The old Berrimah jail will hold adult prisoners again, while inmates from the newly refurbished Alice Springs youth jail will be moved to the yet-to-be opened Darwin facility, making it the Territory’s sole permanent youth jail, under an un-costed plan that the Finocchiaro Government said will add about 250 corrections beds across the NT by March.

Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said she will not be sacking public servants, when asked by the Opposition about how she was going to fund election promises with the $11 billion debt Labor created, and while the bill lowering the age of criminal responsibility passed Parliament, the government said it had not yet seen a report evaluating the impact of raising the age of criminal responsibility.

The eight assistant ministers announced for the CLP Government will not be paid extra for their assistant ministerial work, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said.

The first of a raft of legislative changes promised by the government has been passed by the Legislative Assembly. Legislation providing for a presumption against bail for serious violent offenders and giving police the power to search people for weapons with metal detectors in any public place was approved after the government used its numbers to prevent referral of the bills to the Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

The Finocchiaro Government stopped its crime legislation being reviewed by the newly re-established scrutiny committee, instead pushing on to have its five amendment bills dealt with on urgency over the next two weeks, but some members told the Parliament they had only seen one of the five pieces of legislation.

The Finocchiaro Government will re-establish a legislation scrutiny committee despite declaring as late as Friday that it would not, while it also plans to introduce amendments to five different pieces of legislation into Parliament over the next five days.