Barkly Regional Council chief executive officer Emma Bradbury has been given an extra week’s leave, Mayor Jeffrey McLaughlin says, saying she was extending her leave because she had done such a good job and deserved it, which comes during an ongoing saga over allegations of bullying and mismanagement against the CEO and the mayor and an intervention by the NT Government.

Multiple sources told the NT Independent Ms Bradbury was sacked from her job on Thursday, but Mr McLaughlin said this was not the case, and that the CEO had been on two weeks leave because she needed it after doing a such a good job, with council voting on a resolution to extend that leave by a week.

“I can’t tell you anything else because it is underneath the Local Government Act,” he said.

The agenda for Thursday’s council meeting noted under the CEO’s report, that corporate and community planner Karen Legge wrote Ms Bradbury had taken leave from February 1 to February 17 and “the period of leave may be extended” and chief financial officer Romeo Mutsago would act in the role. There are no minutes yet published for that meeting.

Ms Bradbury did not answer her phone seeking comment, while Deputy Mayor Russell O’Donnell hung up on the NT Independent when identified as the caller, before answering the phone again, saying he could not talk because he was on the phone.

When asked by text message to respond to claims the CEO had been sacked he responded with: “In meetings at the moment”. He has not responded since.

The Barkly Regional Council media manager Tash Adams said she could not comment and would have to seek direction for a response, but could not say when a response would come.

The council did not provide a response by the time of publication.

In late September, the ABC reported there had been a “flood of resignations amid allegations of bullying, harassment, and mismanagement”, but that Mayor McLaughlin and Ms Bradbury said the complaints were the “venting” of a “small group of disgruntled ex-employees”.

They both strongly deny the allegations against them.

In late November, in response to those allegations, council’s then-Alyawarr Ward’s Noel Hayes announced Melbourne’s Justitia Lawyers, a small Melbourne firm, had been engaged by council to review its “people systems” and “business processes”.

He said in communication with staff that the review was being undertaken because of a “number of changes and staffing matters which have attracted negative media attention”.

Mr Hayes was the chair of the council business processes review committee which was to receive the report but was one of four councillors who resigned on the same day in mid-December, telling ABC radio in Alice Springs it was because he had issues with the way council was functioning and because of the mayor’s behaviour. He specifically said he would probably not have resigned if the mayor had resigned after being charged over a drug driving offence, and other drug possession offences on September 19.

Less than five months later, at the start of February, the mayor was again charged for drug driving but has maintained his innocence in both incidences, publicly saying the second alleged offence was the result of being on “prescription medication”. He declined to expand on this for the NT Independent and to say if prescription medication was the reason for the first drug driving charge.

A September 2022 NT Police statement said he was charged with driving under the influence of drugs, supplying less than a commercial quantity of a schedule 2 drug, possessing less than a traffickable quantity of a schedule 2 drug, and cultivating less than a traffickable quantity of a prohibited plant.

Multiple sources also said Ms Bradbury had formulated the review structure and questions despite the allegations against her, but in a response to detailed questions, Ms Adams only provided an answer to one question, denying the presence of government representatives at a council meeting in January.

Ms Bradbury did not explain what role she had in creating the questions and structure for the “review”, or if Justitia Lawyers had informed the government of its findings. Justitia Lawyers had said it would not comment.

The review was to be handed to the council during a special confidential meeting on December 23, which, because of a lack of a quorum – partly due to the councillors who had resigned – it was forced to be postponed and became the January 12 special meeting where the review was considered. It was discussed again at a meeting this month. There are no minutes online for those meetings.

Former Darwin Council executive Mark Blackburn was also listed in the minutes as being present, and also present as a visitor at the December 15 general meeting invited by the Office of the Chief Minister, to provide “independent governance advice” to the Barkly council. The minutes stated he was there along with Lachlan Wilkins who is the Barkly regional executive director for the Department of Chief Minister and Cabinet.

Mr Blackburn is the man who the NT Government appointed to manage Palmerston Council after its councillors were sacked for dysfunction in 2017.

Sources have told the NT Independent that during the January 12 meeting, Ms Bradbury and Mr McLaughlin were told they could have no further role in the “review” process and that Ms Bradbury exited through a fire escape door.