Lawyers will be excited and busy this week. Government lawyers will be reading the decision closely and working out how to proceed. Often where States or Territories have granted tenure for specific projects (such as a mine) there is a contractual agreement between the State or Territory and the project proponent that passes compensation liabilities through to the proponent, so there will also be some company lawyers busy assessing potential liabilities. Lawyers who represent indigenous groups will be carefully considering where to go next.
I prefer the definition attributed by some to former US president Harry S Truman in 1945: "Political correctness is a doctrine, recently fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and promoted by a sick mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end." Amen to that.
Darwin has always been a haven for desperados, chancers, carpet baggers and those trying to run away from the dark shadows of a previous life. I'll admit to being one of the latter when I turned up in mid-1984. From the long-lens-view of the populated south-east of the country, Darwin was an attractive bolt-hole, not least because it was about as far away as you could get from your southern ghosts. Not that there was any lack of opportunity for new troubles in the Top End.
Over its four years, Rural Weekly NT emphasised news and views from the pastoral, mining, agriculture, land management and conservation sectors. Politically, it covered the 2016 election loss of former Chief Minister Adam Giles and the rise of Labor’s Michael Gunner. But other issues also rose to the fore, matters deeply affecting those in the bush, including health services, especially mental health and youth suicide, as well as the wind-down of the Inpex project, the impacts of climate change and the potential hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) of the Territory’s gas reserves.
We'll never know with any certainty just how many crops were grown in the NT from the late 1970s through to the late 1990s but through my research over the past couple of years I’ve located reports - sourced from court reports, personal reports, NT Police material and of course contemporaneous media accounts – that indicate the Northern Territory was a hot-spot for cannabis cultivation during that period.
Literary journals are an important component of Australia's literary culture and can help to foster a range of Indigenous, non-indigenous and multicultural voices. However, the Northern Territory has no such platform, and its lack is a significant shortfall in the artistic lives of Territorians.
“The government comes, has a look and goes back to their air-conditioned office”: Miriam Charlie. Residents in the four town camps - Mara, Yanyula, Garawa 1, and Garawa 2 - face overcrowding, insecure tenancy, water contamination, and failing health hardware. The recently released Town Camps Review classifies 34 per cent of Borroloola houses in “very poor” condition, and another 25 per cent in “poor” condition.
"Lupo was a very large bull mastiff looking dog that was white, except when as kids one time decided to dye him blue or purple with gentian violet ... Maybe he was the Boundless Possible dog": Scott McConnell MLA
Fecund—Fertile Worlds is the first in Artback NT’s Spark NT Curator Program, initiated to foster art critical and curatorial practice within the NT and to provide NT artists with opportunities to showcase their work within curated touring exhibitions.
I’ve been thinking about Chris Wilson a lot since I learned of his diagnosis with pancreatic cancer. It’s very sad I probably won’t hear him play again, won’t get to watch him own a stage and destroy a room again. But I’ve been so very lucky to have these memories and many others to carry with me as fuel: Jeff Lang