NT’s top prosecutor blasted Gunner government’s budget cuts in “bizarre” speech at work Christmas party

THE Territory’s top public prosecutor revealed the hopeless state of affairs within his agency to a pub full of gobsmacked guests at his office’s work Christmas party last year.

Director of Public Prosecutions Jack Karczewski QC.

THE Territory’s top public prosecutor revealed the hopeless state of affairs within his agency to a pub full of gobsmacked guests at his office’s work Christmas party last year.

THE Territory’s top public prosecutor revealed the hopeless state of affairs within his agency to a pub full of gobsmacked guests at his office’s work Christmas party last year.

Lawyers at the function last year told the NT News Director of Public Prosecutions Jack Karczewski QC’s speech at the Deck Bar in December last year was “bizarre”.

Mr Karczewski QC on Thursday released some of his speaking notes following an NT News Freedom of Information request.

The agency had previously opposed the request for ten months, with a team of four government lawyers arguing the speaking notes were not a government record on not subject to FOI.

Mr Karczewski’s speech painted a picture of an agency in crisis at a time of growing public unease about crime.

Jack Karczewski QC, in happier times

Mr Karkzewski told the function the ranks of non-lawyer staff at his agency had been “decimated” as a result of low wages and “hectic” workloads, who routinely leave when they are poached by “less deserving” government departments.

“No sooner are they trained and demonstrate promise, they are snapped up by an agency with far less pressing and far less deserving needs but with a bigger budget,” he said.

“The prosecutors have also had a tough time,” Mr Karczewski said, claiming some were “outnumbered” by taxpayer-funded defence lawyers.

He said “no one wants to work” at his agency’s Katherine office, where he could offer only a bread-line wage.

“Indeed, probably no one could afford to live there on the money which is being offered.”

In a draft version of his speaking notes, also released on Thursday, Mr Karczewski described working in his agency’s Katherine office as a “poisoned chalice”.

“As for the future, 2019 doesn’t look like being kind to the DPP,” he said.

Current and former lawyers have told the NT News Mr Karczewski’s speech proved a tipping point for many at the agency, where morale had already taken a battering.

Director of Public Prosecutions Jack Karczewski QC leaves Darwin Local Court.

The agency has since struggled to staff who have quit, and has developed a reputation among many Territory lawyers for being shambolically managed.

Internal records show the agency’s Darwin summary prosecution team, which does the grunt work of prosecuting the Top End’s low level crooks, this week had 11 positions vacant out of a team which, at full strength, should have 23.

One prosecutor, in response to a survey conducted by the Community and Public Sector Union, described workloads as “ridiculous”.

The union has fielded repeated complaints about Mr Karczewski’s comments in his annual report last year, in which said working for the agency required “long periods of preparation after hours or on weekends for which there is no remuneration”.

The Territory government earlier this year pushed back Mr Karczewski’s compulsory retirement age by two years.