The first official day of the 2024 election campaign kicked off in Palmerston on Thursday, as both major parties took to the battleground satellite city for press conferences, while an independent MLA found himself saving the day for the CLP when a couple of countrymen from Wadeye crashed the party’s presser making its politicians uncomfortable.
The NT Office of the ICAC has ejected the NT Independent from a national anti-corruption conference held at the Darwin Convention Centre, after the editor explained he wanted to ask some questions of the delegates, which resulted in a 12-month trespass notice being issued by NT Police.
EDITORIAL: DIPL chief executive Andrew Kirkman will not resign and will not be sacked, Chief Minister Eva Lawler has now confirmed, after a judge found he misled the court, attempted to blackmail a female staffer, inflicted a mental health injury on her and acted in an “aggressive, threatening…and inappropriate manner” during a meeting that was secretly recorded.
NT Government ministers will be subject to new “controls and processes” for managing their conflicts of interest following another internal government review, with no specific penalties put in place for those who breach the new guidelines.
DIPL chief executive Andrew Kirkman has been referred to the Public Employment Commissioner following a court ruling that found he engaged in “an aggressive, threatening and inappropriate manner” toward a female staffer, while an internal investigation in 2021 recommended forbidding recording conversations in the department after Mr Kirkman was exposed.
Chief Minister Eva Lawler says ministerial staffers can solicit political donations for Territory Labor, but only after work hours, as the NT Electoral Commission released the latest political donation returns, that show Tamboran Resources is Labor’s largest donor ahead of the 2024 general election. SEE THE FULL LIST
EXCLUSIVE: Labor campaign mastermind and federal gas lobbyist consultant Gerard Richardson was hired by former chief minister Natasha Fyles at considerable cost to Territory taxpayers, before she was forced to resign in scandal and his contract terminated.
Deputy Chief Minister Chansey Paech’s big spending on travel continued in the past financial year, racking up nearly a third of all ministerial travel across the NT himself, records show, including claiming “offical allowance” expenses under “other” costs, which has raised further questions about how the government is acquitting ministerial travel.
The Labor Government spent twice as much taxpayer money to fly ministers around the Territory in the past financial year than it did over the same period in the lead-up to the 2020 election, newly released records show, while mysterious travel expenses costing tens of thousands of dollars listed only as “other” have been called into question.
Territorians will head to the polls in August with no idea what the independent body that investigates politicians for corruption will look like under the next government, following scandal in the Office of the ICAC that has led to Michael Riches currently under investigation for alleged “inappropriate behaviour” towards female staff and the acting commissioner refusing to explain a conflict of interest in relation to its largest investigation in three years.
Sky News reporter Matt Cunningham and Mix 104.9 presenter Katie Woolf are under fire for “toxic” comments made on air that appeared to downplay the alleged actions of besieged ICAC Michael Riches, who is currently under investigation for alleged “inappropriate behaviour” towards female staff members amid unresolved allegations of domestic violence.
The Lawler Labor Government will not make any official changes to rules around the use of taxpayer money for campaign purposes ahead of August’s election in the aftermath of an ICAC report that showed the party used public funds at the 2020 election for political purposes, with the Opposition calling the surprise deferral “more of the same tricks” by a government that “lacks transparency”.
