A 29-year-old woman has been charged with child exploitation offences after three homes in the Greater Darwin region were raided by a joint police taskforce this month, including the woman’s home in a Palmerston suburb last week, making her the third alleged offender from the ring busted in the last two weeks.
The Finocchiaro CLP Government is proposing new laws to grant ministers and the unelected Territory Coordinator sweeping powers to “step in” on major projects and overrule regulatory processes by departments, ultimately making decisions to approve projects themselves, which critics have labelled “anti-democratic and anti-Territorian”.
The Finocchiaro Government will not say if it will spend close to $20 million to upgrade the Darwin Convention Centre, which was part of a plan by the previous government to get an NBL team for the city, and will also not say if the government will give the troubled Darwin Salties more taxpayer money to allow them to continue.
A 14-year-old male is facing charges after he allegedly indecently assaulted two female paramedics who were helping him in an ambulance, before spitting in the vehicle, NT Police said, and later damaging a medical vehicle and spitting at police.
Housing flood evacuees at the Howard Springs accommodation village last year cost taxpayers $12.7 million for just two months, with the total costs for repairs and cleaning hitting $1.3 million, including nearly $500,000 to replace broken windows and $175,000 to fix plumbing – figures the previous Labor government refused to disclose and famously downplayed as regular “wear and tear”.
Bypass works on the long-delayed and over-budget Tiger Brennan overpass project that closed access to a gate at the Hidden Valley motor sports complex could mean the popular V8 Supercars event is cancelled next year, the new Minister for Logistics and Infrastructure has revealed, stating the department is currently “scrambling” to find a solution that would allow emergency vehicles to enter the facility.
Parks Australia has been slapped with a $200,000 fine after the Commonwealth agency pleaded guilty to damaging a sacred site at Gunlom Falls during the construction of a pathway in 2019, the largest fine on record under sacred sites laws.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s hiring of a liquor industry lobbyist as her chief of staff has been raised during debate in Parliament about new alcohol laws, with Greens MLA Kat McNamara suggesting the government’s plan to scrap the minimum alcohol unit price would benefit the liquor industry and not Territorians.
The Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education used unreliable student records to claim government funding and failed to comply with Australian accounting standards, a new Auditor-General’s report has found, which follows other serious operational and financial problems at the institute that led the Auditor General being unable to sign off on its finances for two years.
The CLP Government will provide Territorians with a look behind the books at what it calls a “grim” economic outlook caused by years of “financial chaos” next week at a special event with the NT’s Under Treasurer.
Any person found guilty of spitting at any worker will be subject to a mandatory three-month jail sentence, as part of the CLP’s anti-crime agenda to be debated in Parliament this week, that has been labelled a “recipe for injustice” by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
Large “disturbances” in the remote community of Jilkminggan on Monday saw a woman assaulted by up to six unknown offenders and a man tasered by police after he allegedly threatened officers with a claw hammer, NT Police said.
