47 Results

Moral panic or good law and policy? S. 33AA of the NT Liquor Act as a blunt instrument of social control.

For mine, Anderson used “boys” and “little boys” as dog-whistles to the broader Aboriginal community in the NT to send a barely-encoded message that the pretenders to the Mills throne are no more than boys, uncircumcised (or sub-incised) grown men unworthy of consideration as men.

Port Darwin MLA and Attorney-General John Elferink will go to the back-bench. Drysdale MLA Lia Finnochario, new to the parliament but very impressive, will get a ministry. Speaker Kezia Purick – dumped by Mills in favour of Lambley six months ago and better-connected to business than any of her colleagues – will be bought back into the fold.

Someone in Acting CM Lambley’s position should be well aware that it is erroneous and possibly prejudicial to cry ‘murder’ when there has been no such conviction by a court. Murder is a very specific offence, and it does the NT Government no credit to have Ms Lambley respond in hysterical ignorance.

Olga Havnen Almost a year ago I wrote here of the magnitude of Olga Havnen’s job as the replacement for Bob Beadman in the key role of Northern Territory Coordinator-General for Remote Service Delivery: The most challenging part of Havnen’s new job will be to renew the shattered faith and trust in governments as service [...]

Peter Hanks QC: ” … If the facts as alleged in the 8 statutory declarations are accurate, several offences against s. 266(2) of the Electoral Act (NT) were committed at Wadeye … offences that seriously threaten the integrity of he operation of the Electoral Act (NT) and the sytem of representative government in the Northern Territory.”

Mills and the CLP got smart – and got some smart advice and advisors – and realised that government in the NT was theirs for the taking – not by the usual head-butting over seats in the northern suburbs of Darwin but by concentrating on what had long been accepted as Labor’s heartland, the bush seats. And they didn’t forget that they only needed one seat to get them over the line. By close of the count Saturday night the CLP had taken government.

At the time I came to the conclusion that the ‘cooling-off place’ had been designed by the same architect that had designed Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. The several strands of barbed-wire at the top of the chain-wire mesh fence, the padlocked chain on the gate and the spotlights surrounding the Spartan building are reminiscent of TV images I had seen during the time that David Hicks was receiving similar consular assistance from the Australian Government as Julian Assange is currently receiving.

Sternly worded letters to administrative staff of such corporations and combative encounters with shop-front staff, are only likely to have one outcome; the closure of such facilities to birders. Shop-front staff find dealing with insistent birders just as onerous and boring as birders find the process themselves. With management fielding complaints from both sides, it is easy to see the most expedient course of action for them to end the problem altogether.

UPDATED – Now with added Gerry Wood! That’s not all! Just next to this rubbish dump there is an open sewerage pond where the raw sewage is pumped out straight of the houses. It is just very rough and ready – a hole in the ground surrounded by a chain-mesh fence. Pure raw sewage. The tip is about 2 or 3 minutes drive from the community. Kids walk back and forth. Dogs can get into the sewage ponds and then they go back to the community. It is a disgrace.