A new report by the government’s Public Accounts Committee into the Darwin Waterfront Corporation has raised fresh concerns about ongoing “governance failures” and a culture of cover-up at the troubled corporation – that received more than $25 million of taxpayer money last year – with one committee member stating the brief public inquiry held in June was “fundamentally inadequate” and permitted the corporation to avoid accountability by withholding key documents.
Territory Labor appears not to have learned any lessons from an ICAC investigation into its misuse of public funds during the 2020 election campaign, with the Auditor-General finding the now-Opposition members used taxpayer-funded staff to produce party-political social media posts in recent months, in breach of the Public Information Act.
The CLP Finocchiaro Government has shut down a censure motion brought against it by an independent Indigenous MLA in Parliament, who said the government was “contributing to increasingly unsafe communities across every part of the Northern Territory” with its unilateral policies.
A little-known ‘networking’ company connected to Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s husband Sam Burke has not made its annual financial reports public since 2021 while its auditor resigned two years ago, the NT Independent can reveal, raising more questions about how much the company received from taxpayers through the Waterfront Corporation to hold a conference this year and the value of ongoing fees paid to it with taxpayer money.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government has used the Saturday night stabbing of a 15-year-old at the Darwin showgrounds to promote changes to the Youth Justice Act it will introduce this week on urgency, without any evidence the measures will reduce crime and while refusing to work with Indigenous groups and leaders to find solutions to the Territory’s crime problem.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s failure to disclose her husband’s directorship in a company linked to the Darwin Waterfront Corporation for two years, while at the same time publicly demanding other politicians follow the rules, is the type of double standard that destroys the public’s trust in its elected officials, an independent MLA says.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro must explain why she breached the Disclosure of Interests Act by keeping her husband Sam Burke’s directorship in a company connected to the Darwin Waterfront secret for two years – while she was criticising the previous Labor government for its failures to properly disclose – and simply resign, the Opposition says.
EXCLUSIVE: Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro breached the Disclosure of Interests Act by not divulging for two years that her husband Sam Burke was a director of a company that received annual payments from the Darwin Waterfront Corporation and which held a conference at the Waterfront earlier this year with the assistance of an undisclosed amount of taxpayer funds, the NT Independent can reveal.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has publicly mused about introducing Castle Law in the Northern Territory – the legal doctrine that would decriminalise the use of lethal force for people to protect themselves and their property – saying on radio that she hears from the public about it “a lot” and that “people are very, very interested”, while laughing off the public’s concerns about current bus safety officers being armed with guns.
Chief Minister and Police Minister Lia Finocchiaro has remained silent for three days on the Coroner’s findings from the inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker, which found the NT Police exhibited the “hallmarks of institutional racism” and providing a series of recommendations for government and the police force, while the Opposition says Ms Finocchiaro has “failed to show leadership” during challenging times.
Following the previous Labor government’s move to arm public housing and bus safety officers with pepper spray last year, the current Finocchiaro CLP Government has moved to give them guns, as part of a plan to quickly train those officers and police auxiliary members as new “Police Public Safety Officers” to “target antisocial behaviour in public places”.
Nearly 800 letters demanding an independent investigation into the death of Kumanjayi White have been presented to NT Parliament, while the Chief Minister continues to reject the calls, stating this morning that she “can’t understand” why Indigenous Territorians do not trust the NT Police and claimed it is “a fantastic relationship”.
