'Larissa and I were called lubras. I'm 56 ... The last time I heard that word was when I was 14 or 15'

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Three rebel Country Liberal party members threatening to bring down chief minister Adam Giles’s Northern Territory government say they have been racially harassed by their CLP colleagues.



Alison Anderson, who with Larissa Lee and Francis Xavier walked out of question time in the Territory parliament on Thursday, told National Indigenous Television that she and Lee had been subject to a racial slur intended to describe a “bad” Indigenous woman.



“There was an incident where Larisa and I were called ‘lubras’,” she said on Monday. “I’m 56 ... The last time I heard that word used was when I was 14 or 15 and it should not be used in our society today.”



In the same interview, Xavier, a Tiwi Islands elder, said he was the subject of “inappropriate” treatment in the government’s offices.



"Every time I walk in on the fifth floor, they keep saying, 'Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, crazy Frankie,’ ” he said.



Anderson said, “We tried to rise above it, to not let it hurt you, but it does hurt you.”



None of the three identified who was behind the offensive language.



Lee said that the group had not decided their next course of action but would probably leave the party for the crossbenches. “If we are going to walk out, me, my colleagues, Alison and Francis, we are going to walk out,” she said, adding that leaving the CLP would be “the proudest moment of our lives”.



“I’ve basically given up because there’s no hope for Aboriginal people in this party. There isn’t,” she said.



It was the first appearance of the trio since Anderson was suspended from the parliamentary wing of the CLP on Friday by Giles, after weeks of internal strife that has plunged the government into turmoil and threatens to send Territorians to an early election.



Disagreements within the party spilled into the open when health minister Robyn Lambley, on International Women’s Day on 8 March, said tourism minister Matt Conlan had told Anderson to “fuck off, you cunt” during a cabinet wing meeting.



Conlan apologised two days after the 17 February meeting, but when questioned by reporters Giles at first denied the incident had ever taken place.



The weeks that followed saw the three bush MLAs – Anderson, Lee and Xavier – form a united front expressing their unhappiness over a range of issues, including concerns by Anderson that the Giles government was failing to “uphold our promises to the bush”.



Speaking to the ABC, Anderson warned that she was under pressure from her constituents and that if nothing changed it would be “20 years before Aboriginal people ever have faith in the Country Liberal party again”.



When suspending Anderson from the parliamentary wing of the party on Friday, Giles accused her and the others of “holding a gun to our head” and said their conditions for ending the crisis – published by NT News on Friday – were unreasonable.



Over the weekend, prime minister Tony Abbott rejected calls by the rebel trio to intervene in the Territory. “Alison Anderson is a very, very fine and articulate voice of Indigenous Australia – I deeply respect Alison Anderson,” Abbott told reporters in Sydney.



“In the end though, the relationship between Alison and Adam Giles is a matter for Alison and for Adam.”



In a sign of the rancour inside CLP ranks, the NT Speaker posted an extraordinary message to Facebook on Friday saying she had nothing nice to say about Anderson and Lee, and that Xavier “will be taken care of the by the Tiwi land council and Tiwi elders”.



The standoff is taking place in the shadow of a 12 April byelection for the seat of Blain, left empty when former chief minister Terry Mills retired in February, a year after Giles took his job in an internal coup.



Should Labor win the seat, and the three disgruntled CLP members walk out on the party, Giles would be left leading a minority government relying on the supply and confidence votes of independent MLA, Gerry Wood.



Giles’s office has declined to comment.

