Articles by Bob Gosford

What possible connection could there be between the Hells Angels motorcycle club, ex-federal politician Mal Brough and the Northern Territory Intervention? As The Northern Myth noted last week, NT Deputy Chief Minister Dave Tollner, wearing his Business Minister’s hat, had issued a decree that, pursuant to his powers under section 33AA of the NT’s Liquor Act, at […]

It took the Country Liberal Party’s parliamentary wing a long time to get around to sacking Terry Mills as the Northern Territory chief minister. They finally nailed him yesterday. In fact, it played pretty much as Crikey called it a week ago. The delay was down to Alison Anderson, who spiked Giles’ grab for the leadership and […]

At 6.01pm last night Northern Territory Country Liberal Party Deputy Chief Minister Robyn Lambley quit and threw her party — just six months into government after 10 years in the wilderness — further into chaos. Her brief presser was devoid of relevance and reasons for her resignation: “The government has made a number of extremely tough but necessary decisions […]

Syd Stirling spent 18 years in the NT Parliament and was a long-term deputy chief minister and treasurer before retiring in 2008. Yesterday he went on local radio to slam the move by Julia Gillard to parachute Olympic gold medallist Nova Peris into the Senate — in the bluntest of language. “I bagged Gillard and her absolute contempt for […]

Unlike the several hundred thousand Australians that will be glued to their small screens on Friday and Saturday nights this week watching a marshmallow “interview” the biggest fraud in sporting history, I’ll have something better to do. Like eating my own liver. Or standing outside a bar in Darwin’s Mitchell Street picking fights. I’ll do […]

Twenty years ago a young man gave evidence to Northern Territory Police investigating allegations the principal of his school had systematically abused children on the Tiwi Islands just to the north of Darwin. Ten years later that evidence — supported by his oral evidence in court and a further supporting affidavit — was recalled in his application for compensation […]

In mid-July 2008, Mike Turtur, director of South Australia’s Tour Down Under, was a very worried man. His race was “in crisis” following the decision by 17 of the 18 professional teams that formed the International Cycling Union’s ProTour circuit not to renew their licenses for 2009. The Tour Down Under had only received entry into the prestigious — though highly […]

Cycling Australia, the self-described “principal body for the competitive sport cycling in Australia”, yesterday issued a statement ”on behalf of the board to all members and supporters”. In times of institutional crisis this is what we expect of our peak bodies — a settling statement that will calm the nervous, give hope to the doubtful and answers to the querulous. Sadly, […]

Has Adelaide’s Flinders University and its Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer  — incorporating the LIVESTRONG Cancer Research Centre  — been caught up in the murky web of relationships around Lance Armstrong and his related companies the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Livestrong.org and Livestrong.com? There is now no doubt Armstrong is a fraud. As ABC journalist Francis Leach said yesterday on the ABC’s Offsiders: “The […]

There is now a very real question as to whether the Northern Territory general election on August 25 was the dirtiest election we’ve seen in the NT’s short self-governing history.

One week ago, public servant and refugee advocate Vikki Riley lay on a hospital bed fighting for life after a terrible accident. She passed away a few hours later. I wrote a brief piece on her tragic end. On Wednesday afternoon last Democratic Labor Party Senator for Victoria John Madigan and South Australian independent Senator Nick Xenophon proposed a […]

A tribunal in New Zealand has recognised — perhaps for the first time in legal history — that a river has personality sufficient to allow it to be heard in a court of law.

Terry Mills was sworn in as the new Northern Territory Chief Minister last Wednesday and has hit the ground — or at least the airstrips — running. Late last week he travelled to Nguiu — the small Bathurst Island township that won Country Liberal Party candidate Francis Xavier Maralampuwi his seat in the new NT Parliament — to Ramingining in central Arnhem land and […]

It’s never a good look when the leader of a political party gets mugged by his own caucus, more so when he hasn’t even been sworn into office after a historic victory. That’s just what happened yesterday to Northern Territory Country Liberal Party leader and Chief Minister-elect Terry Mills, who was rolled over his choice […]

By rights, the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party leader Terry Mills should have won government in 2008. Back then, Labor chief minister Paul Henderson  — spooked by bad advice, sensing a chance to further monster a weakened CLP and seeking a personal electoral mandate after rolling Clare Martin the previous November in a bloodless coup — ran to an election […]

Rumours are swirling that some candidates are playing the race card as the NT gears up for its election tomorrow. Crikey’s man in Darwin reports on the campaign and gives his prediction of the result.

Absent of any dramatic events over the next few days, Paul Henderson’s NT Labor Party is a shoo-in to win the NT election next Saturday.

For Kwementyaye Briscoe, Wednesday January 4 was just another too-hot day in a too-short life.

Lance Armstrong’s reputation and deified place in sporting history — a position that for many is already suspect — now stands to be torn to shreds.