A group of Peppimenarti residents are continuing their legal action against the Northern Territory government for alleged breaches of the Racial Discrimination Act by failing to provide policing in their community comparable to the level provided to non-Indigenous NT residents, and the group’s lawyer said the decision not to build a police station in the community was “compounding the error”.
Only one of Darwin and Palmerston’s public housing and bus safety officers wants to become a police public safety officer, the Commonwealth Public Sector Union has said, a new role that comes with a gun that the Finocchiaro Government announced last month to crack down on antisocial behaviour.
The NT health practitioner at the centre of claims by the nurse’s union that he is under investigation by NT Police for alleged multiple rapes, and who was allowed to return to work by the Health Department, has suddenly been suspended by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency.
The Finocchiaro Government has axed a $19 million police station that was to be built at Peppimenarti because it claimed the residents did not want it and will instead build one in Maningrida, but the head of the local Aboriginal corporation said the residents were not consulted and simply objected to the proposed site of the complex in the middle of ceremonial grounds and wanted to use some of the money to build new houses so people did not have to continue living in tents.
The Health Department and the Health Minister will not comment on allegations a health practitioner under investigation by NT Police for alleged multiple rapes has been allowed to return to work, while police have refused to confirm the investigation and the industry regulator has claimed it can’t comment on whether a complaint has been filed against the practitioner.
An eight-year-old boy was killed in a rollover on the Arnhem Highway overnight, NT Police said.
The Health Department is allowing a health practitioner under investigation by NT Police for alleged multiple rapes to return to work, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation has said, raising safety concerns for staff.
A woman in a remote community who feared for her life after her partner hit her vehicle with a bullet from a high-powered rifle was not helped by police for 14 hours because the Immediate Response Team had been disbanded after the shooting death of Kumanajayi Walker, while senior police thought local officers would “aggravate the situation”, the former officer in charge of the unit said in a previously suppressed statement to the Coroner.
An off-duty Corrections officer who was walking his dog was slashed with a knife in Palmerston on Monday, the offender allegedly telling him he knew what he did for a job, which is the second time in a fortnight that a Corrections officer has been attacked with an edged weapon while in public, the United Workers Union said.
The former operator of Royal Darwin Hospital’s hyperbaric chamber has sent a letter to the NT government seeking $53,000 in entitlements he says were not paid by Hyperbaric Health, the previous contractor, a company run by the husband of the current operator.
The Mines and Energy Department said Empire Energy’s gas well that was the subject of a legal briefing to the environment minister recommending prosecution or potential prosecution for breaches was built in compliance with regulations but the department won’t say exactly what was alleged to have occurred or how the situation went from legal advice to a minister to a finding that regulations were not breached.
The Finocchiaro Government has spent $7.5 million buying 30,000-hectares to expand Litchfield National Park by 20 per cent, which will include a hunting reserve of an unspecified size, but the Chief Minister has said there has been no planning about how much it will cost the taxpayer to develop or manage the area.
