We should never get political ambition confused with political success, few spectacles are as revealing as the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party (CLP) and its recent legislative misadventure. The CLP, with much fanfare, rolled out a suite of six laws aimed at reshaping crime, justice, and community control in the Territory. The rhetoric was bold, to restore order, empower locals, and curb chaos. Yet, as the dust settles, the reality is starkly different, zero measurable impact. From a security consultant’s perch, steeped in the hard-earned lessons of human nature, justice, and economic incentives, this reform package emerges not as a triumph of governance but as yet another cautionary tale of overreach and miscalculation.
The centrepiece of the CLP’s agenda was a drastic rollback of the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10, coupled with tougher bail laws and expanded police powers. The intent, presumably, was to signal strength, a muscular response to rising crime rates that have long plagued the NT. Statistics paint a grim picture, the Territory’s incarceration rate hovers around 1% of its population, with 40% of those behind bars languishing on remand. This is no small matter in a jurisdiction where youth crime, often tied to social disintegration, fuels public outrage. Yet, lowering the age of culpability to 10 flies in the face of evidence that early entanglement with the justice system without being held accountable entrenches, rather than deters, criminal behaviour. The move promises to swell an already overburdened prison system, where overcrowding is not a glitch but a feature. From a security standpoint, this is akin to pouring fuel on a smouldering fire, effective deterrence demands precision, not blanket punishment.
It’s no secret, both before and during their tenure, that this government was warned about who’s footing the bill for juvenile crime in the Northern Territory, the taxpayer. On their last go-round, the CLP rolled out subsidised bus travel for minors, dressed up as a noble effort to keep runaways from drifting too far from home. The outcome was as predictable as night following day. Far from curbing escapes, it handed runaways a taxpayer-funded getaway car. Worse, it turned buses into rolling hubs for juvenile delinquency, a mobile delivery service for crime, complete with an exit strategy.
Yet, here’s the rub, the same CLP that set this fiasco in motion shows no appetite for undoing its own mess. They’ve dug in, content to let the problem they birthed fester, while taxpayers pick up the tab and communities bear the cost. It’s a classic case of good intentions paving a road straight to chaos and then refusing to glance at the wreckage.
Another own goal, the CLP’s stubborn refusal to entertain judicial reform is a self-inflicted wound that leaves them, and the Northern Territory, vulnerable to the whims of activist judges. A justice system, when left unchecked, becomes a playground for those who see the bench as a soapbox for personal crusades rather than a seat for impartial reason. By dodging the hard work of reining in vague laws or streamlining a clogged court process, where 40% of inmates languish on remand, the CLP cedes ground to judicial overreach. The result? Policies meant to signal toughness, are being undermined or reinterpreted by judges who can exploit the system’s ambiguity to push their own agendas. Without reform, the CLP isn’t just failing to lead, it’s handing activists the tools to reshape the Territory’s legal landscape, one ruling at a time.
Compounding this is their glaring inaction on the corruption and nepotism rotting police management, a failure that strips them of any shred of credibility. When leadership within law enforcement prioritises loyalty over competence, the rank-and-file suffer, and public trust erodes. The CLP’s expansion of police powers, like wanding in schools, might look decisive, but it’s hollow when the brass can’t be counted on to wield that authority with integrity. Communities see through the façade, a force plagued by cronyism can’t enforce justice, only perpetuate dysfunction. By turning a blind eye to this festering problem, the CLP undermines its own law-and-order rhetoric, leaving citizens to question whether the tough talk is just noise masking a refusal to tackle the rot within. Credibility, once lost, isn’t regained with slogans, it demands action, and on that front, the CLP is conspicuously absent.
Economically, the reforms are equally dubious. The promise of “restoring local control” through scrapping the Local Decision Making (LDM) program, once a mechanism for Aboriginal communities to oversee services, sounds noble until you unpack it. Twenty communities were tethered to LDM agreements, designed to shift power from bureaucratic overlords to local hands. The CLP’s pivot to “remote community councils” lacks funding clarity or a roadmap, leaving a vacuum where structure once stood. Economic incentives matter when people lack agency over their resources, dependency festers, and with it, the very social ills these laws aim to address. The Territory’s history underscores this, centralised control has long bred inefficiency and alienation, yet the CLP doubles down, betting on vague reform over proven devolution.
Security, at its core, rests on trust. Crowds, whether in urban centres or remote outposts, behave predictably when they feel heard, disorder erupts when they don’t. The CLP’s decision to axe LDM, alongside a treaty process seven years in the making, sends a clear message, local voices are expendable. This isn’t just a policy shift, it’s a rupture. Aboriginal leaders, already wary of flip-flopping governments, now face a landscape where promises evaporate with each election cycle. The result? A deepening cynicism that fuels unrest. Security professionals know this dynamic well, when communities sense betrayal, no amount of police wands or prison cells can stem the tide.
The bail reforms, dubbed “Declan’s Law,” and expanded police powers to wield metal detectors in schools and public transport, further expose the CLP’s misstep. Crime prevention hinges on addressing root causes, poverty, education gaps, substance abuse, not on symbolic crackdowns. The NT’s prison system, already “full and broken” by the CLP’s own admission, can’t absorb the fallout. Tougher bail laws will pile more bodies into remand, where 40% of inmates currently languish, awaiting trial in a system too clogged to deliver swift justice. This isn’t law and order, it’s a bottleneck masquerading as resolve. From a profiling lens, the data is unambiguous, youth offenders, especially in marginalised groups, respond better to effective intervention than incarceration in the NT. Why? Because most of the kids get greater access to resources, entertainment and recreation in juvenile detention, than they do at home. The CLP ignores this at its peril.
What about the moral angle? A society that prides itself on freedom can’t ignore the price its policies exact on the most defenceless. Justice, in its ideal form, should be a shield of fairness, not a club aimed at those already down. But here’s the catch, incarceration loses its sting if it ends up rewarding more than it deters. When prison becomes a perverse rite of passage, offering structure, status, or even basic needs unmet outside, it backfires, hardening young lives into cycles of despair and defiance rather than breaking them free. The psychological scars run deep, stripping away identity and purpose, yet the CLP marches on, blind to the wreckage.
Laws, too, are toothless if judges won’t enforce them as written. The CLP’s tough-on-crime playbook, lowering the age of responsibility, tightening bail, crumbles when the bench shrugs and does its own thing. If courts treat these mandates as suggestions, doling out leniency or reinterpretation where clarity was intended, the whole scheme unravels. Punishment without consistency isn’t justice, it’s a lottery. The government’s job isn’t just to scribble rules and call it a day, it’s to lift people up, not grind them down. Yet the CLP clings to a path that punishes the young and poor with no real alternative, betting on a system that’s only as strong as the will to follow through. When incarceration rewards more than it reforms and laws bend to judicial whims, the moral failure isn’t just evident, it’s inevitable. From the author.
The opinions and statements are those of Sam Wilks and do not necessarily represent whom Sam Consults or contracts to. Sam Wilks is a skilled and experienced Security Consultant with almost 3 decades of expertise in the fields of Real estate, Security, and the hospitality/gaming industry. His knowledge and practical experience have made him a valuable asset to many organizations looking to enhance their security measures and provide a safe and secure environment for their clients and staff.
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