Chief Minister Eva Lawler says Labor will not reimburse taxpayers for the public money it used to fly former chief minister Michael Gunner to remote communities in marginal electorates on polling days in the lead up to the 2020 election because it was all too “ambiguous” and refused to condemn the conduct that was the focus of a three-year ICAC investigation.
Anti-corruption commissioner Michael Riches “refuses to call out misconduct, mismanagement and corruption”, an independent MLA says, despite having evidence that Territory Labor and Michael Gunner used public funds for party political purposes at the 2020 election, calling for an inquiry into the Office of the ICAC’s conduct.
The NT anti-corruption watchdog’s long-delayed report into Territory Labor’s taxpayer-funded 2020 election campaign has ended with “no concluded findings” of whether former chief minister Michael Gunner “did or did not engage in improper conduct”, but flagged a secret second report will be provided to current Chief Minister Eva Lawler next month concerning Labor staffers’ involvement.
The Lawler Government has announced a big-spending budget three months out from the general election that puts the Territory on course to achieve a net debt of $11 billion by next year.
The Lawler Labor Government’s 2024 Budget is proof that Labor is bereft of any “new ideas” to address the Territory’s problems, CLP Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro says, while the Chief Minister threw it back at Ms Finocchiaro, demanding to know where she’s been hiding for the last month.
A powerful peak body for Aboriginal Territorians has publicly rebuked Police Minister Brent Potter for his comments about violence in Daly River, insisting the Minister and the Lawler Government are playing “the blame game” instead of accepting responsibility for their failure to uphold law and order across the Territory.
The Labor Government needs to come clean to Territorians over its misappropriation of taxpayer money to fund its 2020 election campaign instead of hiding behind new staff guidelines, the Opposition CLP says, while the Chief Minister says she has not been informed yet of what the ICAC’s investigation will reveal, but would not denounce party figures’ actions.
EXCLUSIVE: Labor’s misuse of public funds at the 2020 election has sparked internal reforms to ministerial staff rules, ahead of possible findings from the long-delayed ICAC investigation into the party’s conduct, that an independent MLA says continues to “stink” the longer it remains unresolved.
UPDATED: The CLP has raised three times more money in political donations than Territory Labor by the end of March, with a crypto bro leading the party’s donations take, while Middle Arm proponents and developers backed in Territory Labor with big bucks ahead of August’s general election, new disclosures filed with the electoral commission show.
Attorney General Chansey Paech has backflipped on his previous position that a youth curfew is “madness”, “punitive” and treats kids like “dogs,” as he publicly supported the Chief Minister’s unilateral decision to implement the Alice Springs curfew, which she has now indicated could be used in Katherine and Tennant Creek.
Chief Minister Eva Lawler has contradicted her Police Minister’s claims that the Labor Party knew about his racist and homophobic social media posts before they preselected him as the candidate for Fannie Bay, while the NT Independent can reveal that Brent Potter also shared a post appearing to condone domestic violence.
CLP Member for Barkly Steve Edgington has resigned as the Opposition’s spokesman on domestic violence, following revelations he hired a staffer with a long history of contravening domestic violence orders.
