government did to Alice.
We are about to get a few major projects up this year. If she brings down this CLP government now we will lose those projects. Labor has always punished us due to the big number of CLP members here. Please Alison. Hang in there for Alice.
We need this for our town. Just hang in there until the next election. For Alice.
What a shame the rest didn’t follow the walk out leaving Giles, Tollner, Styles, Conlan, Higgins and Kezia to be shown as the incompetents they are. Another – possibly the last – leadership fail on Giles behalf. Any decent media would be out talking to the elders and asking their thoughts on the so called leader and the shenanigans. The actual story would then show who is incompetent here – Giles or Anderson.
Were the promises Alison listed actually promises made by the CLP? I can’t find anything and a Google search only turns up mentions of sealing the sections of the Santa Teresa road which flood when it’s raining (which as stated in the article is actually being done).
The same goes for the men’s sheds and the footy lights at Hermannsburg, can’t find anything about those either.
Has Alison actually made demands of government to complete these so called ‘promises’?
@ Daniel Davis, Alice CLP branch member: as you would rightly know as you were part of the management of the CLP branch at the time – they were part of the region promises made up in the lead up to the 2012 election.
As a CLP member (i.e. team member) your time would be better spent supporting the electorate in such times, not trying to re-emphasise the Giles tactic of divide and conquer because you have a difficult member to dis-endorse.
The fact the CLP management are laboring on that decision shows it’s not such a good idea. If they (management) were fully behind the “Chief Minister” then they would have supported Alison’s suggested sacking and it would have been carried out by now. Who would you like to see in her spot, word on the street is you guys have already been speaking with Leo Abbott.
@ Aaron, thanks but you’ve just reinforced my point. As you rightly point out I was on the management of the branch at the time and despite trawling through my extensive list of media releases I have saved from the 2012 election I can’t find anything about these specific promises.
Next time you comment try not to be a coward and put your full name to it.
@DD. Typical response. Yes, you would like a name to try and hunt down and affect, wouldn’t you / the CLP. I’m right here and accessible in Alice. No I don’t vote Labor or Greens, no I don’t work for the government – thank gawd.
I was a CLP voter and supporter. But with this carnage – forget it.
My vote will be to the one that offers some sort of basic common sense next time round. No coward here, great to have true “freedom of speech” in this publication, and country.
@Mark Lockyer: All the work done on the town camps was Federal Labor money and completed under the previous NT Labor govt.
The town camps were shocking, dogs eating people, smashed houses, overcrowding – what took them so long to fix these problems in the town camps? No wonder why people drink grog all day long. There was no hope for them.
@Mark Lockyer: Why, in your eyes, should the tax pay payer have been expected to foot the bill … yet again?
The tax payer did not destroy the accommodations or stop any of the tenants from picking up rubbish, tending lawns and/or gardens, performing simple maintenance and upkeep in their own respective yards.
I’m sure the full market rental monies, being received by the respective agency, would be used in maintaining those facilities as well.
I have lived in the town camps and in urban housing. If I was to live like that out of a town camp I would get kicked out. Ask someone whose job that was.
The CLP appear to have nominated persons who are not conservative by nature but labor supporters, such as the three who have resigned, and Kezia. She has now been publicly exposed as a Labor snitch. The party must be totally dysfunctional to appoint such loose cannons.
@janet brown: agreed Janet. What a lost opportunity these mob are. And with all the recent goings on we have Adam PLAYING GOLF for god sake!
What a terrible message that is. Especially after him saying he couldn’t go with the rest of the nation’s leaders and the PM due to “his diary”.
Just dismal. I shudder to think what’s next. God help them if they don’t win Blain! I heard again just yesterday, Tollner is yet again trying to summons the troops. I have to say – he just may well be better. Adam’s been a bad, immature long shot that has failed us all.