NT Labor leader being investigated by police

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    Delia Lawrie: NT Labor leader being investigated by police for 'possible breaches of the criminal law'

    Updated 26 minutes ago
    PHOTO: Delia Lawrie deliberately misled an inquiry that looked into the gifting of the Stella Maris site.(ABC News: Steven Schubert)
    MAP: Darwin 0800
    Embattled Northern Territory Labor leader Delia Lawrie is being investigated by police for her conduct during the Stella Maris inquiry.
    The investigation comes after a Supreme Court judge found Ms Lawrie deliberately undermined the public inquiry so she could sue commissioner John Lawler in the Supreme Court.
    It also comes only days after Ms Lawrie lost the support of the majority of her colleagues, forcing a month-long leadership contest against fellow MLA Michael Gunner.
    After the April 1 court decision, Attorney-General John Elferink wrote a letter to police asking them to investigate Ms Lawrie's actions.
    In a statement, police said a special unit would investigate Ms Lawrie for "possible breaches of the criminal law".
    "Commander Peter Bravos will be heading up a specialised investigative unit, to be referred to as Special References Unit, who will maintain carriage of investigations such as this," the statement said.
    "At this stage the investigation is in an assessment phase and no determination has been made as to whether or not a prosecution will eventuate."
    The 2014 Stella Maris inquiry looked into the gifting of the $3 million Stella Maris site in Darwin to Unions NT by the former Labor government.
    The inquiry found the last-minute decision to grant Unions NT the historic site under a 10-year, no rent lease in 2012 was not transparent, and recommended the organisation's claim to the site be relinquished.
    Ms Lawrie brought a Supreme Court application to argue she had been denied procedural fairness.
    In dismissing her application, Justice Stephen Southwood also found Ms Lawrie had been deliberately trying not to participate in the Lawler inquiry.
    "There was a conscious and deliberate strategy adopted by Ms Lawrie to abandon her participation in the inquiry to enable her to come to this court and wrongly maintain that she had been denied procedural fairness on the basis of Mr Lawler's letter of 17 February 2014," Mr Southwood said in his 120-page findings.
    More on this story:


    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-...nvestigation-for-stella-maris-conduct/6403002
 
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