NT Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has attacked the acting CEO of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency for criticising the inhumane conditions inside the Palmerston watch house and calling for the Federal Government to suspend funding police in remote communities until the NT Government meets with Aboriginal leaders to discuss ongoing crime issues, labelling the calls “irresponsible” and “absurd”.
Four teens have been arrested and another is on the run after a night of chaos through Darwin’s northern suburbs, that started with a car-jacking at knife point, followed by a ram raid of a bottle shop and police later having to abandon a high-speed chase down Tiger Brennan Drive after the teens “attempted to ram” a police vehicle, NT Police said.
Retired and other former NT firefighters say they are missing out on decades-worth of back-paid overtime because the government is imposing a six-year statute of limitations on payouts, following a Fair Work Commission ruling in their favour last year, a limitation the former firefighters say is not being imposed on still-serving firefighters and other NT public servants. But the government says its actions are compliant with the FWC decision.
A group of four youths are on the run after throwing rocks at an 84-year-old man and his vehicle after he refused to give them a lift Tuesday morning, NT Police said, ultimately stealing his Hilux and assaulting him.
A group of Peppimenarti residents are continuing their legal action against the Northern Territory government for alleged breaches of the Racial Discrimination Act by failing to provide policing in their community comparable to the level provided to non-Indigenous NT residents, and the group’s lawyer said the decision not to build a police station in the community was “compounding the error”.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro must explain why she breached the Disclosure of Interests Act by keeping her husband Sam Burke’s directorship in a company connected to the Darwin Waterfront secret for two years – while she was criticising the previous Labor government for its failures to properly disclose – and simply resign, the Opposition says.
A 34-year-old man has been arrested and charged with sexual intercourse with a child under 10, in what NT Police have described as a “confronting investigation” involving a “very young victim”.
The nearly three-year long coronial inquest into the shooting death of Kumanjayi Walker has cost two government agencies more than $7.4 million combined, with the total costs for the inquest still unknown, the government revealed in an answer to a question at Budget Estimates.
Five senior police officers who lied to the coronial inquest about the existence of racist awards in the TRG that the Coroner described as “grotesque examples of racism” in her final report will have no action taken against them, the NT Police have said, while former constable Zach Rolfe has accused the officers of colluding “with the support of some members of the NT Police executive”.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government has launched its first NT Investment Summit in Darwin, bringing to town over 100 business leaders, investors, and key stakeholders from numerous countries and industries, but has not disclosed the cost to taxpayers of the summit or details about what is being discussed.
The CLP Government has committed to “fast-tracking” the majority of recommendations from the Approvals Fast Track Taskforce report to cut red tape and boost the economy, including extending food business registrations to three years, exempting “low-risk” electrical works from needing a certificate of compliance and extending responsible service of alcohol certificates from three to five years.
Only one of Darwin and Palmerston’s public housing and bus safety officers wants to become a police public safety officer, the Commonwealth Public Sector Union has said, a new role that comes with a gun that the Finocchiaro Government announced last month to crack down on antisocial behaviour.
