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July 25, 2023 14 mins

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
As I said yesterday on the show, we spoke to
Samara Lavity about the Justice for Decklan Lavity Well petition
and her calls for further action when it comes to
crime in the Northern Territory. Now as it stands, while
I'm looking at this right now, that petition, those numbers
have now reached twenty two thousand, five hundred and sixty one.

(00:23):
Now the Opposition leader Lea Finocchio tabled that petition in
Parliament yesterday. She joins me on the line, good morning
to you, Leah.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Good morning Katy and to your listeners.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Now, Leah, that petition table yesterday, more than twenty two
thousand people have now signed it. What's going to happen
with that petition now?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
It's really incredible, Katie, And I think the strength and
the numbers of people signing that petition started by Samara
Lavity shows the rapid increase in concern right across our
community for high levels of crime. So I tabled that
petition on behalf of the people who signed it, and
I hope it serves as a very dark warning to
Natasha files around people's desperate want for this government to

(01:06):
do something to drive down our very excessive rates of crime.
So time will tell if they do anything with it.
I've asked for it to be sent to a scrutiny committee,
who are then able to authorize it to come back
to Parliament for debate, and I want listeners to be
really clear that if that petition disappears and never comes
back to Parliament, it is solely at the feet of

(01:28):
Labor that you can blame because they have the majority
on that committee. The chair is Joe Bowden and ultimately,
if they block this petition coming back to Parliament for debate,
it shows just how little respects.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Solelya sorry, just talk us through that again with the
ins and outs of it. What needs to happen now
for it to be debated in parliament.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, So what happens is when you table a petition,
the petition is read out and then I referred it
to a scrutiny committee, which is the proper process. They
are the ones who determine whether it just goes to
the Chief Minister written response to Samara Lavity or whether
it comes back to Parliament for a debate. Now, if
that the petition does not come back to Parliament for

(02:08):
a debate, next sittings. It will be because Labor have
lost it at that parliamentary Scrutiny Committee level. And so
if we don't see that petition next month, we know
that Labor again are trying to shut down the voices
of a community and are turning their back on twenty
two thousand people who demand more from this government.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Well, I actually think those numbers are going to grow.
I think that we're going to see over the coming
days that there's going to be more people sign that petition.
And I don't think that you can ignore that number
of people. This does need to be debated, there does
need to be for the discussion, but you cannot ignore
the voices of twenty two thousand people. Now, whether all

(02:47):
of them are from the Northern Territory or not, I
don't know, but some of the comments that are on there,
they do seem to be people that are based here
in the Northern Territory.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
There's names that I recognize.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, there's no doubt that the vast majority would be Territorians.
I haven't gone through all of them, but that was
twenty Sorry, that was two point two kilos of paper, Katie.
It was enormous. The biggest petition i've ever seen hit
Parliament in eleven years. And we know, I mean, you know,
I know we talk to people every day who are
sick and tired of the ones who have to change

(03:20):
their life, change their lifestyle, barricade themselves in their homes
and their business while criminals walk free.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
When this week, when will we know whether it can
whether it is going to be debated?

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Like when will we know when's it going to go
that step further?

Speaker 2 (03:37):
It should be next parliament. So we should find out
next Parliament whether that Scrutiny Committee has approved it to
come back for debate. Any longer than that is ridiculous,
this labor playing game. So I'll make sure people are
kept abreast of what the status is. But it's our
expectation that would be back for debate next parliament.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Well, we will all be keeping a very close eye
on it, I think.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
And the fact is here.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
That those numbers, I can't remember the last time that
a petition garnered numbers like that here in the Northern Territory.
Keesy Epiric was texting me a little while ago and
she said that she understands the last time that there
was a petition with over twenty thousand signatures.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Was when Paul Henderson.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Was looking at selling too, but it didn't sell. They
backed down. I'd have to go back and do my research.
But yeah, I mean, it's a huge number of people
to sign a petition.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
It's a number that you can't ignore.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
It is a number you can't ignore. But unfortunately we
have a government that continues to ignore the calls of people.
I mean, we have had thousands of people in Alice
Springs come together on crime, thousands of people on the
steps of Parliament House. We've got now tens of thousands
of people signing a petition and yet this week in
Parliament the government made territories wait five months for a

(04:55):
bow review after Dethlan Lavity was killed, only to come
up with no change to b our laws in the territory.
It's just an astonishing you know, they're just not doing
their job. This is a government that is just not
putting our right to be safe as a community above
the right of people who continue to be criminals and

(05:17):
continue to destroy other people's life. Leah.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
One of the things that did pass through parliament yesterday
was the knife legislation. It passed through Parliament to enabling wanding.
We now have some further details about those locations. From
what I can gather, it passed with minimal fuss. There
were some concerns raised by Yinya mark Gyula, but with
minimal fuss. Have you had the opportunity to have a

(05:41):
look at those locations and obviously to get a bit
further detail on how this is going to work.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, Look, it was really disappointing. Government only gave the
opposition a copy of the bill at eight am and
we were expected to speak on it at ten am.
And this is a government again promised to be open
and transparent and yet isn't giving anyone adequate time to
look at it. I believe the Independence didn't even receive
the bill until nine thirty that morning when we were

(06:09):
meant to debate it at ten. So just it really
shows that this has been rushed and that it's all
about managing the optics, not managing the territory and doing
good things for the territory. One thing I want to
really misbust for your listeners is government are really making
this legislation sound like there will be all these zones
across the territory now where police can freely wand people

(06:32):
for knives. It's just not true. There are zones across
the territory which are deemed high risk areas, but police
will always need authorization to do the wanding, and that
authorization requires a very stringent checklist by a commander or
the Police Commissioner, which requires within that preceding six months

(06:56):
for there to be some very high level offenses committed
in that area.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
What did ask this?

Speaker 1 (07:01):
I did ask the Chief Minister about this yesterday and
she said that they would be able to wand in
those areas. We are going to speak to the Assistant Commissioner,
Travis Worz just after ten o'clock this morning, so I'll
get a better understanding from that operational perspective. But so
what you're saying is that they can't just wand in
those areas now. They still need to get approval from

(07:23):
a commander or from the commissioner.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Absolutely so, if police have a reasonable suspicion someone has
a knife, then they can search them like they normally would,
and they can use the one to search them. But
if police want to just search people in one of
these high risk areas, they require the authorization from a
commander or a commissioner, who then have to go away
and dig up the crime data from the six months

(07:49):
before the authorization's requested to make sure that it hits
some very high thresholds.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
So for example, well, some of those areas though would
be hitting high threshold you would see that that's why
they've actually been.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Declared, you would think. But one of the tests, for example,
is that the commander or the commissioner have to be
satisfied that within the last six months there's been a
violent offense, which is an offense that attracts a maximum
imprisonment of more than seven years. So, for example, an
aggravated assault with a weapon is not a serious enough
offense for the commander of commissioner to authorize an area

(08:27):
to be used for wanding. So it's a very very
high barsk.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
So what did I mean.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
I'm assuming that questions were asked about this or this
was raised yesterday in parliament.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
What did the government say?

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah, I asked loads of questions on this, Katie and
raised this issue. And you know, it's just tricky. We
the words as usual. They don't answer questions in question times.
They don't answer questions when we're asking on the bill,
because what I was also really concerned about, and what
your listeners need to know, is even if the area
is authorized, it is only ever going to be authorized

(09:04):
for a maximum of twelve hours. So this idea labors
pushing that there are all these zones that are going
to be zones where you can be wanded. It's just
not true. It first requires authorization, and then that authorization
is only valid for twelve hours. And my concern was
for our police, how on earth are they going to

(09:25):
keep abreast of it. If you're on one shift and
a zone has been stood up for twelve hours, and
then you're the next shift coming in, how are you
going to know how much time is left where the
boundaries are. So I asked all these questions because the
last thing I want is for police to get in
trouble for wanding someone because they might have been one
minute past the twelve hour mark, or they might have

(09:47):
been just on the other side of the boundary of
wherever the zone would be.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah, look, well we're going to catch up, Like I
said with the Assistant Commissioner, Travis Willis just after ten o'clock,
can try to get some further detail on that.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
But I do just want to.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Make the point that these changes have obviously been made
based on what is happening in Queensland. My understanding, based
on discussions that I've had with the Acting Commissioner, is
that you know, the way in which they are implementing
this has been based on what's been they've described as
quite successful in Queensland.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yes, and it has been successful in Queensland, but I
think it's important to remember when you're pay legislation there
are really different contexts. So queen has because if not
thousands more police they use it in operations around train
stations for example, you know things like that we don't have, but.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
We do have bus We do have bus stops, like
I would think that it's a similar situation at a
bus stop.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, we do, we do. But again, if you're a
copper at a bus stop and you've got a written
police commission for it and then go away and get authorizations,
the people have probably hopped on the bus before you've
even gotten your approval to go ahead. So look, we'll see.
I hope it works, don't get me wrong. I hope
it works that when it comes to the legislation. One

(11:04):
issue I did raise was that if this governments.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
We're just having some problems with your phone line there
Ly for some reason, it's just cutting out. I'm not
sure if you can step. I'm in another direction for us.
It's sorry to do it had moved at all?

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Is that better?

Speaker 3 (11:17):
That's better? Thank you?

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Oh sorry? Okay. So one issue I raised was that
if you're going to copy Queensland, copy it properly because
in Queensland, for example, around bail, they include all weapons.
And so what we know is this government have really
limited things to controlled weapons, but in Queensland they've got
much broader definitions to capture all sorts of weapons, which

(11:40):
is something we need here in the territory. So I
did quiz the minister on why she's picking and choosing
bits of Queensland legislation, but of course I didn't get
any answers on behalf of our community, because this government
is certainly not open or transparent when it comes to
what they're up to. But we'll see. I hope this works,
but it certainly is complicated. And my major concern is

(12:02):
around supporting our police to implement it, because I don't
want to see our police getting in trouble for inadvertently accidentally,
you know, being on the wrong side of whatever the
boundary is on, being a few minutes outside of the
time frame. You know, all of these details need to
be nutted out, and clearly they haven't been well.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Leaf Andochiaro.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Before we wrap up this morning, what is on the
agenda today and what's the opposition going to be focusing on.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
So today we're really focused on our economy going backwards.
We in the last week had ABS data showing there
are six thousand less jobs this month than last month.
We've got data that shows from context that we've got
for the nineteenth consecutive quarter, our economy is the worst
performing in the nation. And Deloitte Access Economics, who are

(12:52):
the people that the Northern Territory government follow, their economic
data are showing that we have the worst dwelling start,
very poor performance. We've got the second lowest population growth
in our nation. So we're going to really be focusing
on the government who's dragging the territory backwards because we
need opportunities here. It's very important for all of our

(13:14):
futures and for our kids, and we will always fight
for a strong economy so that everyone benefits and Leah.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
The interesting one there is, I mean com sick the
nineteenth quarter going backwards. Unfortunately we saw it under the
previous Chief Minister, Michael Gunner. He said that he basically
chucks it in the bin when he sees those Comsect reports,
and I don't think that our current Chief Minister, Natasha
Files takes them overly seriously either.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Deloitte though.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Those reports are the ones that the Northern Territory government
also uses, don't they to actually get a gauge of
where we're at exactly?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
So Treasury use the Deloitte data, and the Deloitte data
has most of the indicators pointing down and backwards. So
it's a really serious issue. This government will have you
think that everything is rosy, but every major project on
the list was there when we left government in twenty sixteen.
Nothing has progressed in that space, and we still don't

(14:12):
see the plan for our future going forward, which puts
people's jobs at risk, it puts the future of our
kids at risk, it it increases our cost of living,
and it creates uncertainty. And so this government doesn't have
a plan for a strong economy or our future. And
that's what we're going to be prosecuting today.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
Leah Finocchiaro, we better leave it there. Good to speak
with you this morning. Thanks so much for your.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Time, Take care everyone.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Thank you,
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