EXCLUSIVE: Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro breached the Disclosure of Interests Act by not divulging for two years that her husband Sam Burke was a director of a company that received annual payments from the Darwin Waterfront Corporation and which held a conference at the Waterfront earlier this year with the assistance of an undisclosed amount of taxpayer funds, the NT Independent can reveal.
Five senior police officers who lied to the coronial inquest about the existence of racist awards in the TRG that the Coroner described as “grotesque examples of racism” in her final report will have no action taken against them, the NT Police have said, while former constable Zach Rolfe has accused the officers of colluding “with the support of some members of the NT Police executive”.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has publicly mused about introducing Castle Law in the Northern Territory – the legal doctrine that would decriminalise the use of lethal force for people to protect themselves and their property – saying on radio that she hears from the public about it “a lot” and that “people are very, very interested”, while laughing off the public’s concerns about current bus safety officers being armed with guns.
EXCLUSIVE: The five senior NT Police officers who lied to the Coroner about racist TRG awards approached the president of the police association before filing their false sworn statements, who advised all of them not to file the misleading documents, multiple sources have said, raising further questions about collusion and who ordered the officers to make the statements.
Chief Minister and Police Minister Lia Finocchiaro has remained silent for three days on the Coroner’s findings from the inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker, which found the NT Police exhibited the “hallmarks of institutional racism” and providing a series of recommendations for government and the police force, while the Opposition says Ms Finocchiaro has “failed to show leadership” during challenging times.
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage has found former NT Police constable Zach Rolfe “was racist and worked in and benefitted from an organisation with the hallmarks of institutional racism”, which she said may have contributed to the “avoidable” shooting death of Warlpiri man Kumanjayi Walker.
The legal agency defending Indigenous Territorians needs to “wake up” and start taking action amid the NT’s broken justice system that is long past crisis point, a prominent local barrister has said, while crime continues to soar with a system that cannot manage the strain.
A senior government executive who told Parliament’s Budget Estimates Committee she was not involved in recommending the Environment Minister approve the controversial Mataranka water allocation plan due to a conflict of interest, was forced to change her story when an internal document signed by her was presented that showed she was involved, with other questionable conflicts of interest raised.
Following the previous Labor government’s move to arm public housing and bus safety officers with pepper spray last year, the current Finocchiaro CLP Government has moved to give them guns, as part of a plan to quickly train those officers and police auxiliary members as new “Police Public Safety Officers” to “target antisocial behaviour in public places”.
Disgraced senior bureaucrat Andrew Kirkman is still on the government payroll nearly two months after departing his chief executive position, the CLP revealed at Budget Estimates hearings, but how and why remains a mystery.
The Chief Minister’s $400,000-a-year chief of staff Alex Bruce publicly boasted last year that he wanted to see “some mongrels” cop pepper spray to the eyes and wanted to post it to social media, raising questions about how the CLP developed its “dangerous” policy to arm the public with OC spray, while the police association says it’s concerned its officers could also be injured.
Acting ICAC Greg Shanahan told Estimates hearings on Tuesday that he has recused himself from involvement in an undisclosed number of matters due to conflicts of interest, but refused to publicly disclose his conflicts register, stating only that some of his disclosures related to people he “worked directly with for a long period”.
