EDITORIAL: David Connolly made the whole affair worse on Friday morning in his first speech as Administrator with his condescending attitude while his supporters surely cringed when he attempted to speak in language and talked about his great and deep respect for Indigenous culture. We all knew it was a lie, which made it all the more grotesque.
As Charles Darwin University launches a duplicated medical program amid mounting losses and large debt, and in the wake of a widening training scandal involving the carpentry apprenticeship which saw the vice-chancellor resign leading to a possible class action, there are serious concerns that both the executive leadership and the university council have failed in their oversight of the institution, writes Dr Don Fuller.
The Attorney-General should reject the inclusion of a fixed prognostic timeframe in the Northern Territory’s proposed voluntary assisted dying laws former chief minister Marshall Perron writes, arguing it would unnecessarily exclude suffering patients and undermine a more compassionate, evidence-based approach.
The Northern Territory now has two medical schools, but with an existing, successful partnership already in place, Dr Don Fuller argues that the new Charles Darwin University-Menzies program is an expensive exercise in duplication and may create an unstated incentive to enrol more full-fee paying international students rather that training Territorians, particularly Indigenous Territorians.
OPINION: David Connolly’s response in 2023 to being called a ‘bigot’, a ‘racist’, a ‘chauvinist’, ‘intolerant’ and ‘small-minded’ was that “none of that worries me”, which is consistent with Mr Connolly and the CLP Government remaining unperturbed about his appointment as NT Administrator while the politics of division continue to damage our democracy, writes John Lawrence.
EDITORIAL: Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s defence of choosing David Connolly as Administrator this week has done nothing to calm rising tensions in the wider community and instead raised questions about what type of agenda she’s driving that was not fully disclosed to Territorians ahead of the last NT election.
Diesel prices are between 12 and 14 cents per litre higher in Palmerston than the lowest prices in Katherine, and while the NT government has the legislative power to investigate these margins and even set price caps, it is not doing anything, writes Daryl Frahm.
People with complex disabilities rely entirely on others to meet their most basic needs, writes Fiona Thomas, and when hospital systems fail them, the harm is immediate, degrading, and preventable.
OPINION: Wasteful and scandal ridden Darwin projects such as the Ship Lift and the Waterfront give politicians in the Top End city the ability to claim credit for such developments and enable mates and political supporters to be paid off by an inappropriate and extravagant use of tax-payer funding, while tourism in Central Australia declines, Dr Don Fuller writes.
Dunblane Primary School massacre survivor and former Bondi Beach resident John Phillip writes that legislative changes to lawful firearms ownership risks undermining legitimate, culturally embedded, practical, and legal uses of guns in the Northern Territory.
OPINION: Unlike in the past, none of the exposure following the damning NT Ombudsman’s report into the unlawful conditions in our watch houses, and the refusal to let the UN observe, presents any political concerns for the CLP Government who are happy to own it, writes John Lawrence. If anything, it’s seen as a vote winner.
A recent decision by the NT Planning Minister Josh Burgoyne that was not made public, to change some rural area land to allow for smaller blocks, gives the feeling Trumpism has arrived in the Territory, writes Gerry Wood.
