The Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education used unreliable student records to claim government funding and failed to comply with Australian accounting standards, a new Auditor-General’s report has found, which follows other serious operational and financial problems at the institute that led the Auditor General being unable to sign off on its finances for two years.
The Northern Territory needs to legalise growing marijuana, with production confined to Aboriginal land, to create a First Nations industry and increase tourism, writes Fiona Collins.
Two men in Darwin have been charged with domestic violence offences including one man who allegedly attacked his female partner with glass, NT Police said.
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.
The Northern Land Council was raided by National Anti-Corruption Commission earlier this week, one of two Territory land councils to be raided by the federal watchdog across three days.
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 Anindilyakwa Land Council’s offices have been raided by the National Anti-Corruption Commission, multiple sources have told the NT Independent, with the commission confirming it was conducting an operation on Groote Eylandt on Wednesday.
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.
A woman was killed in a single vehicle rollover at Wickham Point overnight, NT Police said.
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.
