Three board members of Legal Aid NT have resigned following Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby’s appointment of Catherine Voumard as the organisation’s new director, which contradicted an independent selection panel’s recommendation, an internal email shows.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro will not say if she recommended the Attorney-General directly appoint Catherine Voumard as director of Legal Aid NT, a decision that undermined the recommendations of an independent panel struck to hire for the role, which Ms Voumard was not interviewed for.
Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has publicly announced she directly appointed Catherine Voumard as the new director of Legal Aid NT despite an independent selection panel not interviewing her for the role and recommending someone with management experience, while a high-level source in the organisation said the unilateral decision has upset the board and showed a lack of knowledge on the part of the Minister.
The Finocchiaro Government has announced $455 million in operational spending for the Corrections Department in next week’s Budget, plus $117 million in spending on infrastructure, but it remains unclear where new funds are coming from, with the United Workers Union welcoming the extra money, but questioning how it would be spent.
Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby appointed a person who was not interviewed to be the new director of the beleaguered Legal Aid NT, rejecting the candidate who was recommended by an independent selection panel who had significant managerial experience inside the organisation, an internal report shows, but the Minister has refused to explain her intervention.
The Northern Territory Police Association has called the Finocchiaro Government’s law and order budget preview an insult to officers who “continue to feel abandoned and undervalued” by a government with “warped priorities”, and which did not provide a figure for how much it will spend on police next year as part of its crime reduction plan.
The sole director of a company the Health Department is negotiating with to run the hyperbaric chamber unit at Royal Darwin Hospital lived at the same address and shares the same last name as the sole director of the company that lost the contract to run the unit after it was forced into administration 18 months ago, ASIC records show.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government has moved to withdraw government housing for Darwin police officers as part of its latest contract negotiations, the NT Police Association has said, labelling it a “slap in the face to every police officer” and a broken election commitment.
Darwin Council will not say if developer DCOH will pay the estimated $2.8 million car parking shortfall levy for its share of car parking at the new 21-storey civic centre-office tower, which the council itself is partly financing with the same car parking shortfall levy that other developers have been required to pay.
Two parking levies that Darwin Council intends to use to build its new civic centre-private office tower with developer DCOH should be scrapped, the Property Council NT has said, because councils have collected and used them largely at their own discretion without transparent governance controls.
A Federal Court application has been lodged seeking to force Darwin Council to hand over documents relating to the deal it struck with developer DCOH to build the controversial 21-storey civic centre-private office tower, along with details of how it is using ratepayer money on the project.
The Middle Arm industrial precinct could end up costing the NT Government $5.5 billion in capital outlays and a further $140 million in annual operating expenditure for the next 50 years, which would affect its ability to fund health and education, a new report by an energy economist for the Environment Centre NT has found, while a federal Labor MP revealed her government’s $1.5 billion equity investment in the project is a long way from being finalised.
