Law & CrimeNo 622 Oct 17 – 23, 2026
Cuts to legal aid services have caused a spike in ‘stay applications’, disproportionately slowing justice for Indigenous women accused of domestic violence.
By Russell Marks
Exclusive: Dozens of cases ‘paused’ in NT courts

The Local Court building in Nichols Place, Darwin.AAP Image / Esther Linder
Dozens of unrepresented defendants – including Indigenous women who may have been wrongly accused of domestic violence – have been asking Northern Territory courts to “stay”, or indefinitely postpone, the prosecution of serious criminal charges against them as Legal Aid NT’s mystery service cuts enter their 12th month.
The stays add significant delays to a justice system that is already straining under a two-year-old Country Liberal Party administration. Supreme Court delays are now the longest on record.
The Attorney-General’s Department says it is aware, as of October 2, of 44 matters involving unrepresented defendants that have been listed for hearings in the Local Court to determine whether the prosecution of serious charges – including serious assaults – should be paused or deferred.
However, The Saturday Paper understands the true number is likely to be significantly higher. Statistics are not being well captured by the Territory’s courts, lawyers say, and nobody is coordinating the stay applications made by unrepresented defendants.
At least two matters involving very serious charges in the Supreme Court – including one of alleged child sexual offending – have been indefinitely postponed.
The stay applications are a consequence of Legal Aid NT’s decision in mid November last year to dramatically cut funding for criminal law representation, which has meant that for 11 months, Legal Aid NT has not represented people who are not already in custody.
It is an extraordinary situation without precedent in Australia since government-funded legal aid services were introduced in the 1970s.
Courts have a responsibility to ensure defendants receive fair trials. In 1992, the High Court held that a defendant who faces serious criminal charges and who is unrepresented through no fault of their own – because they can’t afford to pay a lawyer and a lawyer is not otherwise available to them through legal aid – is unlikely to get a fair trial. In these cases, courts have the power to pause or delay prosecutions until such time as the defendant is legally represented.
The Territory’s Supreme Court confirmed in June that the High Court’s ruling extends to serious matters – including charges that, if proven, may result in imprisonment – in the Local Court. Since then, dozens of applications have progressed to hearings in the Local Court.
In cases where courts have accepted that an unrepresented defendant cannot afford a lawyer, courts are often simply adjourning for lengthy periods – often six months – hoping Legal Aid NT’s services will resume, despite there being no evidence that they will. “That is undesirable for everyone,” says one Darwin barrister who does not wish to be named. “It puts no pressure on the government to do anything about funding Legal Aid.”
“The increasing numbers of stay applications in the NT is a symptom of the Northern Territory government … failing to understand that a healthy and functioning criminal justice system is good for all Territorians, including victims and affected families.”
Gerard McGeough, chief executive of Victims of Crime NT – a community organisation that was forced to close its Darwin office in June, citing a shortfall in NT government funding – says the delay in justice for victims “invariably puts a hold on their recovery and damages their sense of faith in the criminal justice system”.
There is also an impact on those accused. The Saturday Paper has been told that the current Legal Aid NT service restrictions disproportionately affect vulnerable Indigenous women. Many unrepresented defendants are Aboriginal women who have been charged with assaults on their domestic male partners.
The North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) receives federal funding to represent Indigenous defendants but cannot represent a person where to do so might involve cross-examining an existing or former client. When a woman is charged with assaulting her male partner, NAAJA is often ethically barred from representing the woman if it has represented the partner. Under a longstanding memorandum of understanding, NAAJA typically refers such women to Legal Aid NT. If the woman is on bail, however, then Legal Aid NT also cannot represent her under the present service restrictions.
“Our lawyers are identifying increased cases of misidentification where the woman is a victim of family violence but is mistakenly identified by police as a perpetrator,” says NAAJA’s chief executive, Ben Grimes.
When that happens, the woman is arrested and charged instead of being treated as a victim in need of protection.
“Based on our Custody Notification Service numbers, it is now frequently the case that 20-25 per cent of arrests of Aboriginal people in the NT are women, which is a noticeable increase from previous years,” Grimes says.
Misidentification by police of women as perpetrators of domestic violence remains a major concern in the Northern Territory, despite 2023 amendments to domestic violence laws requiring police to consider whether there is a “pattern” of violence that indicates that one person in a relationship “is the person most in need of protection”.
Of the 44 matters listed for stay hearings, according to the Attorney-General’s Department, 34 are in Darwin and nine are in Katherine. Only one is in Alice Springs. Alice Springs is also the only centre where a third funded legal service – beyond Legal Aid NT and NAAJA – is available to women charged with criminal offences. That is the Central Australian Women’s Legal Service (CAWLS), which received federal funding two years ago to begin representing criminalised women.
The Saturday Paper has been told most of the nine matters listed for stay hearings in Katherine involve Aboriginal women, many of whom are charged with domestic violence-related assaults on male partners with histories of violence – including for assaulting the woman who is facing charges.
“There is substantial public interest in having these women represented,” a Darwin barrister told The Saturday Paper, “including the complex defensive conduct arguments that may arise and the significant consequences that can flow for them and any children in their care.”
On November 17, 2025, Legal Aid NT director Catherine Voumard announced the agency would issue grants of aid for adults charged with criminal offences under NT legislation only if they were in custody, having been refused bail. The same unprecedented restriction also initially applied to children, until Legal Aid NT reversed its position in June.
The reasons for the cuts to Legal Aid NT remain a mystery. Voumard announced the cuts just six months after the CLP government had announced it had “fixed” Legal Aid NT’s longstanding funding problem by allocating additional millions to the agency as part of its first multi-year funding agreement. Yet when she announced the cuts, Voumard claimed that Legal Aid NT was “projecting an end of year financial deficit”.
In June, a spokesperson for the Attorney-General’s Department told The Saturday Paper $4.4 million of allocated funding for 2025-26 – almost all of that year’s budgeted increase – had been withheld “subject to the execution of a funding agreement”.
Legal Aid NT had campaigned for years for a multi-year funding agreement until the CLP offered it one in May 2025. Legal Aid NT’s board of commissioners, all of whom were appointed by the CLP, has not yet signed the agreement. “Part of that agreement is when the department asks for information from Legal Aid, that the information is forthcoming,” NT Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby told parliament’s estimates committee in June. “That has been a real challenge.”
Since November, The Saturday Paper has asked Legal Aid NT multiple times why it has not signed the agreement. It did not respond until last month, when a spokesperson said: “The service restrictions were not, and are not, linked to the negotiation process for funding agreements.” The spokesperson told The Saturday Paper it “will not comment further”.
This response appears to directly contradict the government. “It is Legal Aid not wanting to do the work and make the changes for its own organisation and to sign a multi-year funding agreement so that we can give the money over, okay?” Boothby told parliament in May.
The Saturday Paper asked Boothby what information she has requested of Legal Aid NT and what changes she has asked it to make. Her office provided a nonsensical response, attributable to the attorney-general, claiming the CLP had “increased Legal Aid NT’s baseline funding by 80 per cent after years of chronic under-resourcing under Labor”, that “taxpayers will no longer foot the bill for alleged offenders who can genuinely afford a lawyer” and that “the Government will continue to ensure eligible defendants receive Legal Aid representation”.
Voumard’s appointment as director was widely criticised – with lawyers noting she was Boothby’s “captain’s pick”, had no management experience and was not the preferred candidate following two rounds of recruitment.
The service cuts “are producing significant system wide consequences”, says barrister Beth Wild, president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association of the NT. “The absence of representation is contributing to congested court lists, with hearings now being scheduled as far out as April and May next year. This results in substantial delays for victims and accused persons alike.”
“Unnecessary delays in criminal proceedings are bad for everyone involved,” says Ben Grimes. “The increasing numbers of stay applications in the NT is a symptom of the Northern Territory government creating an imbalanced criminal justice system, and failing to understand that a healthy and functioning criminal justice system is good for all Territorians, including victims and affected families.”
Russell Marks is an adjunct research fellow at La Trobe University and works as a criminal defence lawyer in the Northern Territory
