The Finocchiaro Government will cut a total of $200,000 in funding per year to the Environment Centre NT and the Arid Lands Environment Centre over the group’s legal challenges to government decisions on fracking and water allocations, with the Top End group calling the government a “puppet for big business” that is “running scared from scrutiny and accountability”.
Third party merit reviews will be removed from legislation covering petroleum, planning and water by the Finocchiaro Government, which has been praised by NT Farmers but criticised by the Environment Centre NT as government bowing to big business, adding the reviews are a key part of establishing transparency and accountability in government decision-making.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has declared 2025 the “Year of Action”, laying out her government’s vision for the next 11 months, including its plans for economic growth, cutting crime and repairing the budget, suggesting that while her government was still investigating what measures from the Langoulant review into government spending it would adopt, the millions spent on consultancy companies was “unacceptable”.
A 17-year-old boy has been charged after allegedly trespassing at a Lyons home seven times over four days, stealing alcohol, and twice indecently exposing himself, NT Police said.
NT Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Andrew Warton has been given an unspecified amount of time over the fire season to take a ‘sabbatical’ to run Australia’s Casey Research Station in Antarctica, after only seven months in the top job, while the firefighter’s union has said the three most senior NT Fire roles have not been permanently filled 10 months after the new agency was started.
The CLP Government is expected to announce it will change current legislation to permit “probationary” corrections officers into the job without having to complete current training requirements, a move criticised by the union as raising serious safety issues for the public and officers, while also taking the “first step towards privatisation” of the NT’s jails.
The police force is at “crisis point” and is “haemorrhaging” officers, the NT Police Association has said, calling on Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro to pay officers more, improve their working conditions, and immediately address chronic understaffing in a public pitch before a new enterprise agreement is negotiated.
The Territory’s hospitals will get a one-off cash injection of $51 million this year as part of the Albanese Labor Government’s national funding boost, which the government said was done to strengthen Medicare and support public hospitals.
EXCLUSIVE: CLP Education Minister Jo Hersey took a luxury private jet between Katherine and Darwin to attend a boozy, “bottomless” high tea at the Hilton Garden Inn Darwin in early December, but she claims no taxpayer money was expended despite posting photos of the jaunt on her government-funded social media account, which comes as the Minister was also caught out misleading Territorians about her disclosable interests.
The CLP Government and the Labor Opposition have not ruled out supporting independent MLA Justine Davis’s calls for a parliamentary inquiry into the rorting of a government Indigenous employment scheme that saw an estimated $60 million fraudulently obtained by up to 146 Territory contractors.
The CLP Government will plunge the Territory into further debt rather than find necessary cost savings of $450 million a year, with Treasurer Bill Yan proclaiming the move “responsible action to repair the budget”.
Two men have been charged over Monday’s shooting in Coconut Grove, another person who was arrested has been released, while the gun that was used has not been found, NT Police said.
