On Monday, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said Declan’s Law, to be introduced when parliament resumes on October 15, will extend police powers to search and seize weapons in schools and on public transport.

The proposed amendments, named after 20-year-old Darwin bottle shop worker Declan Laverty who was murdered in 2023, also include tougher bail rules.

Anyone charged with assault offences, threats to kill, recklessly endangering life and sexual offences will face an automatic position of no bail.

“This starts a movement for change right across the territory,” Finocchiaro told reporters.

“The CLP (Country Liberal Party) has a mandate to deliver this amongst other law reform, and we will not apologise to anyone for getting on with the job of delivering it.”

But National Children’s Commissioner Anne Holland said the changes were a sign of failures across the education, justice and health systems for some of Australia’s most disadvantaged children.

“If the view is that there needs to be police in primary schools then that’s a sign of massive systems failure and and that’s what they need to turn their attention to,” she said.

“I would just encourage the Government to have a close look at the evidence that shows that they can’t fix this, the problem of offending by children, we need to take a different approach and address the complex needs of these children very early on.”

The move follows Queensland Police announcing they had seized more than 1000 weapons since a similar amendment named Jack’s Law was introduced in 2023.

The legislation was named after Jack Beasley who was fatally stabbed at Surfers Paradise in 2019.

Queensland stopped short of applying the law to schools when wanding powers were expanded in September to include shopping centres, licensed premises and sporting precincts.

Tougher weapons laws were passed by the NT Labor Government in 2023 ensuring anyone found guilty of carrying a weapon without a reasonable excuse can face up to 12 months’ jail, and 24 months if the offence occurs at night.

The laws followed a petition with more than 20,000 signatures that was tabled by Finocchiaro after Declan Laverty’s mother Samara advocated for change in the wake of her son’s murder.

Finocchiaro has also promised to lower the age of criminal responsibility back to 10 and introduce “posting and boasting” laws similar to those in NSW, which will make posting crime on social media a stand-alone offence.

If the NT parliament successfully lowers the age of criminal responsibility to 10 and passes the laws, technically primary school children could be searched by police and prosecuted.

Justice Reform Initiative executive director Mindy Sotiri said greater stop and search powers, including authority to enter schools to wand children for knives, was a worrying sign of policy development without an evidence base.

“The research overwhelmingly shows that expanding police powers with things like wanding will not ultimately make the community safer,” she said.

“Over-policing of children – especially in places like schools that are supposed to be safe and focused on education – will likely have a negative effect, particularly for communities who are already over-policed.”

Greens Member for Nightcliff Kat McNamara said the proposed changes were “regressive”.

“The CLP wants to give police the power to wand children in primary school, turning our places of learning into airport security checkpoints,” she said.

McNamara said the chief minister was a signatory to the bipartisan Aboriginal Justice Agreement and the legal changes would undermine its work.

AAP