Officers with the NT Police’s Territory Response Group were sent to Alice Springs over the weekend to assist with the town’s current crime surge that appeared to continue unabated, with a woman having her face slashed with glass in the street early Sunday morning, teens stealing a taxi, another woman being assaulted by two men and a man being knocked unconscious with a weapon the night before.
Patrick Bellot, a local real estate agent and husband of Mix 104.9 radio personality Katie Woolf, has been appointed chair of the Darwin Waterfront Corporation through a mysterious hiring process that does not appear to have been publicly advertised.
Police cars were rammed by a stolen vehicle during a pursuit through the Darwin northern suburbs overnight, that saw stolen liquor bottles thrown at police during the chase and a 14-year-old having his face cut up by a 13-year-old during a night of terror that also involved ram raids on a Leanyer bar and a woman being carjacked and threatened with a knife by the group.
Directors who were at the Northern Aboriginal Australian Justice Agency when the organisation’s chief executive officer was unlawfully sacked have now left the board, with the size of the board cut in half and the constitution changed at its recent annual general meeting, following a threat by the NT Attorney-General to remove funding if the directors did not resign.
NT Health has urged Territorians to ensure their whooping cough vaccinations are current as cases surged to 91, up from just 12 cases last year, with 31 cases occurring in just the last month.
Police Commissioner Michael Murphy flew to Singapore on holidays Thursday afternoon, after spending just a few hours in crime-stricken Alice Springs, a police source has said, while NT Police confirmed he was on “scheduled leave”, which came ahead of the Chief Minister also leaving town early.
Two men are in Katherine Hospital after being stabbed during a Thursday night home invasion, with one of the men suffering “stab wounds to his chest”, NT Police said.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government has announced a “Circuit Breaker Program” for Alice Springs in the wake of a surge of violent crimes in the troubled town that it says will address the “root causes” of crime, but the program as described is exactly what Labor announced in April.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has taken the Police Commissioner to Alice Springs to announce the government’s response to the “serious, heinous and escalating violence” that saw a baby and her mother attacked by teen home invaders in the middle of the afternoon, with the baby flown interstate after suffering a fractured skull.
Close to 90 per cent of St John Ambulance paramedics and patient transport officers who responded to a United Workers Union survey said they do not have confidence in the organisation’s executive, while 83 per cent they still have concerns about clinical procedures and patient safety, following a damning government review.
CLP Education Minister Jo Hersey says she is now in the process of divesting her shares in telecommunications giant Telstra, despite pledges from the CLP in February amid Labor’s shares scandal that all its MLAs’ shares would be divested “to show Territorians that we are ready to take government”.
Environmental group Lock the Gate Alliance says it is seeking a Federal Court injunction to halt Tamboran Resource’s fracking operations in the Beetaloo Basin, arguing it needs to be assessed under federal environment laws concerning its water use, before proceeding.
