Healthy Territory, Healthy Future, Maybe not

In politics, as in medicine, the wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong cure. Australia’s Northern Territory (NT) doesn’t suffer from a lack of spending on healthcare, it suffers from a lack of trust in those spending it. The promises of federal health plans to “boost” NT hospitals are not new, but the failures that follow them are stubbornly familiar. When the largest killer of Australians is not cancer or cardiovascular disease but iatrogenesis, harm caused by medical treatment itself, it’s no wonder the public’s faith in bureaucrat-run hospitals is bleeding out.

The Territory has long faced a trifecta of challenges, a scattered population, chronic workforce shortages, and a disproportionate mental health crisis, especially in remote Aboriginal communities. But these are symptoms. The disease lies in centralised control, perverse incentives, and ideological healthcare.

During COVID, Territorians were told to trust a system that locked them down, jabbed them up, and shut out dissent. Clinics became armouries for bureaucrats. Now those same officials ask for more money and more control, without once acknowledging the body count that came from medical mismanagement, vaccine complications, or the silencing of second opinions. You don’t rebuild trust by burying accountability under more acronyms.

The Liberal/National Coalition and its NT affiliate, the Country Liberal Party (CLP), emphasise economic pragmatism and localized solutions. Their approach prioritises incentivising private investment in healthcare infrastructure and offering debt relief to attract doctors and nurses to rural areas. They argue that competition and market-driven efficiencies can address workforce shortages and improve service delivery.

The Coalition’s $9 billion taxpayer funded Medicare investment, aimed at boosting bulk billing and doubling mental health sessions, seeks to enhance access, particularly in underserved regions.  The conservative coalition talks sensibly about decentralising decisions and supporting choice, but their execution always falters. Federally, the Liberals promote public-private partnerships and telehealth initiatives, which, if done right, benefit the NT. The CLP in the Territory supports deregulation and wants more private operators in healthcare, something the public sector unions despise but which patients quietly appreciate when wait times disappear.

What’s missing is courage. The CLP rarely pushes hard enough to dismantle anything, the failing health bureaucracies or to prosecute those responsible for past public health disasters. Their failure to call out iatrogenesis for what it is, a systemic failure, leaves them vulnerable to the charge that they are merely soft reformers of a broken system. The eroded trust in failing systems has never been repaired by a CLP Government or their representatives, and given their current leadership, there is very little chance of that changing.

Labor’s approach to health is to throw taxpayer dollars at bureaucratic systems, then build more layers of “support services” that mostly support each other. Their recent pledge to improve NT hospitals includes vague talk of “mental health investment” and “community-led models”, code for pouring money into ideologically aligned NGOs with no audit trail. Under Labor, healthcare becomes less about treatment and more about narratives. The patient is not a person, they are a demographic. The nepotism and corruption recently coming again to light associated with the CLP has been mastered for decades with labor.

Their plan includes $135 million for urgent care clinics to ease hospital burdens and $1 billion to strengthen GP services, with a focus on training local healthcare workers. Labor’s commitment to Indigenous health, including culturally safe care and clean water access, they have stated aims to rebuild trust fractured by incidents of systemic neglect.

Past Labor promises, such as the 2011 mental health package, delivered terrible outcomes, with funding absorbed by administrative overhead rather than frontline services. Carceral Patients covered under the public guardian who cost the taxpayer over $200k a year under government care, blew up to over $2 Million a year under team health NGO contracts. No results, no KPI’s and no progress, just an expensive glorified baby-sitting industry, the NGO’s scared of any progress that could see the funding dry up associated with one of their cash cows.

In the NT, the local Labor Government continues to promote centralised control, using Darwin as the decision-making capital for communities they rarely visit. Their policy sees hospital managers as public relations officers rather than clinical leaders. They are happy to support public/private partnerships with NGOs primarily started by Labor donors and ex-bureaucratic staff, that provided sub-par care when operating under the safety of the NTG. During the pandemic, this same machinery presided over some of the harshest measures in the country, particularly in Aboriginal communities, further entrenching medical distrust. If Labor has a plan for restoring faith, it’s to hope people forget. The reality is “We will never forget, we will never forgive, and many have decided that a civil war is more acceptable if they ever try that crap again!”

The Greens take a radical stance, pushing for universal healthcare expansions, including dental care under Medicare and uncapped mental health sessions. The Greens want to reinvent the hospital as a social justice hub. Their plan is to “decolonise” healthcare, insert more climate-based planning into medical infrastructure, and redistribute health funding using “equity” metrics. Under their vision, the NT wouldn’t get what it needs but what it represents. The most competent clinicians would be burdened with diversity checklists instead of stethoscopes.

Their $750 million pledge for Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs) aims to empower Indigenous-led care, addressing trust deficits through community-driven models. In the NT, where mental health issues affect one in five residents, the Greens’ focus on community hubs resonates, especially with the parasitic class of bureaucrats and NGOs happy to profit from the suffering of others.

Their mental health policies sound compassionate, until you read the fine print. They prioritise feelings over function, culture over cure. And in typical Green fashion, they propose even more public funding without any measurable accountability.

Phil Scott’s campaign is straight from the Teal playbook, fashionable concern for climate-linked health risks, calls for more “consultation,” and the promotion of community-led health initiatives. Teals pose as sensible centrists but act as soft-Labor satellites. Scott's stance on rebuilding trust in the health system focuses more on “listening” than reforming. His proposals don’t address iatrogenesis, workforce performance, or bureaucratic rot. Instead, he proposes advisory panels, because nothing says ‘efficient healthcare’ like another committee.

His focus on accountability, though, strikes a chord in a territory wary of bureaucratic overreach. However, who does he want to hold accountable? Big Business, the gas industry and who ever disagrees with his radical green agenda.

One Nation stands almost alone in pointing to the elephant in the emergency room. They openly criticise the vaccine mandates, the lockdown excesses, and the suppression of alternative treatments. They call for a Royal Commission into medical mismanagement and demand localised decision-making. Their support base sees doctors as experts, not enforcers, and hospitals as places of healing, not coercion. While their rhetoric is often blunt, it’s rooted in what many Territorians cowards feel but fear to say, the system lied to them, and no one’s been held accountable.

One Nation’s push for community-based mental health services aligns with NT needs, yet their track record, marked by divisive rhetoric, undermines broader appeal. Past attempts at similar nativist policies in other regions led to workforce shortages, as restrictive hiring failed to fill critical gaps. The reality is even if they wish to reduce immigrant intake, they will need those that are willing to enter the country to become Nurses and carers, because Australians won’t step up to do the job.

Statistically, iatrogenesis is a silent epidemic. A recent meta-analysis found medical error to be the third leading cause of death in developed nations. In Australia, that translates to tens of thousands of avoidable deaths and injuries annually, Studies showing over 190,000 Australian killed from 2021 to July 2024 show excess death rates higher than losses of every Australian involved war, yet no mainstream party will touch it. In remote NT areas, the effects are even more severe due to under-reporting, understaffing, and lack of oversight.

Mental health in the NT is in crisis not due to stigma, but due to inaccessibility and system failure. Suicide rates in Indigenous youth are among the highest in the world. But rather than address root causes, like drug abuse, broken families, and spiritual deprivation, governments fund feel-good campaigns and employ social media influencers.

Territorians don’t need more slogans. They need nurses who aren’t burnt out, doctors who aren’t gagged, and facilities run by competence, not compliance officers. Until politicians treat truth like a scalpel, precise and sharp, instead of a sledgehammer the patient will remain critical. The Territory may survive on federal drip-feeds, but it will never thrive until it rips off the bureaucratic bandages and starts real healing.

A healthy Territory begins not with more funding, but with more honesty. And that's something no policy platform yet dares to prescribe.

From the author.

The opinions and statements are those of Sam Wilks and do not necessarily represent whom Sam Consults or contracts to. Sam Wilks is a skilled and experienced Security and Risk Consultant with 3 decades of expertise in the fields of Real estate, Security, and the hospitality/gaming industry. Sam has trained over 1,000 entry level security personnel, taught defensive tactics, weapons training and handcuffs to policing personnel and the public. His knowledge and practical experience have made him a valuable asset to many organisations looking to enhance their security measures and provide a safe and secure environment for their clients and staff.