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The Northern Territory: A Failed State

The suicide rate in Australia is at a 10-year high.

Suicide accounts for less than 2% of overall deaths in Australia but claims the lives of a third of those aged 15-24 and more than a quarter of 25-34 year olds.

The suicide rate in the Northern Territory is twice the national average with 21 deaths per 100,000 people.

The NT rate has increased by more than 38% since 2006 compared with 23% nationally.

People aged 15 to 24 in the NT are more likely to kill themselves than die in a car crash.

One third of the NT population are indigenous, as are 43% of its children.

The suicide rate for indigenous Territorians is 25.5 per 100,000, the highest in the world.

Indigenous children are five times more likely to commit suicide than other Australian children.

Lifeline Top End have provided face to face counseling and community engagement for the past decade.

They have 35 trained volunteer counselors answering about 700 calls a month.

The previous Country Liberal party government cut funding to Lifeline Top End by a reported $150,000 a year in 2015/16 forcing them rely on community support and fundraising.

Today Lifeline Top End ceased operating in the Northern Territory after unsuccessfully lobbying successive governments for more money.

The amount they were asking for was $450,000 per year.

In 2014 the NT government opened a new 1000-bed prison at Holtz, just outside Darwin. The facility cost Territorians $500 million.