Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro's cabinet was sworn in at NT Government House on Tuesday before she announced a raft of changes to the public sector, including increasing the number of departments from 12 to 18.
In 2016, the Royal Commission in to the Protection and Detention of Children in the NT recommended youth detention be removed from the department of corrections and placed under Territory Families.
Ms Finocchiaro will make sweeping changes to the territory bureaucracy. (JAYDEN O’NEILL/AAP PHOTOS)
The main reason was to prevent the movement of young people from youth detention to being held in adult correctional facilities and to ensure more therapeutic approaches to detention were implemented.
But changes to the Department of Territory Families and Attorney-General and Justice indicate she is preparing to place youth detention back under adult corrections, as promised during the election campaign.
Ms Finocchiaro has created a stand alone corrections department under Corrections Commissioner Matt Varley.
She has also split up the department of Territory Families, Housing and Communities to now only be responsible for children and families, essentially child protection.
"It's really important that, as part of my CLP government, we have an agile public service, able to better make decisions.
"We will certainly be having a system where we go back to a specialised public service, build capacity in our own people."
Marco Briceno has been removed as chief executive of NT Health and replaced by Chris Hoskings, formally chief executive of Department of Corporate and Digital Development.
Long-time Department of Education chief executive Karen Weston has also been replaced Susan Bowden.
Ms Finocchiaro said she told departmental chief executives that changes were about "growing our own history".
The CLP has also scrapped several ministries that existed under Labor including Minister for climate change and Minister for Treaty.
Following the failed Voice referendum Ms Finocchiaro told Territorians that Treaty and Voice were a "distraction".
"In stark contrast to Labor, the CLP does not support Treaty, because we are listening and value action over words," she said.
"The CLP will empower Aboriginal Territorians by acting on their calls for widespread changes to local government that give back control to their communities."
During the election campaign, Ms Finocchiaro pledged she would take on the police, fire and emergency services ministries in the lead up to the Country Liberal Party's crushing election victory, where it won 17 of 25 seats.
The chief minister said Minister for Local Government Steve Edgington would be tasked with reforming local government after councils were amalgamated into super shires under the former Labor government.
"This has been our commitment to predominantly Aboriginal people living in remote and very remote communities around the total loss of leadership they feel," she said.
"That work will now be able to commence, where we are out consulting on the ground with people living in the bush about what that new style of local government means and looks like."
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