Chief Minister Eva Lawler to deliver speech about 2024 plan for NT

Chief Minister Eva Lawler is set to deliver a speech about her 2024 plans for the NT. Read the preview.

The Chief Minister’s plan for the Territory will focus on crime, cutting businesses’ red tape, and employment.

Eva Lawler will share her vision for the NT at 11am Monday as Territory Labor gears up for its 2024 election campaign.

“I am not here to mark time, I am not here to cruise through to the August election,” her speech reads.

“I am here because I want more from myself, and more from my team, so that we can position the Territory for the future it deserves — for the future it needs.”

Eva Lawler at the swear-in ceremony in the Government House, December 2023. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Ms Lawler rose to the NT’s top job in December after Nightcliff MLA Natasha Fyles resigned.

Ms Lawler said her main focus was on employment and building more pathways to jobs.

“What we need is people who have the skills, ability and the desire to work, we need to see all Territorians working,” she said.

“We cannot have more generations of Territorians not working.”

Part of her plan for boosting the NT’s employment rate falls on getting more Aboriginal Territorians into jobs.

Ms Lawler said she wanted to see more remote Territorians working in their communities to grow wealth, improve health outcomes, to get kids to school and to “truly close the gap in Aboriginal outcomes”.

“We’ll only know we’ve arrived when everybody working at the health clinic is Aboriginal, when every cop working in a remote community is Aboriginal, when the pilot that flies in and out is Aboriginal, when the staff working in the school are all Aboriginal,” she said.

“I’m not proposing an Aboriginal-only policy — I am saying the numbers need massive improvement.”

Fourteen new Aboriginal Liaison Officers graduated from the two-week training course to join the NT Police on Thursday, November 16.

As Territorians continue calling out for relief from crime, Ms Lawler said she would be announcing additional youth facilities across the NT.

She said she would also address a co-responder model and the Territory Safety Division.

“Too many generations of people are not working, and when that happens, crime flourishes,” she said.

“People are hurt by crime. It hurts business. It hurts families.

“We are tackling crime, and we are tackling it the right way. That means looking beyond short-term political fixes.”

Among her slew of announcements, Ms Lawler is also expected to unveil the new Territory Services portal to help Territorians “get on with their lives and build new businesses”.

She said the one-stop digital “doorway” will simplify more than 60 online transactions for businesses, permits, driver licenses, trade and professional licences, liquor licences and hospitality.

WATCH A LIVESTREAM OF THE SPEECH HERE.