Erwin Chlanda, Alice Springs News

The debt exceeding $11 billion and growing, costing the taxpayer “a million bucks a day” in interest. The number of people in prison at an all time high. Crime exceeding the courts’ capacity to deal with it … Who would want to be a minister of the current Territory Government?

The entire executive board of the NT Police Association (NTPA) is calling upon Police Commissioner Michael Murphy to tender his resignation. This follows his outing himself as the senior executive public officer found by ICAC to have displayed unsatisfactory conduct in relation to the management of a conflict of interest in a recruitment process.

The town’s focus in 2025 will be on a fight for survival of the travel industry and the nearly 400 members of Tourism Central Australia will need to join forces. That was the unanimous view of the 150 people who attended the organisation’s AGM yesterday evening.

Exorbitant prices for groceries in outback stores are often the subject of outrage but are rarely dealt with a great deal of logic ... Why should the public purse kick in $50m over four years from 2025-26 to provide remote stores with low-cost access to about 30 food products?

“We will not spend another dollar on activists and economic vandals and their disruptive agendas.” This is how Joshua Burgoyne, NT Minister for Lands, Planning and Environment, announced that his government has axed its $100,000 annual grant for the Arid Lands Environment Centre (ALEC), Central Australia’s peak environmental organisation for over 40 years and with 400 members.

All Territory Aboriginal persons facing criminal charges since August last year received high quality legal representation unless they chose not to use the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, or it had a conflict of interest. CEO Anthony Beven was responding to allegations made anonymously to the Alice Springs News that “there is more chaos at NAAJA”.

How many troubled children in Central Australia fall under the umbrella of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA)? Surely that was a known number upon which Anthony Albanese’s $250m “special grant” was based.

Check the thermometer and smile, if you are a glider pilot, that is: Central Australia in summer is the world’s best place for flying without an engine. It’s Alice where world distance and speed records have been set for decades.

Take out the hype and Beetaloo gas is a pretty thin project. The sub-basin, 900 km north of Alice Springs, is “estimated” to contain 500 trillion cubic feet of gas. The NT Government  refers  to this estimate as being “by industry”.

My journalistic work in the Territory began early on Christmas Day 1974, looking down from the aircraft of Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns onto the Northern Territory capital that had been all but annihilated by Cyclone Tracy.