A Holtze prison corrections officer who lost an eye after having a crutch thrown at him was working alone at the time he was attacked by a prisoner who had not been properly classified for his threat risk, part of a wider problem of overcrowding and understaffing, prison insiders have said, but the Corrections Department insists prisoners are being properly classified.
The applicants of a Federal Court action seeking details of a secret deal Darwin Council signed with a developer to build a 21-storey civic centre-private office tower say they have dropped the original case because a court date would be too late to stop construction, but said they are still looking at a claim to stop millions of dollars in car park levies being spent on the building and instead returned to developers and property owners who have paid the fees.
A man has been charged with murder over the death of another man in Palmerston in March, NT Police said.
NT public servants will have a redeployment option taken from them and the Commissioner for Public Employment will be able to make determinations about their employment outside of the current enterprise agreement under a proposal put forward amid ongoing negotiations, the Community and Public Sector Union says, adding it could result in job cuts.
A Freedom of Information application seeking a departmental brief provided to former environment minister Kate Worden last year that recommended prosecution of Empire Energy was rejected on legal privilege grounds, a government letter shows, while the department appears to have attempted to cover up one of the three alleged offences referred to in the document.
The Health Department’s chief executive says the department will “really carefully” manage the deal it intends to sign with a company to run the closed hyperbaric chamber unit at Royal Darwin Hospital, after it was revealed that company’s sole director is the wife of the director of a company that previously held the same contract and went into administration, with its contract terminated by the NT Government.
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.
