An environment conducive to corruption and undermining the rule of law has been created in the Northern Territory, with serious reforms needed to stop it from accelerating further, but our current Chief Minister and government have demonstrated an inability to grapple with such essential tasks needed for the benefit of everyone, writes Dr Don Fuller.
EXCLUSIVE: The death of a man who was treated by St John Ambulance in 2021 has recently been investigated by the NT Police Major Crime Squad, including allegations the patient’s records were altered to cover up treatment failures, with the matter now referred back to the Coroner, the NT Independent can reveal.
The Chief Minister’s $400,000-a-year chief of staff Alex Bruce publicly boasted last year that he wanted to see “some mongrels” cop pepper spray to the eyes and wanted to post it to social media, raising questions about how the CLP developed its “dangerous” policy to arm the public with OC spray, while the police association says it’s concerned its officers could also be injured.
UPDATED: NT Police are warning the public to “remain vigilant” following the second reported case of a woman sexually assaulted while she slept by an unknown intruder, with the most recent incident involving a woman waking up to a man in a balaclava with his hand over her mouth on Wednesday night.
The NT Police are appealing to the public for information following three incidents in Wadeye on Sunday, including a vehicle swerving at police and a man throwing projectiles at officers on their own compound.
A Parap woman woke to find a naked male “indecently assaulting” her at her home on Tuesday night, NT Police said, with the perpetrator still on the run.
UPDATED: The Finocchiaro CLP Government is considering arming the public with pepper spray as of September 1, which it says will improve personal safety amid a 12-month “controlled trial” that the Chief Minister teased on social media yesterday as “something new” to help Territorians, but critics argue it’s “a bad idea” that won’t fix violence.
A Territory police officer has been arrested in Alice Springs and charged with two counts of rape in relation to alleged sexual assaults that occurred in 2024, NT Police said.
Acting ICAC Greg Shanahan told Estimates hearings on Tuesday that he has recused himself from involvement in an undisclosed number of matters due to conflicts of interest, but refused to publicly disclose his conflicts register, stating only that some of his disclosures related to people he “worked directly with for a long period”.
St John Ambulance NT last week told paramedics it was ceasing two emergency procedures, roughly a year after a damning independent review into its medical treatments called for the procedures to be ended until a medical director was employed, with the report also finding multiple failures and poor decisions resulted in harm to patients and significant risk to staff.
The delayed reopening of the Dundee boat ramp has taken place following a more than $12 million upgrade, a boat ramp the former Labor Minister Joel Bowden felt the need to visit during the caretaker period last year before he announced the doubling of the cost of the project seven days later.
A 40-year-old man was killed Monday in an “off road buggy” crash on a property in Girraween, NT Police said, but two children involved were unhurt in the fatal crash.
