NT parliamentary committee members call for reform

Non-government members of a parliamentary committee responsible for scrutinising proposed Northern Territory laws are calling for the body to be reformed.

The NT Legislative Scrutiny Committee is currently investigating a controversial bill proposing to change NT child protection legislation, which the government says would prioritise "safety above all other considerations".

But ahead of two days of public hearings into the bill starting on Thursday, the committee's two non-government members have voiced concerns about how it is operating.

They say the committee's seven-day deadlines for public submissions on referred bills are too short, and in some instances, the body's work is being completely ignored by the government.

Independent Justine Davis and Labor Deputy Leader Dheran Young are also calling for the government's control of the committee to be diluted.

The Country Liberal Party (CLP) government has a majority on the committee through its three backbench representatives. Two of the backbenchers, Oly Carlson and Clinton Howe, also hold the chair and deputy chair positions respectively.

Ms Davis said the committee was extremely important considering the NT only has one parliamentary chamber, but that in practice it was not working effectively.

"In the [March] parliamentary sitting, when seven bills were referred to the committee, they were all complex bills — one of them was 120 pages," she said.

"The expectation that [the public is] going to have time [within seven days] to actually understand what's in that bill and meaningfully engage with it and make recommendations to improve it — that's what the point of that whole process is — it's just not possible."

Despite its influence within the committee, the government still rejected 11 recommendations that were made to improve a recent bill on racing and wagering.

"This is work that many people have done, both within the committee and within the community, to try and make sure that what we are doing here is making the best law we can, but none of the recommendations have been taken on board by government," Ms Davis said.

"It's curious because there are three government members on that committee, so they have been part of making those recommendations.

"It's interesting that they don't speak to those recommendations when the bill is debated as well."

The scrutiny committee was scrapped by Territory Labor in 2020, before the CLP revived the body after winning the 2024 territory election,

Over the first 18 months of the CLP's term in government, the party referred 15 bills to the committee, and another nine bills were referred between February and March this year.

Seven of those recent bills were referred in the February parliamentary sitting week, giving the committee just four weeks to hold inquiries into all of them.

Ms Davis said committees in other jurisdictions had "far longer" deadlines, such as in the Australian Capital Territory where they had three months.

"All of us do want to do our job properly, to be able to actually go through … in that case seven bills and get input from people, and then meaningfully look at how that bill is going to work, whether there are any issues with it, assess it against our terms of reference — it's virtually impossible," Ms Davis said.

"It should be a great thing. We're really lucky to have something like that, but it's not set up in a way that it can actually serve its purpose."

Call for committee membership shake-up

Under Labor, the committee also had a majority of members from the government.

But Mr Young, the deputy opposition leader, said the make-up of the committee should now be changed to reduce the government's influence, pointing to the ACT's model which is chaired by an opposition member.

"Many other jurisdictions around Australia will either have an opposition member or an independent member chairing certain committees,"

"Sometimes they establish special committees for certain pieces of legislation and have members of parliament that may have expertise in those areas sit on those committees."

A spokesperson from the Office of the Chief Minister did not directly respond to a question about whether the committee would be reformed.

But they said the government took transparency seriously.

"Which is why this government restored the legislative scrutiny committee that was axed by the previous Labor government," they said.

"Our government will continue to be transparent and accountable as we deliver our 2026 year of growth, certainty and security for the benefit of all Territorians."