You’d have to wonder how long the Crown’s new representative in the Northern Territory can survive in the viceroy’s post.
Amid protests and demonstrations, David Connolly, a past president of the NT Cattleman’s Association, was sworn in as Administrator of the Territory late last month.
Shortly before his elevation some of his racist, sexist, bigoted social media posts emerged, such as:
First Nations people are too privileged compared to the inequality experiences by white people … PM Albanese is like a Blue Whale’s “anus” … Abuse about a transgender athlete … Lighting of fires by Aboriginal people is arson and they should be fined, “You cannot convince me they are going good for the country” … Criticism of Welcome to Country ceremonies … Mocking a victim of domestic violence and date rape … And a racist joke accompanied by emojis: “My part indigenous truck driver told me he slipped off his truck today, banged his head and will get a black eye. I replied ‘how would you tell’?”
The NT Independent published a slew of his horrible online comments (now deleted).
Aborigines account for nearly a third of the population of the Northern Territory so it is understandable there was widespread hostility to his swearing-in, which was painfully performed by an unhappy GG Sam Moystyn.
Days before he was officially anointed, Connolly issued a grovel – he didn’t mean to cause offence and that the posts “are no reflection of my personal core values”.
It is merely the sort of stuff from “the pastoral world” and that he was just a “naive cattleman”. Anyway, he’s sorry if his Tweets triggered any bad memories.
The Labor opposition boycotted the swearing-in ceremony while traditional owners from Arnhem Land said Connolly would not be welcome on their land.
The Cattlemen’s Association attempted to put Connolly in his place by acknowledging it works with Indigenous people and employs women in leadership roles as part of a “diverse and modern” NT cattle industry.
The CLP government has stuck by him. GG Jolly John Kerr didn’t last long after sacking the Whitlam government, as he was booed and jeered every time he set foot in public. He was a right royal embarrassment.
The same is likely to be the case with the viceroy in the Northern Territory.
For 11 years (2013-2024), he was manager of the Tipperary Group of Stations, part-owned by Melbourne KC, Allan Myers. He was president of the NT Cattleman’s Association between 2021 and 2024 – so his role as president overlapped with his time as Myers’ station manager.
The Tipperary Group of Stations comprise three enormous pastoral leases: Tipperary East & West, Litchfield and Douglas West – a total of 386,001 hectares.
TGS is a partnership between Myers’ Branir interests and the Malaysian investor Jason Jeap’s Booloomani Pty Ltd. The Tipperary spread was bought by the partnership in 2016.
Myers, in a celebrated shock to the Melbourne “establishment”, stormed out of the Melbourne Club after Yeap’s membership nomination was withdrawn.
He wrote to close associates explaining that he would no longer be part of an institution that discriminated on the basis of race.
In 2017, Senator Nigel Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, assigned to the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, John Mansfield, a former Federal Court judge, the job of reviewing “detriment issues” relating to 16 long-standing native title land claims.
“Detriment” relates to objections from commercial organisations claiming that native title would result in adverse impacts on their businesses.
These claims have sat around in ministerial too-hard baskets for years. Mansfield was commissioned to clean it up.
On its 45 kilometre north-west boundary, Litchfield adjoins unalienated Crown land which runs down to the Daly River.
It was recommended for a grant of Aboriginal title in 2003, and the previous owners of Lichfield (pre-Branir-Booloomani) made no claim for detriment at the time.
Connolly, then the manager of TGS, sent Mansfield submissions objecting to the native title claim.
Even though he was involved in the partnership’s purchase of the pastoral lease, he told Mansfield he knew nothing about the Lower Daly land claim until he heard about the detriment review. Needless to say, he objected to the claim, adding that a planned tourism attraction on Litchfield Station would be adversely affected if title was granted to the Aboriginal claimants.
Mansfield was unimpressed. He said in his report to the minister that the Aboriginal interests “should not be prejudiced because of the purchasers’ failure to conduct due diligence purchase procedures or because of inadequate third-party advice”.
As for the tourism attraction:
“… its plans for diversification are prospective, rather than actual; it does not have authority to conduct other than the usual pastoral activities on its lease … More generally, there is a very real question about the weight to be given to such detriment claims standing against the grant of the land to traditional Aboriginal owners.”
The NT Cattleman’s Association, of which Connolly was an active member at that time, also weighed in about Litchfield, submitting to Mansfield that banks, riverbeds and intertidal zones that abut pastoral leases should not be granted as Aboriginal land.
“A grant of this [Lower Daly] Land Claim area, or any other similarly situated land claim, to a land trust does nothing beyond providing advantage to that land trust built on the detriment to the pastoral lease holder.”
Mansfield was scathing:
“It is tantamount to an assertion that no grant of unalienated Crown land to the traditional Aboriginal owners should be made where it might adversely affect the ‘interests’’of a pastoral lease holder, using ‘interests’ in the widest sense to include whatever the lease holder might do or choose to do some time in the future, and whether or not that activity is or is not permitted under the lease at the time, and whether or not it includes the pastoral leaseholder using the unalienated Crown land for a profit making business.”
The NTCA, in reprisal, threatened to withdraw from the Commonwealth-funded Real Jobs program, which assists with employment opportunities in the fishing and pastoral industries for Indigenous Australians.
In March 2024, Connolly gave a rousing, race-baiting speech to end his term as president of the NT Cattleman’s Association. His spray of attacks included PM Albanese (a liar); money wasted on the campaign for the Voice; expenditure on Aboriginal welfare and programs (it divides Australia on the basis of race); the Labor Party in general and weak judges (who are soft on law ‘n’ order).
He included a flourish that endeared him as a CLP favourite to land in the Administrator’s post two years later:
“Let’s speak honestly about this for once. The main group of people perpetrating these criminal actions have been in Australia for 60,000 years. The English didn’t send ’em here. They are the product of failed policy and a soft-on-crime attitude.”
It’s not just shameful social media rants that haunt him, but also carefully prepared statements that cement his reputation as King Charles most regrettable representative Down Under.
Most of the pastoral estate, which covers 45% of the land mass of the NT, is subject to native title claims. We should be reminded that this is not land owned by pastoralists, it is leased from the Crown.
Murray McLaughlin is a long-standing Darwin-based journalist who is writing a book about the territory – its politics, Indigenous issues, and land management.
On January 20, he sent an email to Allan Myers KC:
“I am a retired journalist, now writing a book about the Northern Territory.
As you may be aware, the proposed appointment of Mr David Connolly as Administrator of the Northern Territory has attracted criticism because of his past posts on social media, and his address as retiring president to the 2024 annual conference of the Northern Cattlemen’s Association.
Were you aware of Mr Connolly’s social media posts before this present controversy?
Were you aware of the content of Mr Connolly’s 2024 address to the NTCA conference before his delivery?
Whether or not you were previously aware of any of these publications, what is your opinion now about them?
Also, did you agree with Mr Connolly’s submissions about the Lower Daly land claim to the detriment review by Aboriginal Land Commissioner Mansfield which was tabled in February 2019?
What is your opinion about Commissioner Mansfield’s criticisms of Mr Connolly’s submissions?
Regards,
Murray McLaughlin
There’s been no reply from the Mighty Melbourne Silk.
Here’s Connolly’s farewell speech as President of the NTCA, March 2024 …