NT Chief Minister-elect Lia Finocchiaro sitting with CEO of The Department of the Chief Minister and Cabinet, Ken Davies PSM, and Police Commissioner Michael Murphy. Photo: Facebook Lia Finocchiaro MLA.
The Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party (CLP) leader Lia Finocchiaro has become Chief Minister-elect in a landslide election win against Labor.
On Saturday (24 August), Territorians voted CLP in with a 16-seat majority, representing an 11 per cent swing to the centre-right opposition and the party’s second election win in 24 years.
A day after her election win, MLA for Spillett Lia Finocchiaro met with the CEO of The Department of the Chief Minister and Cabinet, Ken Davies PSM, and Police Commissioner Michael Murphy APM.
“The CLP team is privileged and humbled that Territorians have put their trust in us,” said the Chief Minister-elect from Parliament House in Darwin. “We take this responsibility very seriously, and we will not let Territorians down.
“Law and order is the number one issue and we have seen Territorians express that very loudly and clearly.
“Work is underway to ensure Declan’s Law and other measures including criminalising bail breaches, electronic monitoring for people on bail, ram raid legislation, reducing the criminal age of responsibility [to 10] and minimum mandatory sentences for assaulting frontline workers will be ready for the first week of parliament as promised.
“We will ensure there is a whole of government approach to supporting our police who can’t be left to carry everything as they have been in the past.”
A draft swathe of legislative reform is expected to be tabled at the next parliament sittings in October. However Ms Finocchiaro said ‘Declan’s Law’ would be introduced in week one of the new parliament.
The legislation came after the murder of 20-year-old bottle shop worker Declan Laverty, who was killed by a 19-year-old on bail at the time for a previous aggravated assault. His death incited a rally of 4000 people in Darwin calling for better bail laws, which was led by Declan’s mother Samara Laverty.
Declan’s Law will amend the Bail Act 1982 (NT) to include:
- Presumption against bail for all serious violent offences
- Presumption against bail for serious violent offences when the use or threatened use of all weapons, including ‘offensive weapons’ is involved
- Presumption against bail for repeat offenders – defined as those who have been found guilty of two or more offences within the previous two years – and those who are alleged to have committed another crime while on bail
- Breach of bail conditions as an offence for youths
- Mandatory electronic monitoring if a repeat offender is granted bail or reoffends while on bail.
Chief Minister-elect Lia Finocchiaro also met with NT Police Association president Nathan Finn at Parliament House in Darwin. Photo: Facebook Lia Finocchiaro MLA.
Ms Finocchiaro said the new legislation would ensure serious violent offences, regardless of whether a weapon was used or not, started with a position of no bail on first offence.
The CLP only held two of the 25 seats in Darwin Parliament House when it returned to opposition in 2016. Then-leader Adam Giles said at the time of his loss that infighting and scandals took his party out of government – it has only served one other term since 2001.
After being elected to parliament in 2012 at the age of 27, former lawyer Ms Finocchiaro became the youngest minister in NT history at 28, when then-Chief Minister Terry Mills handed her a swathe of portfolios. That same year, she was a Territory finalist in the Young Australian of the Year awards for her advocacy on fair pay and representation for women.
Ms Finocchiaro was able to survive the party’s turbulent period, becoming leader of the opposition in early 2020 after the only remaining CLP member Gary Higgins resigned. Later that year she helped the party gain another six seats, but was unable to succeed in the following three by-elections.
Her grandparents were Italian migrants, but Ms Finocchiaro grew up in the city of Palmerston and was the NT’s highest-ranking army cadet in high school.
She is the first NT-born Country Liberal Party Chief Minister and has two children with her husband Sam Burke – the son of former CLP Chief Minister Denis Burke.
