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.
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.
