UPDATED: The Finocchiaro CLP Government is considering arming the public with pepper spray as of September 1, which it says will improve personal safety amid a 12-month “controlled trial” that the Chief Minister teased on social media yesterday as “something new” to help Territorians, but critics argue it’s “a bad idea” that won’t fix violence.

Acting ICAC Greg Shanahan told Estimates hearings on Tuesday that he has recused himself from involvement in an undisclosed number of matters due to conflicts of interest, but refused to publicly disclose his conflicts register, stating only that some of his disclosures related to people he “worked directly with for a long period”.

St John Ambulance NT last week told paramedics it was ceasing two emergency procedures, roughly a year after a damning independent review into its medical treatments called for the procedures to be ended until a medical director was employed, with the report also finding multiple failures and poor decisions resulted in harm to patients and significant risk to staff.

A record-high number of prisoners across the Territory reached 2,903 last week, which has the CLP Government scrambling to recruit record numbers of prison officers, while the union says conditions behind bars remain unsafe after an officer lost an eye last month and have also raised concerns about the continued use of private corrections guards.

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.