‘Spin’ and ‘Cherry-Picking’: Explosive Report Accuses NT Government of Misleading Territorians Over Its Tough-on-Crime Success Story
- A damning new report claims the Finocchiaro government’s victory lap on crime “cannot be supported by existing data”, and that there is “no clear trend” at all.
- Researchers say ministers trumpeted a 24 per cent fall in house break-ins while staying silent on a 5.8 per cent rise in property offending across the Territory.
- The head of the NT’s peak Aboriginal legal service says the government is either “incompetent” or “deliberately painting an inaccurate picture”.
- Arrest rates have stayed stubbornly high for two years, raising fresh doubts over whether the Territory’s harsh new laws are making anyone safer.
For two years, Territorians have been told the same story: the crime wave is breaking, the streets are getting safer, and the tough new laws are working.
Now a bombshell report says that story may not hold up.
Researchers have accused the Northern Territory’s Country Liberal Party government of selectively using statistics to sell a narrative of falling crime. They say the claims rest on incomplete, unverified figures, and that the true picture is far murkier than the one presented at press conferences.
For families in Darwin, Alice Springs and remote communities who have lived through years of break-ins, assaults and fear, the stakes could hardly be higher.
If the numbers are wrong, so is the public’s understanding of whether they are actually any safer.
The report, titled Tough On Crime, was released this week by the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research.
Its central finding is blunt: Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro’s repeated assertions that her government’s reforms have driven down offending are not backed by the available evidence.
Last month, the Chief Minister marked two years since her government’s “centrepiece” crime reforms by declaring that bail refusals had jumped 55 per cent and crimes involving edged weapons had fallen 12 per cent.
She added that 300 offences allegedly committed by children aged 10 and 11 were now before the courts.
The researchers say figures like these tell only part of the story.
Co-author Tatiana Corrales said the government was presenting crime data in an “overly simplistic” way and was not being upfront about its limitations. “There is definitely a lot of spin,” she said, adding that, contrary to popular messaging, “there’s actually no clear trend”.
She said claims that the government was fixing a crime crisis inherited from Labor could not even be tested with the data being relied upon.
Much of the problem, according to the report, lies in the government’s heavy dependence on a single source: NT Police records.
In late 2023, police introduced a new IT system called SerPro to log crime data. The researchers argue that figures generated by SerPro cannot be reliably compared with anything recorded before it came online.
In plain terms, any before-and-after comparison spanning the change of government is on shaky ground.
The data is also published with a lag of up to five months, meaning official claims may be based on figures the public cannot yet see or scrutinise.
The report also warns that simply shifting the time frame being measured can produce “stark” differences in results, opening the door to selective presentation.
Two examples stand out.
NT Police figures showed domestic violence offences dropping between 2024 and 2025, yet court finalisation data over the same period showed what the authors described as a “marked increase”.
And in May, a government media release celebrated a 24 per cent fall in house break-ins. It made no mention of the fact that overall property offending across the Territory had climbed by 5.8 per cent.
When the researchers widened their lens to include court statistics, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and records held by the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, a very different picture emerged.
Victimisation rates had risen. Imprisonment rates had risen.
Court listings were up, and demand for legal services had surged since 2024.
This fight over numbers did not come out of nowhere.
The CLP swept to power at the 2024 Territory election on an unapologetic law-and-order platform, promising to cut offending, revive a struggling economy and restore the Territory lifestyle many residents felt had been lost.
Once in office, it moved fast. Bail laws were tightened.
The age of criminal responsibility was lowered.
Spit hoods were brought back into youth detention, a decision that drew fierce criticism given the Territory’s painful history with the treatment of young people in custody.
Those measures were sold on one promise: results. Which is precisely why the integrity of the data used to prove them matters so much.
Analysis: What This Means for Australia
This is not merely a local spat over spreadsheets. When governments justify sweeping, punitive laws on the strength of statistics, those statistics become the foundation of public trust.
If that foundation is cracked, the consequences ripple far beyond Parliament House in Darwin.
For public safety, the danger is twofold. Overstated success can breed complacency and divert attention from problems that are quietly worsening, such as rising victimisation.
And if the reforms are not reducing harm, communities are paying a heavy price for little return.
For law enforcement, the report raises uncomfortable questions about how crime statistics are gathered and shared. A new IT system that breaks historical comparisons, combined with months-long publication delays, makes independent oversight extremely difficult.
The social cost falls hardest on Aboriginal communities, who are already vastly overrepresented in the justice system.
Rising imprisonment and soaring demand for legal aid point to a system under strain, with taxpayers footing the bill for more prison beds, more court time and more police resources.
Nationally, other jurisdictions weighing similar bail laws and youth justice crackdowns will be watching closely. If the Territory’s experiment cannot be properly measured, it cannot be honestly copied, or honestly rejected.
North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency chief executive Ben Grimes did not mince words. He said it was hard to reach any conclusion other than that the government was being “intentionally misleading”.
“Either they’re incompetent, and they don’t understand the data and the systems that they’re meant to be administering, or they’re deliberately painting an inaccurate picture to Territorians,” he said.
Mr Grimes pointed to his organisation’s tracking of average daily arrests. If the laws were working, he said, there should have been a spike after the change of government followed by a sharp fall.
Instead, the figures show more than two years of elevated arrest rates.
Policy analysts say that pattern is telling, suggesting enforcement activity has intensified without a matching drop in underlying offending. Justice sector observers warn that relying on police data alone can blur the line between more crime and more policing.
Governance experts believe the deeper issue is transparency, arguing that independent, multi-source reporting is the only way to rebuild confidence.
The government is standing firm.
A spokesperson said crime and court statistics were publicly available and independently compiled by the Department of the Attorney-General and Justice from offences recorded by NT Police.
Territorians, the spokesperson said, could see for themselves that record investment in police and strong law and order measures were “beginning to deliver results”, insisting the figures show the CLP is reversing Labor’s crime crisis.
The question now is which version of the truth Territorians will believe.