COMMENT:
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For the good of Katherine, Katherine MLA Sandra Nelson must consider resigning.
While Ms Nelson has already indicated she will not be contesting the 2020 NT election, she is today a lame duck until that time.
There are still 520 days to the next scheduled poll in the NT, Katherine deserves to have the most effective representative possible during all that time.
A by-election seems to best course open to this community now.
Ms Nelson's liking for social media has brought her undone again, and she will be sidelined by an increasingly dysfunctional government.
Ms Nelson came to national attention in August 2017 after a throwaway comment about terrorism she posted on Twitter was roundly criticised.
Today her picture is splashed across the front of the NT's only daily newspaper as having "ratted' on her government through a Facebook group.
Surely Chief Minister Michael Gunner's number is almost up as well.
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It matters not that a colleague chose to spill the beans on their supposedly private online discussion, Ms Nelson chose to criticise her government days after several other government members went rogue when the government was basically declared broke.
Some of those members have chosen to become independents rather than to tough it out with the ALP.
Ms Nelson has declared her love for the ALP and issued a vote of confidence in Mr Gunner's leadership.
This is just spin, or perhaps devotion to a cause which Katherine does not share.
The sort of spin she and others said in their leaked conversation they were tired of, well so are we.
Voters are fed up with the power games of our political leaders.
Watch what happens in the Federal election in a few months.
We saw what happened to Willem, Giles and Co. just a few years ago when Ms Nelson won an unlikely victory in Katherine.
If the CLP find a half-decent candidate, that is unlikely to happen again
Ms Nelson has not built on the following that took her to the narrow win, if anything that support has waned.
"Until the 2020 election I will remain a hard-working member of the Labor Caucus, as the member for Katherine and Michael Gunner has my support," Ms Nelson said this week.
"Every member of the Labor Caucus has my support. Every member. I have full faith in our government's economic management."
We can already see challenges ahead for Katherine in the next two years, challenges which will need effective community leadership.
PFAS, fracking, NT's dire financial straits - we have a bumpy time ahead.
Ms Nelson must also consider what is best for Katherine.
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