A Facebook page purporting to have revealed independent candidates for Darwin council as “paedophile puppets” controlled by Territory Labor, has been referred to the NT Electoral Commission for investigation after breaching the Local Government Act and spreading misinformation.
Territorians have a right to know how $25 million of taxpayer dollars are being spent at the Darwin Waterfront Corporation every year, an independent MLA says, following a compromised parliamentary hearing that did not fully investigate unadvertised jobs, poor governance practices and an unusual overlap of board and executive roles, but the Finocchiaro CLP Government have refused to explain how it intends to deal with the matter now, while ruling out a proper investigation.
Three males were arrested and one remains on the loose after the group allegedly stole tools and spray cans from a Tennant Creek business before spraying graffiti on buildings down Paterson Street, using the tools to break into a licenced premise and stealing 134 litres of alcohol, NT Police said.
The way the Finocchiaro CLP Government has implemented its plan to legally arm Territorians with pepper spray as of next month ignored “normal parliamentary processes” and could lead to users of the spray not being held legally responsible for causing death or serious harm, which an NT Greens MLA says creates the potential for “vigilantism” and racially-motivated attacks.
A new report by the government’s Public Accounts Committee into the Darwin Waterfront Corporation has raised fresh concerns about ongoing “governance failures” and a culture of cover-up at the troubled corporation – that received more than $25 million of taxpayer money last year – with one committee member stating the brief public inquiry held in June was “fundamentally inadequate” and permitted the corporation to avoid accountability by withholding key documents.
Territory Labor appears not to have learned any lessons from an ICAC investigation into its misuse of public funds during the 2020 election campaign, with the Auditor-General finding the now-Opposition members used taxpayer-funded staff to produce party-political social media posts in recent months, in breach of the Public Information Act.
The CLP Finocchiaro Government has shut down a censure motion brought against it by an independent Indigenous MLA in Parliament, who said the government was “contributing to increasingly unsafe communities across every part of the Northern Territory” with its unilateral policies.
A little-known ‘networking’ company connected to Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s husband Sam Burke has not made its annual financial reports public since 2021 while its auditor resigned two years ago, the NT Independent can reveal, raising more questions about how much the company received from taxpayers through the Waterfront Corporation to hold a conference this year and the value of ongoing fees paid to it with taxpayer money.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government has used the Saturday night stabbing of a 15-year-old at the Darwin showgrounds to promote changes to the Youth Justice Act it will introduce this week on urgency, without any evidence the measures will reduce crime and while refusing to work with Indigenous groups and leaders to find solutions to the Territory’s crime problem.
NT Police have confirmed they did not undertake full searches of several potential disposal sites of Peter Falconio’s remains mapped out for them by a world-leading expert in “no-body” homicide cases in 2007, and have yet to action the entire scope of the search report.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s failure to disclose her husband’s directorship in a company linked to the Darwin Waterfront Corporation for two years, while at the same time publicly demanding other politicians follow the rules, is the type of double standard that destroys the public’s trust in its elected officials, an independent MLA says.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro must explain why she breached the Disclosure of Interests Act by keeping her husband Sam Burke’s directorship in a company connected to the Darwin Waterfront secret for two years – while she was criticising the previous Labor government for its failures to properly disclose – and simply resign, the Opposition says.
