A private consultancy company started by one of the Territory’s most senior public servants has recently employed another senior bureaucrat, with both heavily involved in establishing the NT Government’s private investment attraction and gas regulation policies over the past five years, raising questions about the potential for confidential government information to be used for private gain.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government says it may enforce existing legislation from 1949 called the Price Exploitation Prevention Act it says would force fuel retailers to disclose the full cost structure and price margins of its fuel or face jail and could be used to allow the government to set the price, a move that was described by the last CLP government as a rash decision.
Santos has temporarily shut down its Darwin LNG plant due to equipment replacement on its floating production vessel in the Barossa gas field it has been reported.
Woolworths will close its Nhulunbuy store next year due to viability concerns ahead of the scheduled 2030 closure of the nearby Rio Tinto Gove bauxite mine that will lead to an expected drop in population and economic activity, with the Chief Minister saying the region needs more private investment but was short on how that would happen.
Core Lithium will restart its Finniss lithium mine based on $170 million in funding from a consortium of three companies which includes Glencore Australia, and plans for $120 million in equity raising, the company has said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.
Lands and Planning Minister Josh Burgoyne donned a cowboy hat Monday morning to announce the Finocchiaro CLP Government is gifting a two-hectare parcel of land to the NT Livestock Exporters Association to expand the Berrimah Export Yards, but the value of the free land and the cost of planned infrastructure works was not disclosed.
A rocket launching company the previous Labor government invested more than $5 million of public funds into has gone into liquidation, with the Chief Minister mocking Labor again for their poor investment decisions, but refusing to answer questions about whether she would now call a public inquiry into how Labor wasted millions of taxpayer money investing in doomed private business enterprises.
The NT Cattlemen’s Association has been forced to publicly acknowledge it works with Indigenous people and employs women in leadership roles as part of a “diverse and modern” NT cattle industry, following comments from NT Administrator and former NTCA president David Connolly, who claimed on Monday that his racist, sexist and homophobic social media posts, that also included joking about domestic violence and date rape, were a reflection of “the pastoral world”.
AirAsia will discontinue its Darwin to Bali and Kuala Lumpur routes less than a year after launching due to operating below a 70 per cent load factor, making them economically unsustainable, the company has indicated, while the NT Government has pledged to review its taxpayer-funded air subsidy scheme in the wake of the cancelled routes.
Latest business news highlights include a First Nations-led carbon forestry project attracting $81 million in investments, NEXTDC advancing its $120 million data centre project in Darwin, the Aboriginal Tourism Business Accelerator Program kicks off with a new cohort, and a $49.5 million contract awarded for another section of the Tanami Road upgrade.
Administrator David Connolly says he was a “naive cattleman” mixed up in the high stakes world of “agri-politics” when he made controversial social media comments disparaging Aboriginal people, women and the LGBTQI community and joked about domestic violence and date rape, which he said was “pastoral world” talk, while his former employer at Tipperary Station has provided some insight into why he left the station manager role last year.
Outgoing CDU vice-chancellor Scott Bowman’s legacy of a London campus has been scrapped after the university spent nearly $2 million on the flawed project and hired three of Mr Bowman’s mates with taxpayer money to run it, the university has said, while questions to its council about how it allowed the proposal to proceed have been ignored.
