Northern Territory government has expedited contentious bills that introduce armed Police Public Safety Officers on buses and public housing that have sparked much debate over whether throwing armed personnel in communities will resolve the safety concerns or cause new ones, and criticisms directed at the sheer pace with which the government is rushing the bills through without proper consultation and transparency in such a major overhaul of policing.
The controversial police bill was passed almost desperately by parliament
According to ABC News, the Northern Territory government made an emergency rush to pass a law to create a new police rank this week, a move that it had dropped anti-discrimination reforms from the agenda. Thursday, theย Country Liberal Party, to its surprise, tabled a bill to create the new Police Public Safety Officer (PPSO) position, where transit safety officers and public housing officers will become part of the police force.
The government, in June, announced that it intended to establish the post, which will enable officers to carry guns in buses and in complexes of residential buildings after they have completed a training program. Although Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro did not feature on this week’s parliamentary agenda, on Thursday, she informed parliament that it was an urgency that this bill be passed.
Opposition caught off guard by the sudden introduction
The PPSO rank will bring together the resources located in different agencies, i.e., frontline police auxiliaries, police auxiliary liquor inspectors, public housing safety officers, transit safety officers, and private security resources, she said. This will give a centralised and highly visible response to the issues affecting public safety in the Northern Territory.
On Thursday, Opposition Leader Selena Uibo told the debate that Labor members knew nothing about the existence of the bill until Wednesday night. Last night, she said, we found out only after 6.30 pm that this [bill] was going to be [debated] on urgency. Not even a message, text, or e-mail by the chief minister or the head of government business saying Hey, by the way, we are doing this because it is really important.
There are concerns of hurry process brought up by critics
The PPSO bill is not the first of its kind of legislation that the government has presented to the parliament on an urgent basis. It has resulted in accusations that the government is dodging scrutiny, and crossbench and opposition MLAs have only a small time to look at bills before they are introduced, debated, and eventually voted through within hours. The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory has said that the PPSO plan had been extensively criticised and that it was an extremely irresponsible escalation which would put more lives at risk.
Reforms on anti-discrimination are put on hold
The head of the Australian Association of Christian Schools, Vanessa Cheng, said the organisation had written to NT Attorney-General, Marie-Clare Boothby, requesting her to make urgent amendments to the bill. The ACCS would like religious schools to have the ability to set expectations of staff outside working hours, including attending church on Sunday, and favouring admission of students of the same faith.
But Ms Boothby expressed her disappointment with the development, saying the new requirements were out of the realm of what Territorians desired. We sat down with those parties, we consulted a good deal, they told us what they wanted, we all agreed, she said in parliament.
The hasty enactment of this law casts some serious concerns as to the democratic process and community security. In the number of 56 armed officers being deployed by the beginning of 2026, the true test will be whether this method will actually lower crime rates, or instead, it will only increase the tensions in already vulnerable communities all over the Territory.