Police Minister Brent Potter has refused to resign following revelations he shared racist, homophobic and misogynistic posts on social media, saying he has “been on a journey” since posting the material and that Territory Labor knew about the posts before they preselected him in 2022.
Today’s national news includes Australia and Vietnam strengthening bilateral relations; economy decelerating, underscoring case for rate cuts; ASIC penalising ASX, issuing infringement notice; and Virgin Australia planning to allow pets on board planes.
EXCLUSIVE: NT Labor Police Minister Brent Potter shared misogynistic, homophobic and extreme-right political posts on social media, in addition to racist and anti-Semitic material, including one post containing a derogatory slur against gay people, another that promoted “toxic masculinity” and multiple posts from conservative media websites as late as 2019, in which he mocked Federal Labor and former Victorian premier Dan Andrews.
NT Police Association president Nathan Finn has said he told Police Minister Brent Potter he found it difficult to see how he could continue in the role because of his Facebook posts sharing racist and anti-Semitic material, and said Chief Minister Eva Lawler’s defence of him “sent a damaging message”.
Drug use in the NT is up by more than five percentage points with 25.2 per cent of Territorians using an illegal substance last year, compared to 19.6 per cent in 2019, with cannabis and hallucinogens leading the charge, a new study has found.
Mosquito repellents are being distributed and agencies are trying to disrupt breeding spots as high rainfall has lead to plague levels of the disease-carrying insects in Tennant Creek, the ABC has reported.
The fallout from revelations that Police Minister Brent Potter shared racist posts on social media came quick on Wednesday, with an independent MLA calling for Mr Potter to resign over his “sickening” behaviour, while Chief Minister Eva Lawler backed her minister, despite claiming in a statement that “there is no room for racism in the Territory”.
EXCLUSIVE: Police Minister Brent Potter’s deleted Facebook posts, in which he quoted Nazis, praised Vladimir Putin, permitted the casual use of the n-word amongst family members and shared a link to a video about how to “destroy” the Black Lives Matter movement, have called into question recent public statements that he “does not tolerate racism”, amid accusations of its widespread prevalence in the NT Police force.
Nicole Hurwood has been appointed as the Commissioner for Public Employment, a promotion from her role as a deputy chief executive officer in NT Health.
An armed man allegedly attempted to enter the Alice Springs Hospital over the weekend, forcing hospital workers to barricade themselves inside while waiting more than for 40 minutes for the police to arrive, exposing the NT Government’s lack of “code black” data in hospitals, the Opposition CLP says, and causing safety fears.
The NT Government has announced a second large scale battery storage project for the Darwin-Katherine power grid before the first batteries have been tested, which are expected to be running by the end of the year the Chief Minister says.
Police Minister Brent Potter has backed Police Commissioner Michael Murphy after an ICAC inquiry found he was too intoxicated to remember if he had racially abused staff at a Chinese restaurant in Alice Springs two decades ago, with the Chief Minister also downplaying the alleged incident as occurring “long ago”, when he was “in his late 20s or early 30s”.
