Karama MLA Brian O’Gallagher calls for police presence in area after shopfronts smashed
Top End MLA Brian O’Gallagher’s electoral office was one of several shopfronts at a Karama shopping centre smashed in an early morning attack.
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Top End MLA Brian O’Gallagher’s electoral office was one of several shopfronts at a Karama shopping centre smashed in an early morning attack.
The recently-minted Member for Karama said about 3am, vandals smashed windows at his office, the shopping centre’s main entrance and at the Karama Child and Family Health Clinic.
NT Police said a man, 43, and woman, 19, were arrested and charged for criminal damage at the scene.
They were set to appear in court on Tuesday.
Mr O’Gallagher said rather than being deterred from talking tough on crime by the alleged overnight incident, he would continue his push for the government to install a “permanent police presence” in Karama.
In 2022 when he was a City of Darwin alderman, he secured 1200 resident signatures in Waters Ward calling for the Labor Government to create a permanent police presence in either Karama or Malak.
Reports at the time said then Cr O’Gallagher had pushed for a mobile unit police caravan and permanent patrols as an initial escalation of force around the shopping centres, to be solidified by a station down the line.
Now an MLA, Mr O’Gallagher has watered down the sentiment of his Waters Ward petition, saying he would accept a mobile caravan. He said his government would not waste resources building a $12m white elephant like the Nightcliff police station..
“We could have a mobile caravan here with two or three police based here because Karama is serviced out of Casuarina and sometimes the response times are a bit slow,” he said.
“We’ve really got to make our communities much safer than they are. We’re getting there and I am committed to doing everything I can do personally.”
He said the government’s tough laws had not yet filtered through to the judiciary.
“We passed laws, I think we’ve got to make sure the judiciary understands what the concepts are,” he said.
“Whether that’s filtering through yet, I don’t know (about) the decision making, but we are absolutely committed that for serious offences and repeat offences, bail is no longer a privilege and it shouldn’t be accepted.
“We’ve got to enforce (the laws) we’ve already got. Sometimes I think it takes a little bit to get through the system. We can pass laws but it’s actually got to be (about) implementation, but we are going to come down tough
“We’ve got to get boot camps ready, got to do the reforms in the corrections system. It takes a while when you’re building extra infrastructure it doesn’t happen overnight. I think we’ve got to get our police resourced stronger, and that takes a while.”
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