The NT News Editorial was pretty blunt. The new administrator was a nice bloke, “a personable man,” but it went on to damn him with the faintest of praise, saying he had “more abilities in other directions than he is likely to need for success” in his new role.
The editor raised a broader, “more pertinent” query about the position of administrator, querying whether “the post itself retains any point.”
“The time has arrived,” the editor thundered, “when it is reasonable to ask whether the administrator is redundant and whether the business of administration would, in fact, be simpler, more direct and more realistic without him.”
Attractive as it might be to think this editorial fury was directed at the most recent—our 24th—administrative appointee, sadly it was not, even though those words might fit these times as well as they did 56 years ago.
The NT News editorial—under the heading “Redundant First Citizen—appeared in the edition of Thursday, 22 January 1970 and concerned the appointment of Mr F. C. (Fred) Chaney—our 10th—administrator of the NT from 1970 to 1973, when he was dismissed following the election of the Whitlam Labor government in late 1972.
As Barbara James noted in Fred Chaney’s entry in the NT Dictionary of Biography, his tenure had been tenuous following the proposal by the new Minister for the Northern Territory, Kep Enderby, to abolish the administrator’s position.
Enderby’s reforms followed the creation of the position of Deputy Administrator in 1971 and the appointment of Allan O’Brien to that role. O’Brien took on a “great deal” of the work that had previously been Chaney’s responsibility. Chaney was effectively sent on extended gardening leave.
Additional constitutional changes followed that would further attenuate the ever-diminishing powers and responsibilities of the Administrator, including the introduction of a fully elected Legislative Assembly in 1974 and limited self-government in 1978.
This diminution of powers, responsibility and effectiveness of the role of the NT’s administrator has continued to this day, such that he or she is now largely the holder of a putatively vice-regal but effectively symbolic office, equipped with a similarly symbolic rubber stamp for legislation and selected appointments.
As tempting as it has been for some commentators to bloviate about the current incumbent’s allegedly extensive constitutional powers such a characterisation is inapt and readily dispelled by a perusal of the administrators’ limited statutory duties at the NT Government House website*.
Perhaps the only statutory function listed there that could not be exercised by a competent servant of the public—and without the faux vice-regal expense and flim-flam—is the exercise of “the Prerogative of Mercy”.
Space doesn’t allow for a detailed examination of that ancient, reserved power but I can only find one example of it being exercised by an NT administrator.
That followed the petitions to Administrator Vicki O’Halloran—our 22nd—by the mother of Zach Grieve, who in 2013 was convicted and sentenced to an NT special—mandatory life imprisonment—with a 20-year non-parole period.
In 2018 administrator O’Halloran exercised the prerogative, reducing Grieve’s non-parole period to 12 years, resulting in his release in October 2023.
But the existence of such a curious and rarely used power cannot justify the preservation of the now well and truly redundant position of NT administrator.
56 years on surely it is time to heed the word of that NT News editor long passed and to make the 24th—and arguably least worthy—administrator truly redundant.
- If you are interested in more information about previous NT Administrators or their responsibilities and duties have a look at the NT Government House (home of the Administrator) website here.
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