Territorians were granted the opportunity to vote for their own Legislative Assembly members 50 years ago – on 19 October 1974.

Two months later, Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin and diminished this milestone to a distant memory.

The first election was a non-event for NT Labor, which didn’t win any seats to 17 for the Country Liberal Party (CLP), which had been formed a few months earlier from the merger of the Territorial Country and Liberal parties.

This group of trailblazers included Bernie Kilgariff, Ian Tuxworth, Paul Everingham, Roger Steele and Marshall Perron. They were joined by two Independents, Dawn Lawrie in the seat of Nightcliff, and Ron Withnall in Port Darwin. The CLP won 49.01 percent of the vote, Labor 30.46 percent and independent candidates 20.54 percent.

As the Territory was still being prepared for self-government, Country Liberal leader Goff Letts took the post of majority leader and a seven-strong executive council, rather than a cabinet, managed internal affairs.

Six Labor members were elected in 1977 to 12 CLP and one Independent. Self-government began on 1 July 1978, and Labor gained a seventh seat at the 1980 election. Due to population growth, the Legislative Assembly was increased to 25 seats in 1983.

The CLP governed for the rest of the century. Over five elections between 1983 and 1997, Labor did not defeat a sitting CLP member. Labor’s only wins were in three by-elections and two vacant seats in 1990.

The CLP was cemented in political history largely due to Cyclone Tracy and the mammoth task of rebuilding Darwin. This was driven by the Commonwealth Reconstruction Commission, and it was only in the 1980s that the population in Darwin reach pre-Tracy figures.

A new Parliament House was built in Darwin and officially opened by the Governor-General, Bill Hayden, on 18 August 1994. The building is part of State Square, which also includes the Supreme Court, and constructed at a total cost of about $170 million. With a floor area of 23,000m2 over five levels, 2024 is also the 30th anniversary of the Wedding Cake.

Two decades of CLP dominance ended when Clare Martin led Labor to victory in 2001. Since then, Labor has only once failed to record a majority of 13 or more seats and 20 out of the past 24 years have been under a Labor Government.

The Martin Government led Labor to a landslide re-election in 2005, reducing the CLP to only four seats. With a change of Chief Minister, Paul Henderson called an early election in 2008 and then brought in fixed four-year terms.

In 2012, Terry Mills led the Country Liberals once again back into office. Henderson resigned from the Legislative Assembly in January 2013, triggering a by-election in Wanguri.

Over the next four years, the CLP’s majority was splintered by internal power plays and instability. Seven months after coming to office, Mills was rolled as Chief Minister while on an overseas trade trip. Adam Giles was then almost deposed two years later, but refused to go.

The four-year period under CLP was chaos. There were two Chief Ministers, six Deputy Chief Ministers, 18 restructures of the ministry and four of the government’s original 16 members finished the government’s term on the crossbench.

The 2016 election was a bloodbath that reduced the CLP to just two members, Gary Higgins and Lia Finocchiaro.

Giles was defeated in his seat of Braitling. It was the first time Labor had ever won a seat in the CLP heartland of Alice Springs. Labor also won Katherine for the first time since it was created in 1987 and held by the Country Liberals for almost three decades.

Four years later there was a sharp adjustment and Michael Gunner’s Labor government faced the prospect of becoming the NT’s second oneterm government. There was a lack of confidence after five years of falling house prices at the end of the INPEX construction boom. Disputes arose within government on how to handle the economy with three Labor MLAs moving to the crossbench.

A poor result at the Johnston byelection in February 2020 following the resignation of Ken Vowles looked like trouble for the government six months ahead of an election. But the result for the CLP was worse, slipping to third behind the Territory Alliance’s Steven Klose. The new party had been formed by Independent MLA and former CLP Chief Minister Terry Mills. The CLP’s decision to recommend preferences to Labor ahead of its new competitor helped Labor retain Johnston with Joel Bowden.

A month later covid arrived and saved Labor, as it did in most other states around Australia, and changed the course of politics. The Northern Territory’s finances came second to a larger national problem and revived Labor’s prospect of re-election.

The August 2020 election saw Labor returned with 14 seats in the 25-member Legislative Assembly. The CLP increased its representation from two seats to eight and three sitting crossbench members were re-elected.

Territory-wide Labor’s primary vote was down 2.8 percent and the Country Liberal vote was also down – Labor polled 53.3 percent of the two-party preferred vote, a swing to the Country Liberals of 3.9 percent.

The newly formed Territory Alliance recruited three sitting Independents, but only Araluen MLA Robyn Lambley was re-elected. Mills lost Blain. But it should be noted the Alliance party polled 14.8 percent in the seats it contested, meaning voters genuinely wanted an option away from the main parties.

The overall result was a win to Labor, but the 2020 election produced some of the closest results in NT history. Nine of the 25 seats had winning margins under 2 percent. In eight seats the winning candidate won by fewer than 120 votes, fewer than 50 votes in four seats. Five of the CLP’s eight seats narrowed on margins of under 1.5 percent.

It took weeks to decide Barkly, where the CLP’s Steve Edgington eventually won by five postal votes.

By nature, Territorians don’t follow national trends, but it’s interesting to note that at the 2022 federal election political partisanship for the major parties reached record lows with a wave of Teals. The proportion of voters that always vote the same way was also at a record low (37 percent). This has been shown in the Territory by our volatile landslides one way or the other.

In 2024 an electoral boundary redistribution created challenges for candidates and sitting members, particularly in Palmerston. Eight of 25 electorates were unchanged, 13 underwent minor changes, with the four Palmerston seats undergoing significant change, including the then Chief Minister’s Eva Lawler in Drysdale.

On August 24, Territorians delivered a blistering landslide to the CLP because they clearly wanted change. With pre-polling numbers up and overall voting numbers down it appears that those Territorians who voted had made up their minds long before the campaign began. Listening to the word on the street, people felt unsafe in their homes and businesses were concerned about a flatlining economy and felt abandoned with the additional cost and disruption of crime.

The 2024 election has been the best result for the Greens in the NT, with the minor party also seeing large turnouts in the seats of Nightcliff and Braitling, and increased votes across the board.

The outcome is a solid 17 CLP MLAs, an opposition of four Labor, three independents — Robyn Lambley in Araluen, Yingiya Guyula in Mulka and newcomer Justine Davis in Johnston — and one Green.

Accountability and integrity need to be top of mind over the next four years as we move into the second half century of NT politics. Territorians will clearly not settle for anything else.

The election was always going to be a challenge for Labor to return for a third term. The cost of living is biting households and it’s hard to think of one major project of real significance that NT Labor started and finished in the last two terms. Territory voters responded and delivered a brutal swing in some seats of over 20 percent against NT Labor, including electorates that had been strongholds for decades in Darwin’s northern suburbs.

Congratulations to the Country Liberal Party and Lia Finocchiaro – Territory born, lawyer, the CLP’s first female Chief Minister and the NT’s 14th Chief Minister.Our readers will be particularly interested in strategies for economic growth, creating business confidence, payroll tax and political stability.