When a Northern Territory politician’s lengthy history of driving infringements surfaced in the media this week, it was the last thing the NT Opposition needed.
Arafura MLA Manuel Brown was suspended from driving for three months last year for speeding, then once he got his licence back, he put his foot down and got fined yet again.
The NT Independent also reported that Mr Brown’s 14-year-old son had at one point been photographed driving his vehicle — a report that hasn’t been denied by the shadow minister.
This all came 17 years after Mr Brown received a conviction for driving without due care, following a crash which led to the death of a woman in Katherine in 2009.
Manuel Brown was previously convicted for driving without due care in an incident that resulted in a woman’s death. (ABC News: Marcus Kennedy)
The NT Labor party was already waist-deep in scandals of its own making, from turmoil in the office of Opposition Leader Selena Uibo to the internal fallout from a recent reshuffle.
But Mr Brown’s recent licence suspension had been known to Ms Uibo for months; raising questions about her judgement in not properly and publicly disclosing the matter sooner.
“Hindsight’s always a great thing,” she told ABC Radio Darwin on Friday.
“I do wish now that we had been very up-front.“
Selena Uibo says (ABC News: Pete Garnish)
Ms Uibo said she had expressed her “extreme disappointment” to Mr Brown over his driving record, particularly considering the consistently dire rates of road deaths in the NT.
“That’s not the standard I expect from him or my team,” she said.
Mr Brown conceded in a statement that his speeding was a “pattern of behaviour that I need to address properly” and that he would undertake “driver training to ensure it does not happen again”.
For now, he has managed to hold onto his shadow portfolios including education and training, early years education and young Territorians, among others.
Hurdles in bid to ‘win back confidence’
Ms Uibo has been the Opposition Leader since NT Labor received a brutal electoral drubbing in 2024.
Up until recently, she was overseeing just three other MLAs; all Indigenous members of parliament from remote electorates in the Northern Territory bush.
But in March, her team gained a fresh face, with the victory of former Darwin city councillor Ed Smelt at the Nightcliff by-election in the city’s northern suburbs.
Labor’s Ed Smelt became Selena Uibo’s deputy opposition leader shortly after winning the Nightcliff by-election. (ABC News: Dane Hirst)
Mr Smelt was this month elevated to the role of deputy opposition leader, which saw the surprise dumping of Daly MLA Dheran Young from the job.
Mr Young, who had worked to help steer the party during its period of rebuild, had been a vocal advocate for those hit hard by floods during the devastating recent wet season.
But this couldn’t save his political skin.
The deciding vote to roll Mr Young from the job was Manuel Brown — who went against own left faction to do so.
Mr Young was made collateral by NT Labor with Ms Uibo claiming that his dumping was necessary for the party’s future and to “win back confidence” in Darwin and Palmerston, the urban centres where it was completely obliterated by voters at the last election.
It is hard to see voters regaining confidence in NT Labor after the week that has just gone by.
As the NT Opposition’s internal dysfunction continues, its key reason for existence — holding the Country Liberal Party (CLP) government properly to account — is falling by the wayside.
