OPINION: The daughter of a long serving NT Police officer says her father was forced into medical retirement because of trauma from his work, and after management ignored his multiple suicide attempts. She says senior police refused to help him with his mental health and have never provided therapy.
OPINION: The NT Public Sector Appeals Board has found a fire fighter who was sacked because he refused COVID-19 vaccinations should be reinstated writes Laine Jolly, and she says it should be applied to all Northern Territory public servants sacked over vaccinations.
OPINION: How is it that not one of the NT Police staff members involved in alleged misconduct for sending “racist” text messages that have recently been strewn about in national media as part of the Coronial Inquest Show has ever been spoken to about their behaviour by the NT Police executive in more than two years, writes former cop Carey Joy.
Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker’s bold assertion that his personal popularity has lifted while the coronial investigation into the death of Yuendumu teen Kumanjayi Walker is still underway surely ranks among his most confusing, self-aggrandising, and delusional comments yet, while raising serious questions about the integrity of the inquest itself.
Fundamental questions need to be asked about the changes to the NT’s discrimination laws, writes former independent MLA Gerry Wood, who argues the repeal of 37A shows no attempt at balance, just one way bias.
OPINION: There needs to be a shift from a criminal to a health approach in justice systems which also places Indigenous communities at the forefront of the decision-making process, while the age of criminal responsibility should also be raised to 14, SMART recovery CEO April Long writes.
OPINION: NT Police officers, and those who leave the force with PTSD, are often left without so much as a phone call from the agency to see if they are okay, with mental health care and welfare mostly window-dressing, writes former member Paul Milne, who asks, what value does the executive put on officers’ lives? Warning that this article contains discussion of mental health and suicide.
Outside of an acute hospital setting, I have had great difficulty getting support for my mental health here in the Territory, because not all recovery from mental health crises can or should occur within an acute hospital setting. This is where the Northern Territory falls down; writes one Territorian who relies on the NT’s mental health system.
OPINION: I can’t quite believe that I am now sitting down in front of my computer, to complain about an Australian government using similar tactics to those of oppressive regimes overseas, and even more staggered that I’m doing it two years on from when this saga first began; writes Peter Greste of the NT Government’s latest antics.
OPINION: Former independent NT MLA Dawn Lawrie writes that she is constantly and consistently appalled by the current government’s attempts to muzzle a free press in a democratic society.
We were always told as new recruits that at times you will need to vent, swear, cry and discuss things with your colleagues that the average person would find confronting and offensive, but NT Police officers now know that their private messages can be illegally obtained and used by the Commissioner against them, splashed across the national media, writes former officer Carey Joy.
EDITORIAL – Trigger warning, discussion of mental health and suicide: The NT Police, an organisation that has seen five of its people take their own lives this year, publicly dismissed, censored and deleted their own former members’ personal experiences of mental health support failures in the agency in a shocking social media bungle.
