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 development application for the construction of an eight-storey residential tower in Larrakeyah, on the site of an old elevated house, has been lodged with the Development Consent Authority.
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.
A man has been arrested after allegedly stabbing his partner to death in the remote community of Lajamanu, NT Police said.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro today announced eight assistant ministers, meaning that all government members are now ministers or assistant ministers, and Independent MLA Robyn Lambley has been endorsed as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly.
The NT Independent has won another NT Media Award, this time for Best Text News Coverage, beating out the ABC and The Australian, marking the fifth gong for the online newspaper since starting in March 2020.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro will not re-establish a legislation scrutiny committee despite calling it “the dismantlement of transparency” and “closing down democracy” when it was scrapped by the Gunner Labor Government, a position former independent MLA Gerry Wood has labelled hypocrisy.
NT Independent editor Christopher Walsh has been named as a finalist in the 69th Walkley Awards for his political shares scandal reporting that led to the resignation of a chief minister, the second year in a row the paper has been shortlisted in Australia’s pre-eminent national journalism awards.
The Finocchiaro Government has now said it is working to “fix” Legal Aid NT’s funding shortfall, a week after the issue became public, but has not said what it will do, while the agency itself will not say what the government is doing, or whether it will still dramatically reduce its representation of people in criminal matters.
Public drinking will be criminalised with police given new powers to issue on-the-spot fines, as well as arrest and charge people for consuming alcohol in prohibited places, under so-called ‘nuisance drinker’ laws, the Alcohol Policy Minister Steve Edgington has said, but a peak alcohol body has said it would be better to treat the issue with a therapeutic, rather than punitive approach.
Building work in the Northern Territory increased by 3.7 per cent in the June quarter, with an increase of 13.5 per over the year, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.
The CLP Government’s new ram raiding law will carry the same maximum penalty as the offence of damage to property, which already covers ram raids.
