On Saturday Northern Territory voters will pass judgement on one of the most controversial terms of government in recent history.
It’s difficult to measure the level of dissatisfaction among voters in the NT, if only because small electorates and a fluid population mean making any scientific prediction is difficult.
This election also sees redrawn electoral boundaries, new 100m exclusion zones stopping the handing out of how-to-vote cards around booths, and the introduction of optional preferential voting, with the hope the latter reduces informal votes in the bush.
But after four years of chaos the polls, pundits, and betting agencies predict annihilation for the incumbent Country Liberals. Only an ageing psychic crocodile named Burt thought otherwise.
On the final day of campaigning, chief minister Adam Giles hit the airwaves promising a Labor government guaranteed economic recession. He denied it was a last-ditch scare campaign.
The opposition leader, Michael Gunner, on an apparent clear run to victory, avoided some last-minute scrutiny by declining interview requests from both local and national ABC radio, ostensibly to go doorknocking, before holding a press conference that afternoon.
At a people’s forum on Thursday afternoon, Gunner swayed 58% of the undecided voters. Giles swayed 12%. Nearly a third remained undecided.
Much of the population had already checked out by then. More than 50,000 people – almost 40% of eligible voters – had cast their ballots by the end of Friday.
The rest will line up at local schools on Saturday, free from harassment thanks to the new exclusion zones, pick up a snag sandwich, and number as few or as many boxes as they like.
What are the main issues?
The last term of government has been extraordinary for the scale and number of scandals. They don’t necessarily matter to everyone but they have undoubtedly played a part.
Ken Parish, a law lecturer and former Labor MLA, said the chaos of the CLP’s term was probably not much greater than that during the Rudd and Gillard Labor years, and voters were just equally sick of it.
“My perception is that the big issues for Territorians are the chaos, dysfunction, disunity, the revolving door, members leaving and getting down to a minority, the successful leadership coup, followed by the unsuccessful coup because Giles refused to go, and then a succession of tawdry misdeeds by assorted people culminating in Mr Barrett, and … the privatisations were a big thing.”
Privatisation
The 99-year lease of the Darwin port made national headlines and put the wind up the White House, but closer to home people are much more upset about the CLP’s sale of the Territory Insurance Office.
The sale of the last state-owned insurance company caused huge distress among Territorians needing affordable insurance against natural disasters in a small and uncompetitive market.
Parish said the port, TIO, and the Darwin bus service privatisation were all things the government “had really little or no mandate for, hadn’t really consulted about, and people didn’t consent to.”
“They might well have been sensible economic decisions, but people I think certainly felt and still feel like the CLP were high-handed and didn’t take notice of what people wanted.”
Giles concedes they did not bring the people along with them in making the decision, and has pledged – several times over the last two years – to become more consultative. On Thursday he said he would resign if a CLP government sold the Power and Water company.
The economy
The Northern Territory is facing tough times with shrinking GST returns, a falling housing market, predicted unemployment rises, and the winding down of the major Inpex resource project.
The CLP campaign has largely centred on the Territory’s financials, spruiking the government’s reduction of “Labor debt”, and its plans for jobs, almost a third of which they said would come from an expanded onshore gas industry.
“We know there are heavy economic challenges coming,” Giles said on Friday morning.
“We spent the last four years getting the budget back on track, paying back debt and getting an economic plan to go ahead. And we have tabled our plan for 24,000 new jobs.”
“Labor has not tabled any plan on bringing any investment dollars to the Territory. They have not brought forward a plan to grow private sector jobs,” he said.
“There is no way that the Territory won’t go into recession under Labor.”
Labor has promised a surplus by 2019-20, provided it can find enough savings to cover the extra $223.5m needed to cover their election commitments, pledging to “make the tough decisions” on funding projects instead of going over budget.
It plans to consolidate public service departments, axing 26 executive roles to save $9m annually in salaries, and redeploying another 80 positions.
It has also labeled the CLP jobs promise “misleading” and containing exaggerations of the gas industry’s projected jobs figures.
Personality
This is unavoidable. During the campaign Giles has repeatedly said the public is sick of “personality politics”, but has it ended?
Giles has been implicated in many of the CLP scandals, but his inconsistent messaging has also tired voters. It was near impossible to keep track of his position following the Don Dale footage, and he has backtracked on a number of statements, sometimes within days. On Thursday he told the people’s forum he would not introduce the Safe Schools program to prevent bullying of LGBTQI kids, a week after he told a social services debate that he would.
The well-documented individual clashes dominated the narrative of parliamentary sittings and were behind more than one resignation from the CLP.
Two of the CLP’s most controversial figures, David Tollner and John Elferink, are leaving politics at this election.
The CLP instability began just seven months into the term, when Giles rolled chief minister Terry Mills, in a move ABC election analyst Anthony Green described as “reminiscent of politics in newly emerging African nations in the 1960s”.
Mills returned as an independent just a few weeks ago, vowing it had nothing to with revenge.
Delia Lawrie, the former Labor leader who was replaced by Gunner after she lost credibility over a union scandal, is also running as an independent, as is ex-CLP member and parliamentary speaker Kezia Purick, and former CLP minister Robyn Lambley.
Indigenous activist and artist Jack Green is running on an anti-fracking platform for the seat encompassing his home town of Borroloola, but faces tough competition.
Trevor Jenkins, rubbish warrior, is having another tilt.
Alison Anderson, former Atsic commissioner, former member of Labor, the CLP, Palmer United, and current independent, announced she would not contest the election and was then pictured in a Labor T-shirt helping with the campaign.
And who knows what Larisa Lee will do if she retains her seat.
The ballot paper holds a record number of candidates, including a significant proportion of independents, but as is evident many of them are people who abandoned one of the majors. 1Territory, founded by two former CLP presidents, touts itself as an alternative conservative party but with policies such as legalising marijuana.
Indigenous affairs
The 2012 election was won on the “bush vote”, but how the Northern Territory’s Indigenous population has or will vote this time is unknown. The small electoral population and low enrolment mean seats could be swung on a strong family or community network, but issues such as juvenile justice, housing and jobs hit particularly hard in remote communities.
The CLP got rid of the Indigenous affairs portfolio when it took office, and then reintroduced it last year. It introduced a number of programs including “community champions” to mentor small business ventures in remote communities. Both parties have made promises on remote housing and employment programs.
Labor accused the CLP of an “outrageous, cynical betrayal” when it released costings showing far less than their promised $1.6bn for remote housing, after most remote-living Territorians had already voted.
The environment
It’s the nature of the Territory that environmental and economic concerns often overlap and sometimes compete. The cattle industry is a lifeblood industry, but then so is the resources sector and tourism.
The environmental defenders office (EDO) NT scored the available written policies of four parties – the CLP, Labor, the Greens, and 1Territory. The CLP failed, scoring just 12.5/36, with a noted lack of transparency, climate change policy, and commitment to enforce planning law breaches.
Labor and the Greens policies scored 31 and 25 respectively, and 1Territory was given 22.
The CLP faced criticism in the last week of the campaign over a perceived lack of action over an oil spill in Darwin harbour, but Giles said it was his party to establish the “policeman-like” Environmental Protection Agency, a move the EDO called a step forward.
After the embarrassment of Port Melville on the Tiwi Islands, which was built without environmental assessment, both major parties have pledged to close the legislative loopholes which allowed it to happen.
They part ways significantly when it comes to fracking. Labor has promised a moratorium, followed by either a ban or a highly regulated industry to be decided in its first term. The CLP has pegged a third of its jobs plan to onshore gas.
Law and order, alcohol, and Don Dale
Is Don Dale a factor?
Yes and no. The entire country was shocked by the footage broadcast on Four Corners, but Territorians have also been dealing with high rates of property and violent crime, particularly by young offenders. It has meant that the CLP’s continued push for a “tough on crime” approach, once they had made appropriate noises about the royal commission, played relatively well. So did some of the attacks launched against Four Corners.
Parish said the report horrified people but it was more a “nail in the coffin” for the CLP, further highlighting “disunity and incompetence”.
The cost of the commission is an unknown for the next government, with a possible $32m payable by the NT. Gunner referred to it a “legacy issue” because it wasn’t sorted out before caretaker period stepped in.
The royal commission is also looking into child protection, a fraught issue in the NT with an overworked and frequently criticised Department of Families and Children struggling to deal with the rates of children at risk. The ALP, CLP and Greens were all given a tick by the NT council of social services for policies to outsource out of home care services and to establish an Aboriginal-controlled service.
As part of its “tough on crime” measures the CLP government will introduce a bill to remove the presumption of bail for repeat offenders, and Labor has pledged to focus on early intervention and rehabilitation.
The two parties are split on alcohol policy, another highly contentious and divisive NT issue. Labor has pledged to bring back its Banned Drinkers Register in concert with a suite of complementary measures, and to end mandatory alcohol treatment. The CLP says its temporary beat locations policy is working, but critics say it’s too resource-heavy on police, and impossible to implement in places such as Darwin with multiple bottleshops.
The Making Justice Work campaign said Labor and two independents, including Lawrie, were most aligned with their vision for reform.
