The Limmen Bight Marine Park has been extended by 185sq kms, an increase of 20 per cent, which the government says will help support the world’s largest dugong population while protecting marine habitats and promoting sustainable tourism.


The Limmen Bight Marine Park has been extended by 185sq kms, an increase of 20 per cent, which the government says will help support the world’s largest dugong population while protecting marine habitats and promoting sustainable tourism.

ANALYSIS: Fifteen months ago, Territory Labor Leader Selena Uibo was handed a review of the party’s crushing 2024 election defeat prepared by the national executive, which she promptly hid and refused to make public. Today, the NT Independent can reveal the contents of that report show the party has yet to fully come to terms with why Territorians booted it from office and failed to learn any lessons from one of the worst political defeats in Territory history.

The NT’s acting Chief Judge was forced to issue an extraordinary “correction” earlier this week after an email from the courts’ deputy registrar stated there would be no new Local Court judges appointed “in the foreseeable future” necessitating cancelled court lists in an already over-stretched system, which kicked off allegations in legal circles that the CLP Government had rejected the appointment of new judges on the grounds that their alleged politics did not align with the ruling party’s.

Former NT Police assistant commissioner Janelle Tonkin has taken aim at the NT Police Force’s toxic culture, after her official police picture was altered with AI to make it sexually suggestive and shared amongst an unknown number of officers, saying the police force has “real work to do” to make it safe and respectful for women and minorities.

Alice Springs is set to receive a major infrastructure upgrade for a new four-way signalised intersection at Schwarz Crescent, connecting to Smith Street and the Stuart Highway, as part of a joint government tender, with the total cost not revealed.

Twenty-four Territory business and industry bodies will travel to Texas with Trade and Business Minister Robyn Cahill for an unspecified period of time and at an unknown cost to taxpayers to make their case to US-based companies for benefits from Beetaloo Sub-basin gas-related projects in the NT, the Minister says. The total cost to taxpayers for the Texas trip was not disclosed, however Ms Cahill’s office “estimated” it will cost $27,000 alone for her to attend the voyage.

The $355 million Acacia digital health program did not have a proper implementation plan produced until two years after the project started which was not effectively adopted, a consultant who worked on the project has revealed, arguing the system was treated merely as an IT project, rather than a system intended to change how healthcare works, adding those in charge were not prepared to make hard decisions. The consultant said perhaps the most important question of all was why money kept being spent without an understanding of whether value was being achieved.

Four people, including a teenage girl, have been arrested over an alleged attack on a man who is in a critical condition with skull fractures after a street fight in Nightcliff on Monday involving about 30 people, some armed with weapons including poles, rocks and axes, NT Police said.

A man suffered serious injuries after allegedly being hit in the back with a three-pronged spear during a “large disturbance” involving about 100 people in Wadeye, NT Police said, which follows the recent arrest of 13 people stemming from a series of alleged violent acts and property offences in the community since the start of August.

The Finocchiaro CLP Government will not say if it will continue to implement NT Health’s troubled Acacia digital patient record system and has ignored questions about whether it will adopt the 12 recommendations made in a scathing Public Accounts Committee inquiry report released more than two weeks ago.

Labor’s Yiwarr McGrath has defeated independent candidate Andrew Blamey to win the Mulka by-election Saturday night, bringing the party’s total number of MLAs in NT Parliament to six after the 2024 election wipeout saw it reduced to just four bush members, but the new member enters a divided Labor parliamentary caucus.

NT Police have charged 13 people with more than 50 offences stemming from a series of alleged violent acts and property offences in Wadeye since the start of August, with details of three riots and some of the other alleged crimes still not made public.