The Territory coroner has ruled out investigating the suspected murder of a Darwin journalist by the Indonesian military.

Roger East is suspected of being killed by invading Indonesian forces at Dili's wharf on December 8, 1975, after travelling to East Timor to investigate what happened to five colleagues who were killed two months earlier. He was 29.

NT deputy coroner Celia Kemp said Mr East's death was not in her jurisdiction. "This is because his death did not occur in the Territory, Mr East's body was never in the Territory and at the time of his death Mr East was not a person who 'ordinarily resided in the Territory'," she said.

East Timor activist Rob Wesley-Smith, who has been pushing for a coronial into East's death for more than a decade, has written to Attorney-General Syd Stirling seeking a review of the Coroner's Act.

"Darwin was the last place Roger lived in Australia, he'd only been in East Timor a few weeks, and while nobody knew for sure that he intended to live here when he returned, no one knew any different either," he said.

"There must be a lot of people that could fall under that classification if that's the case. And if the NT doesn't have jurisdiction then who does?"