Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb has announced he will resign from his role, effective September, which will leave the Northern Territory without a permanent DPP, police commissioner, ICAC or head of Children and Family Services following resignations from those high-level positions over the past couple months.
The Prime Minister’s Office has no record of correspondence with Darwin Council about why Anthony Albanese allegedly cancelled a trip to attend the council’s ‘VIP’ unveiling ceremony of the controversial Cyclone Tracy memorial sculpture late last year, a Freedom of Information response indicates, despite Lord Mayor Kon Vatskalis having claimed he cancelled the event because the Prime Minister could not make it.
Territory taxpayers have bailed out former DIPL chief executive Andrew Kirkman once again, preventing him from testifying in a Federal Circuit Court legal action scheduled for last week about a mental health injury he inflicted on a female staffer when he pounded his desk, screamed at her and told her in a 2021 meeting that her career would be “destroyed” if she challenged him.
A St John Ambulance NT executive was allowed to drive one of the charity’s emergency response vehicles on holiday to Adelaide, with the organisation claiming he paid his own fuel interstate, but the move has annoyed some who say St John has a shortage of response vehicles and follows an audit of its spending last year.
A new ‘Boosting Literacy and Numeracy Plan’ will be implemented across Territory schools in response to steadily declining standardised test results that the government hopes will lead to improved basic reading and maths skills for students.
Three men are facing multiple drug charges following an NT Police bust in Holtze on Monday that resulted in 113 kilograms of cannabis being seized along with $170,000 in cash, which police said has “significantly disrupted” a Vietnamese organised crime syndicate operating across state borders.
Coroner Elisabeth Armitage has delayed the release of her findings into the death of Kumanjayi Walker for nearly another month at the request of the families involved, which follows the death in custody of another Yuendumu man last week in Alice Springs during a failed arrest.
EXCLUSIVE: One of two ‘plain-clothes’ police officers who pinned a disabled Aboriginal man to the ground at an Alice Springs supermarket where he lost consciousness and subsequently died, has been identified as a police “liaison sergeant” who was not on frontline duties at the time of the fatal incident, the NT Independent can reveal, with the officer previously the subject of complaints over his use of force against Indigenous people. *NOTE: The feature image in this article is of a previous arrest by the officer, not a picture of the incident on Tuesday*
A two-hour hearing into the potential misuse of taxpayer money and other misconduct at the Darwin Waterfront Corporation has been quickly scheduled for Tuesday by a CLP-dominated parliamentary committee, following a referral from the Opposition last week, but the committee has yet to seek internal documents from the corporation as evidence to inform its investigation, the NT Independent understands.
UPDATED: The cause of death of a 24-year-old Yuendumu man who died while being arrested by NT Police officers on Tuesday afternoon at an Alice Springs supermarket is still unknown following an initial autopsy, police said Wednesday afternoon, while political leaders have called for the community to remain calm as the investigation continues.
The Finocchiaro Government has rejected a presumption in favour of NT public servants working from home, as well as the removal of a cap on the amount of days they can spend working from home, the Community and Public Sector Union has said, while Public Service Minister Jo Hersey said the government would not reduce the existing flexible work arrangements, but would not say what its work from home policy was.
Former ICAC Michael Riches “had a thing for pretty girls in the office” an investigation into his conduct as the NT’s anti-corruption watchdog has revealed, according to one former staffer, while 15 people described Mr Riches’s leadership style as “erratic, controlling, and awkward socially”, with one describing his office as “the most horrible place I’ve ever worked”.
