Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro should have seen this coming.
The warnings were there, signposted by every frustrated Territorian who has been a victim of crime in the days since the Country Liberal Party came into power.
The two-month-old baby who was flown to Adelaide hospital after being hit in the head with a fridge handle in December.
The 71-year-old Darwin man found lying in a pool of his own blood after two teenagers hacked him with a machete.
The Alice Springs healthcare worker who woke in the middle of the night to a stranger raping her.
How did it take the alleged murder on Wednesday evening of an elderly supermarket owner by a teenager on bail for serious charges, including alleged rape, for Finocchiaro to recall parliament and introduce the “toughest bail laws” in the nation?
The Chief Minister’s declaration on Thursday that “nothing is off the table” meant very little to exasperated residents.
“What does that even mean?” one person said.
The Finocchiaro government strengthened bail laws when it first came to power. But it had no choice. Tensions were rising across the region, and Finocchiaro had run a “tough on crime” campaign.
Territorians have been here before.
Just over two years ago, bottleshop worker Declan Laverty was murdered while working in Darwin’s northern suburbs.
His killer, 19-year-old Keith Kerinauia, was sentenced last year to life in jail with a non-parole period of 20 years. This masthead at the time revealed after the murder that Kerinauia had been released on bail for aggravated robbery and aggravated assault just over a month before Laverty’s death.
The CLP, in a bid to win the election last year, rolled out Samara Laverty and promised to crack down on violent attacks.
Declan’s Law was one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the CLP after it took over in government from NT Labor in August last year, legislating a presumption against bail for youth and adult serious violent offenders, regardless of whether a weapon was involved in the alleged offending.
Finocchiaro told reporters on Thursday she had gone back to Samara Laverty asking for her thoughts on strengthening the laws further.
Laverty says she carries anger and overwhelming guilt for the death of supermarket owner Feick. She wishes she had tried harder to get stricter bail laws.
“This is what I was trying to stop, I couldn’t stop it and now somebody else is dead,” she told The Australian on Friday.
The CLP says it has “strengthened laws at every opportunity” after “inheriting a broken system that prioritised the historical trauma of perpetrators over the rights and safety of victims”.
In the case of the two-month-old, the alleged attackers had collectively been charged with almost 300 other offences and bailed 35 times. They were on bail at the time of the alleged incident.
The elderly man hacked with the machete? One of those boys, aged just 14, had been bailed for the third time since mid-December, and has more than 50 active charges before the courts.
The man accused of raping the healthcare worker was convicted and imprisoned in April 2022 for a range of other offences, and was on a good behaviour bond at the time of the alleged sexual assault.
Let’s not forget the six Indigenous women who in the short time the CLP has been in government have been allegedly killed at the hands of their partners.
How is it that the teenager charged with allegedly stabbing Feick, who was on bail while facing serious rape, deprivation of liberty and aggravated assault charges – charges that police and the Chief Minister refused to confirm – was not even monitored with an ankle bracelet while on bail?
Why did no legal mind question the lenient conditions that were imposed on this man during one of over two dozen court appearances since he was bailed in December 2023?
It is clear the Territory’s justice system is broken.
The answer isn’t to lock every defendant into overcrowded, overrun, disgusting watch houses. It is clear not everyone should be put on remand.
At the end of the day the granting of bail has to assess the seriousness of the alleged offending, the likelihood of a conviction or a sentence, whether there is a risk of an accused not appearing before the court, and whether they are a further risk to the public.
If alleged offenders were not granted bail, the numbers of prisoners could possibly triple. And the presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle of the justice system.
But there are many questions. Why is the justice system failing so badly that the court systems are simply a revolving door for offenders?
We’ll never know what could have happened if they had acted sooner.
If you know more contact this writer at liam.mendes@protonmail.com or message 0423 456 893 on Signal or WhatsApp.
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