Calls for dissolvement of Aboriginal legal service board following ‘gross mismanagement’

One of Darwin’s most experienced barristers is calling for the board of Australia’s largest Aboriginal legal service to be dissolved. John Lawrence says the crisis engulfing the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency is crippling the Northern Territory’s justice system and contributing to the record number of Indigenous people in prison. Mr Lawrence says the service is run by a “cabal of people” who have been “driving it into the ground” because of their “gross mismanagement and incapabilities, their lack of qualifications and so forth”. “Up here, we have a third of the population indigenous ... that organisation is supposed to be community run – it is not community run,” he said. “All it counts is their clients ... because it’s the most important legal practice and the biggest in the Northern Territory, and they're tasked with representing the most marginalised, vulnerable people exposed in this legal system. “They’ve failed miserably.”