Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has declared 2025 the “Year of Action”, laying out her government’s vision for the next 11 months, including its plans for economic growth, cutting crime and repairing the budget, suggesting that while her government was still investigating what measures from the Langoulant review into government spending it would adopt, the millions spent on consultancy companies was “unacceptable”.
A single-vehicle rollover that resulted in nine individuals being hospitalised with head injuries and fractures south of Tipperary Station on Saturday night is currently under investigation, NT Police said, with a five-year-old girl suffering a serious head injury.
CLP Education Minister Jo Hersey says she will now disclose the gift of a free luxury jet flight to a boozy brunch paid for by a wealthy Katherine businesswoman, after breaching the Disclosures Act by failing to report the gift, with the Opposition calling for the Minister to be reprimanded for flouting NT disclosure laws on multiple occasions.
A five-year-old boy from an unnamed remote community was allegedly raped by a 19-year-old male relative, with the teen scheduled to appear in Darwin Local Court today, NT Police said.
The federal and NT governments and the Aboriginal Peak Organisations have reached a new funding agreement all say will enhance service delivery in remote First Nations communities.
NT Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Andrew Warton has been given an unspecified amount of time over the fire season to take a ‘sabbatical’ to run Australia’s Casey Research Station in Antarctica, after only seven months in the top job, while the firefighter’s union has said the three most senior NT Fire roles have not been permanently filled 10 months after the new agency was started.
Today’s national news includes Australia enacting ‘disputed’ legislation on hate crimes, Australia making an initial $500 million AUKUS payment, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the US engaging in a multinational maritime cooperation exercise, and hot nights anticipated in southern Australian states.
The CLP Government is expected to announce it will change current legislation to permit “probationary” corrections officers into the job without having to complete current training requirements, a move criticised by the union as raising serious safety issues for the public and officers, while also taking the “first step towards privatisation” of the NT’s jails.
The police force is at “crisis point” and is “haemorrhaging” officers, the NT Police Association has said, calling on Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro to pay officers more, improve their working conditions, and immediately address chronic understaffing in a public pitch before a new enterprise agreement is negotiated.
The Territory’s hospitals will get a one-off cash injection of $51 million this year as part of the Albanese Labor Government’s national funding boost, which the government said was done to strengthen Medicare and support public hospitals.
EXCLUSIVE: CLP Education Minister Jo Hersey took a luxury private jet between Katherine and Darwin to attend a boozy, “bottomless” high tea at the Hilton Garden Inn Darwin in early December, but she claims no taxpayer money was expended despite posting photos of the jaunt on her government-funded social media account, which comes as the Minister was also caught out misleading Territorians about her disclosable interests.
A 25-year-old woman was arrested at the Casuarina bus interchange Wednesday afternoon after she allegedly threw objects at people and threatened bus workers with an edged weapon, NT Police said, before later allegedly spitting at and kicking police officers.
