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.
Editorial: Sixteen hours before his latest attack on this publication and his lawyer’s extraordinary calls for the Coroner to hold the NT Independent in contempt of court for reporting on facts, Jamie Chalker received a list of 13 questions relating to his involvement in using unreliable evidence at the murder trial of Zach Rolfe.
EDITORIAL: The NT Independent’s explosive special investigation series based on an internal coronial report the Police Commissioner did not want the public to see has laid bare the fundamental failings in the police force, not just in its response the night Kumanjayi Walker was shot and killed, but has revealed some bigger overall issues with the NT Police that continue to fester.
OPINION: Once the NT Police Commissioner decided to throw a courageous and decorated junior Constable under the bus, there has been no respite from how low Chalker has been prepared to go to destroy Constable Zachary Rolfe, writes Richard Rolfe.
In an open letter to Chief Fire Officer Mark Spain, Laine Jolly writes sacking firefighters over refusing COVID-19 vaccinations, inflicted unacceptable damage to the physical, mental and financial wellbeing of them and their families, and exacerbated staff shortages.
The only way the Yuendumu community will ever recover, and get any form of justice from the death of Kumanjayi Walker, is to free themselves of the NT Police executives’ constructed blame of Constable Rolfe, and look at the multitude of failures made by management sending the Immediate Response Team there in the first place, writes the former leader of that unit Carey Joy.
Functionally, we are a democracy, which relies on voters being active in the political process. But when the voters experience apathy to the extent where only 65 per cent of them can be bothered to vote, we find ourselves in a political condition on the brink of authoritarianism, writes Darwin lawyer Danial Kelly.
EDITORIAL: There is no way for Jamie Chalker to fix his handling of the 2019 Yuendumu shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker – identified as the number one issue by members for no confidence in him – and his actions since that time to lie to the public, suppress evidence, bully members and act dishonourably has irreparably disgraced the once proud NT Police force.
The level of arrogance, corruption, greed, selfishness and complete and utter incompetence it takes to break an entire jurisdiction is rare and needs to come from so many working together seamlessly to let a jurisdiction down so historically. We’re only surprised it took this long for the place to come crumbling down around us given the people in charge.
OPINION: Territory-based federal politicians need to understand the difference between a state and a territory, and if they want the NT to pass laws without interference from the federal government, then they need to put their energies into statehood, not a de facto state set up just for one piece of legislation they are trying to repeal, writes Gerry Wood.
The leader of the Northern Territory is now covering up a potential crime after being made aware of it by the man in charge of investigating corruption. It does not get any more troubling for our democracy than this.
It was good to see federal Labor Minister Bill Shorten step in to stop the use of the term “birth parent” instead of “mother”, unlike NT Labor with changes to adoption laws in 2018, writes former independent MLA Gerry Wood.
