The CLP Government and the Labor Opposition have not ruled out supporting independent MLA Justine Davis’s calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the rorting of a government Indigenous employment scheme that saw an estimated $60 million fraudulently obtained by up to 146 Territory contractors.
The CLP Government will plunge the Territory into further debt rather than find necessary cost savings of $450 million a year, with Treasurer Bill Yan proclaiming the move “responsible action to repair the budget”.
Treasurer Bill Yan is taking the crumbling Territory economy on the road through the NT next week – with special guest Under Treasurer Tim McManus – in an effort to explain to Territorians how the CLP Finocchiaro Government is planning “to fix the economic mess”.
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.
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”.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has committed to taking no action against five senior police officers who lied to the court about their involvement in the racist TRG awards, despite evidence the joint investigation by the ICAC and NT Police executive failed to properly review the officers’ criminal conduct.
The Territory’s politicians have quietly been given an early Christmas present in the form of an $8,200 annual pay rise as of January 1 – bringing their base salaries to $175,000, plus benefits and expense accounts – while ministers will see their pay packet increase by nearly $14,000 a year.
The Centre for Public Integrity has called on former deputy chief minister Nicole Manison to resign from her new VP position with Tamboran Resources and for the CLP Finocchiaro Government to review all decisions the previous government made concerning the gas company, in what is becoming a major PR nightmare for Tamboran.
Darwin Alderman Rebecca Want de Rowe has publicly criticised the Supreme Court jury’s conviction of her paedophile husband Kent Rowe, stating on social media recently that he is “innocent” despite being found guilty in 2022 of the repeated and remorseless sexual abuse of a young female family member over many years.
A Charles Darwin University staffer who publicly criticised the CLP Government in an op-ed for acting like “dictators” who engage in “shady” politics, has been rebuked by vice-chancellor Scott Bowman from China in his own opinion piece, in which he wrote that he was impressed by everything the CLP is doing, including a proposal to give an unelected bureaucrat the ability to override environmental regulations.
Four years after finding deliberate non-compliance of campaign financial disclosure laws by the NT’s political parties and donors, the NT Electoral Commission has again ordered an audit of the major political parties, independents and other election participants to ensure they properly disclosed their donations and expenditure at the 2024 NT election.
A tender to paint CLP Minister Marie-Clare Boothby’s electorate office and “move furniture” was put out to the market at a cost of between $500,000 and $1 million, government records show, which the Minister claims she shut down over the huge price tag, but the tender was active for at least a week before being removed, the NT Independent can reveal.
