Saturday’s election result in the Northern Territory couldn’t have been any more decisive. NT Labor has returned to power after four years of Country Liberal party rule with a massive landslide. The CLP has only won two out of 25 seats at this stage, and it can’t hope for more than four.
The election followed a tumultuous four years. Six members of the Country Liberal government left the party at one time or another, with the government eventually losing its majority. The government changed leaders once, and almost changed leaders again.
It used to not be so unusual for the Country Liberal party to govern the territory. The CLP was in government for 27 straight years, from 1974 until 2001. Labor only won for the first time in 2001, holding power for three terms before losing in 2012.
Northern Territory politics has been becoming more volatile and unpredictable over the past 15 years. Small electorates once allowed MPs to build up strong personal votes, and only a few seats would budge at each election. Landslide Labor victories in 2005 and 2016 have demonstrated that once-safe CLP heartlands can no longer be taken for granted, and Labor’s loss of its remote Indigenous heartland in 2012 is a reminder that these communities are likewise more volatile than they once were.
At the time of writing, Labor appears to have won at least 16 seats. The Country Liberal party has held on to the new Darwin-Palmerston fringe seat of Spillett and the regional seat of Daly. Independent MPs Gerry Wood, Kezia Purick and Robyn Lambley have held on to their seats of Nelson, Goyder and Araluen.
This leaves four seats still in play.
At the end of election night, the outgoing chief minister, Adam Giles, was trailing his Labor rival, Dale Wakefield, by 21 votes in the Alice Springs seat of Braitling, with some postal votes yet to be counted.
At the time of writing, Labor’s Sandra Nelson led senior CLP minister Willem Westra van Holthe by 31 votes in Katherine, and the independent MP (and former Labor leader) Delia Lawrie leds her Labor rival by only four votes in the Darwin-area seat of Karama.
Labor’s Damian Hale, a former federal MP for Solomon, leads on the primary vote in the Palmerston seat of Blain, ahead of former local member and chief minister Terry Mills. Mills is just ahead of the official CLP candidate on primary votes. If Mills stays in second place, we will have to wait for an official preference distribution to determine who wins that seat.
This result is not just the worst for the CLP in terms of seats: it’s by far their worst result in terms of the vote. The CLP has won more than 50% of the primary vote at five Northern Territory elections, most recently in 2012. This year their vote has dropped to about 32%. This compares with 35.7% of the primary vote at the 2005 election.
Labor didn’t just win this election with a few seats in one region: they comprehensively defeated the CLP in every part of the territory.
Labor lost in 2012 on the back of a massive swing to the CLP in remote majority-Indigenous electorates. That result has been completely reversed, with Labor regaining Arafura, Arnhem, Namatjira and Stuart.
Labor has also put itself in a dominant position across the Darwin area, gaining Fong Lim, Port Darwin and Sanderson, although it is not clear yet whether Labor or an independent will win Karama.
The result was most devastating for the CLP in their heartland in the three other cities in the territory. When Labor won in a landslide in 2005, the CLP maintained a hold on two Palmerston-area seats, one seat in Alice Springs, along with the Katherine electorate. They now look set to lose all three Palmerston seats and could also be wiped out in Alice Springs and Katherine.
The election was a clear victory for Labor and a devastating defeat for the CLP, but the election was also a good one for independents. There has never been more than two independents elected to the assembly at any one election. This election has produced at least three independent MLAs, with that number possibly increasing to five. More than 25% of voters opted to not vote for one of the major parties, the highest such figure in the history of elections in the Northern Territory.
The result was good for independents overall but the picture was not consistent. Ex-CLP independents did well in the Darwin region and in Alice Springs but the Indigenous MPs who left the Country Liberal Party in 2014 have all been thrown out of parliament. Alison Anderson retired at the election, with her seat returning to Labor. Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu, who reconciled with the CLP, has lost his seat of Arafura to Labor. Larisa Lee attempted to retain her seat of Arnhem as an independent but didn’t come close: she managed only 2.6% of the vote, coming a distant fourth.
Yesterday’s election was a resounding rejection of the CLP and an impressive victory for Labor, but the new government should be careful not to rest on its laurels. This election suggests growing volatility and instability in Northern Territory politics, which may make it harder for future governments to hold on and win re-election.
