Solar installation company Mpriza Group Pty Ltd and its manager, Nicholas Zikos, have been fined after pleading guilty in Darwin Local Court to multiple work health and safety breaches, some of which were brought after the company “inadvertently” sent evidence of its own wrongdoing to NT WorkSafe.
Truancy officers have started patrols this month in the NT and will be issuing $370 fines to parents who fail to send their kids to school, as part of the CLP Finocchiaro Government’s crime reduction plan, which the government said could also see families referred to the Federal Government for income management or prosecuted.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani will join Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in Darwin this weekend for the 14th Trilateral Defence Ministers’ Meeting to enhance military cooperation and address tensions in the Indo-Pacific.
Federal officials will be visiting the Territory to ensure there is “a clear understanding of the demand pressures and the environment” around the protection of the NT’s borders, the Chief Minister has said, while the head of a land council called on the Australian Border Force to “do their job properly” after four foreign nationals arrived by fishing boat to Peacock Island this week.
A 55-year-old former government employee at a research facility south of Alice Springs has been charged with animal cruelty offences after 71 cattle were found deceased or dying at the facility in 2023, NT Police said.
The latest business highlights include a new investment boost to enhance mining prospects of Tennant Creek, and Dollars and Sense opening their fifth NT discount store. Also making resource news is Kingsland to define an indicated resource for Leliyn in the NT, CLP approves revival of Pine Creek gold mine, and Bubalus set to secure land access for Nolans East.
Seven youths have been arrested in relation to a series of car thefts over the weekend in Alice Springs as part of Operation Archer, NT Police said, an operation designed to provide police with “additional capability” to crackdown on stolen vehicles and attacks on police.
The 2024 Northern Territory Brolga Tourism Awards celebrated 27 winners from local businesses, organisations, and individuals, at a ceremony in Alice Springs, with a record 94 nominations from across the Territory, the highest in five years, the government said, which comes amid troubling times for the industry.
A 36-year-old woman is facing perverting the course of justice charges for her alleged involvement in helping a 20-year-old offender who reportedly cut off his ankle monitoring device last week evade police, with The Australian reporting the woman is a NAAJA employee who was in a “relationship” with the offender.
The Finocchiaro Government has frozen car registration fees and will give Territorians a free driver’s licence for a year, as part of its plan to ease the cost-of-living crisis, but the costs to the Territory’s budget have not been disclosed.
Six youth detainees at the new Holtze Youth Detention Centre have allegedly caused $200,000 worth of damage at the facility, in what the government called a “deliberate act of vandalism”, that saw teens allegedly smash wash basins, tear metal intercom panels and light and power sockets from the walls, leaving the rooms unusable and live wires exposed in the first week the facility was opened.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro plans to grant herself extraordinary new powers to declare exemptions to the law, through the Territory Coordinator position, has an audacity that eclipses former PM Scott Morrison’s multiple ministries scandal, writes Justin Tutty.
