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The Northern Territory is out of sight – and often out of mind – for many Australians. But for 18 months, environment, First Nations, justice and family groups have been sounding the alarm with increasing urgency.

The populist, “tough on crime” agenda which saw the Country Liberal party, led by Lia Finocchiaro, sweep to power in 2024 has been taking shape, and those representing the territory’s most vulnerable people, communities and ecosystems are worried.

“It feels like Australia’s first, and hopefully only, mini Trump-style experiment,” says Kirsty Howey, the executive director of the Environment Centre NT, a small organisation on the frontline of community opposition to a gas industry expansion of fracking across the Top End.

Two moments this month have underscored the change. First, submissions to a proposed update of the territory’s child protection laws revealed overwhelming opposition to the changes from experts in the sector – including the children’s commissioner, who said she was given just a week to look at the draft laws.

Next, the government released its Climate Resilience Plan that listed, as its first option, fracking the Beetaloo Basin.

It was, according to The Arid Lands Environment Centre, a demonstration of the “extent of dystopian state capture” and government decision-making in favour of the gas industry.

“It’s pretty devastating. I couldn’t believe seeing the accelerating of a new gas development as the number one priority in the Climate Resilience Plan,” says the centre’s fracking campaign coordinator, Hannah Ekin.

“My first reaction was numbness because I’ve just heard so many bad decisions from this government.

“I laughed for a moment at the absurdity of it and then the reality of the impact sunk in and I remembered that this year we’ve had some of the worst floods in the territory’s history.

“These floods were made much worse by climate change and the future of liveability in the NT under accelerating climate change is very bleak.”

Warnings against proposed changes to the NT’s child protection laws, which include removing the decades-old protection of the Aboriginal child placement principle, were no less stark. In a submission to the territory’s legislative scrutiny committee, the children’s commissioner, Larrakia woman Shahleena Musk, said she was given “only one week” to provide comprehensive and robust advice on the proposed amendments. The opposition spokesperson for child protection, Chansey Paech, described the proposed amendments – announced in the wake of the alleged murder of Kumanjayi Little Baby – as “driven by ideology”.

“The CLP government has brought in a series of laws that I would say are absolutely directed at using the law as a way of taking control over Aboriginal families instead of investing in services that actually keep them safe,” the Arrente, Arabana and Gurindji man says.

‘Slash and burn’

The Top End experienced an unprecedented five overlapping natural disasters over the most recent wet season, including major floods that displaced some Aboriginal communities on the Daly River for months.

But Howey says the response to the increasing threat of such disasters has been to “double down on fossil fuels and dump environment and climate protections altogether”.

Since coming to power 22 months ago, the Finocchiaro government has scrapped the NT’s renewable energy target of 50% by 2030, despite the CLP having backed it while in opposition, and abandoned a promise to implement an emissions reduction target of 43% by 2030.

The merits review process, which allowed communities to challenge decisions related to petroleum projects and water licences, has also been scrapped in a bid to stop environment groups and other third parties from using the legal system to “sabotage” projects. A policy introduced by the previous Labor government requiring certain large emitters to develop greenhouse gas abatement plans was also scrapped.

In 2025, Finocchiaro appointed Stuart Knowles, the former general manager of Japanese gas giant Inpex, as territory coordinator, a powerful new position in the bureaucracy with the authority to override 32 territory laws to fast-track developments of “economic significance”.

Then came the Climate Resilience Plan that listed accelerating “the production of low emissions energy, including from the Beetaloo Subbasin” as its first action, alongside other priorities including “promoting emissions abatement and offset opportunities”.

Ekin says the territory already had very weak climate and environment protections. But she says the change in government has seen “a real slash and burn approach to the environment” with the CLP showing “very little interest in any kind of regulatory safeguards or community participation in deciding what’s appropriate”.

Howey describes the Finocchiaro government’s approach as “anti-democratic” and “a constant stream of populist policies that have disproportionately affected First Nations communities but also have profited big business including gas companies”.

Howey says the territory has previously been a “vanguard jurisdiction” for different types of policy – some very punitive, such as the NT intervention in 2007, but others positive, such as land rights.

“It feels like with the state of Australia’s political trajectory and the rise of One Nation, the NT may be ahead of the curve sadly,” she says.

“Australia should be looking very closely at the anti-democratic, racist, climate change denying policies that have been implemented by the Northern Territory government to understand what’s happening here but also as a harbinger of what could be rolled out elsewhere.”

‘Tried and failed before’

The CLP government has also shown “a consistent pattern of not engaging” with Aboriginal organisations when introducing reforms that disproportionately affect First Nations people, says Ben Grimes, the chief executive of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (Naaja).

One of the first changes made by the CLP was to lower the age of criminal responsibility back to 10 years old – two years after it was raised to 12. The government has also strengthened bail laws and introduced boot camps for young people on bail and armed public transport officers in Darwin.

“Naaja was not consulted before changes to child protection legislation, bail laws or housing legislation were introduced, despite each directly affecting thousands of Aboriginal Territorians that Naaja represents,” Grimes says.

He says the government has focused on “tough on crime” approaches that have “been tried and failed before”. The impact on those caught up in the system can be profound, he says: people are spending longer on remand due to court backlogs and cuts to legal aid mean courts are bracing for “a wave of cases adjourned indefinitely or permanently stayed as a result of lack of legal representation”.

“This is bad for community confidence in the justice system, bad for victims and bad for community safety,” he says.

Aboriginal land councils have also pushed back on policies they say wind back their rights to be involved in decision-making. In March 2025, land councils accused the NT government of “treating them like children” in a “tick-a-box” meeting on reforms to the Sacred Sites Act held with the lands, planning and environment minister, Joshua Burgoyne. “We asked for information; he gave us platitudes,” the Central Land Council chair, Warren Williams, said at the time.

The changes to the act, which passed last year, were introduced to allow new developers to be added to decades-old authority certificates that set conditions for sacred sites, even where the proposed development differed vastly from that intended by the original certificate – effectively bypassing the need for further consultation with traditional custodians. The first use of the new laws was for a proposed high-rise waterfront hotel in Darwin. The Singapore-based developer has since scrapped the project.

Ekin says her overwhelming impression of the territory government is one that just “bulldoze through, they don’t respect evidence and don’t care what communities think”.

“We are a small and often forgotten jurisdiction and life is only going to get harder here, particularly for First Nations people,” she says.

The NT government was contacted for comment.