EXCLUSIVE: Chief Minister Natasha Fyles’ most senior political adviser’s consultancy firm is the registered lobbyist for a national gas company that the NT Government approved to frack the Beetaloo Basin and develop a massive Middle Arm LNG project, federal records show, raising further serious conflict of interest concerns involving the NT Government’s gas policies, the NT Independent can reveal.
The Fyles Labor Government attacked their own Speaker on Wednesday afternoon after he threw Treasurer Eva Lawler out of the chamber for belligerence, in an unusual scene from the floor of Parliament that followed comments about drinking high-priced Veuve Clicquot champagne and “being out of touch” with Territorians.
The Fyles Government failed to properly hire an ICAC Inspector before the last inspector’s term ended in September, so instead used an undisclosed amount of taxpayer money to strike a high-level hiring panel to recruit for the job, placed ads around the country for more than a month, and then decided to hire the same guy whose contract they let expire, the Chief Minister has revealed in Parliament.
The Territory’s deficit this year will be more than double what the Fyles Government claimed in May, with net debt also expected to continue to increase to $10.2 billion in two years, according to the mid-year fiscal report tabled in Parliament Tuesday night.
Territory Labor’s support has plummeted to new lows that would see it lose power if the election were held today, a new independent poll shows, with only 19.7 per cent of Territorians polled saying they would support the scandal-plagued Fyles Government.
Chief Minister Natasha Fyles failed to publicly disclose on her parliamentary register a potential conflict of interest involving her husband working for a major health provider that has reportedly been paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars by the NT Government, an independent MLA says.
“What is the point of a code of conduct when you see behaviour like this go completely undisciplined,” Territory Labor asked Parliament in 2016, when a CLP minister breached ministerial rules in a private shares scandal. Three days later he resigned. For five days now, Chief Minister Fyles has remained silent on her own breach of the ministerial code of conduct. READ WHAT HAPPENED IN 2016 HERE.
EXCLUSIVE: A national integrity expert has called on the Labor Government’s Cabinet team to immediately deal with Chief Minister Natasha Fyles’ “clear breach” of the NT ministerial code of conduct for failing to divest her shares in gas giant Woodside Energy when she obtained them last year.
ANALYSIS: The Chief Minister now has a lot in common with the previous scandal-plagued Giles CLP government, with no credibility left and her political career in tatters for arrogantly lying to Territorians to further her own interests and failing to accept responsibility.
EXCLUSIVE: Chief Minister Natasha Fyles breached her government’s own ministerial code of conduct by failing to divest her Woodside Energy shares, triggering calls for her resignation and an emergency Cabinet meeting to discuss her future as leader, the NT Independent can reveal.
Chief Minister Natasha Fyles has claimed in a statement amid a growing shares scandal that her grandmother bought her what would become Woodside Energy shares in 1985, and that she has recorded them on her parliamentary Register of Members’ Interests for years – which has been contradicted by parliamentary records that show she did not declare any shares until after the last election.
Chief Minister Natasha Fyles must immediately divest her shares in gas giant Woodside Energy or abstain from any further Cabinet discussions and public promotion of the Middle Arm industrial precinct, a leading national integrity expert says, amid a growing political storm for the Territory Labor leader.
