Politics
The Northern Territory election – a poor performance by Labor but not a Coalition landslide
The Coalition will surely take heart from the Northern Territory election, with the CLP having taken office from Labor, having enjoyed a TPP swing of about 10 percent, and a gain in primary vote of 18 percent.
This is the Coalition’s first gain in primary vote in any election, state or federal, since 2020, and only the second for the last ten years. Until this election the Coalition primary vote had slipped in 22 out of 23 elections.
The change in parties’ primary vote, since the 2020 Territory election, is shown in the table below. The 2024 figures are taken from Antony Green’s Election Page on the ABC, and may shift a little before the count is finalized, but not enough to change the general outcome.[1]
The Northern Territory is known for volatility in its elections, but even so there is something hard to believe in these figures – both the size of the CLP’s gain, and the collapse in support for “others”, which is contrary to the national trend of increasing support for independents.
We get some explanation for this outcome when we look at the 2020 election, when there was a 12.9 percent vote for the “Territory Alliance”, a group that had broken away from the CLP because of party power struggles rather than any ideological difference. The Alliance members are now back in the fold, and their votes seem to have come home.
The table below is a repeat of the first table, but with that 12.9 percent re-allocated to the CLP’s 2020 vote, and taken off the “other” vote.
This is more in line with normal political movements.
Labor has done badly, losing 11 percent support – half to the Coalition, the other half to the Greens and independents. Dutton and his acolytes will surely present this as a sign of Coalition momentum, but in comparison with the federal Labor government, the Territory Labor government has been on a rough road. Just eight months before the election its chief minister had to resign over the government’s slow response to crime in Alice Springs and a personal conflict of interest. And Dutton probably doesn’t want people to pay too much attention to the shambolic performance of the Liberal government in Tasmania.
In this election the gain in the Green vote has been almost as impressive as the gain in the CLP’s vote. The Greens contested 11 of the 14 urban electorates (all 3 in Alice Springs, 8 out of 10 in Darwin), and in those 11 seats won 18 percent of the primary vote.
Most notably the Greens have come close to taking two Darwin seats – Fannie Bay (will probably be won by the CLP off Labor) and Nightcliff (will probably be held by Labor). This success probably stems from opposition to the government’s policies on gas, fracking and allocation of groundwater.
In another Darwin electorate, Johnston, an independent looks likely to take a seat off Labor.
Labor’s worst setbacks were in Darwin and Alice Springs, particularly the outer suburbs of the Darwin-Palmerston urban region. In the urban seats it contested there were TPP swings between 10 and 26 percent against Labor.
By contrast Labor held on to its support in the non-urban electorates it contested. The turnout in the remote electorates was very low – around 30 percent in three electorates.
Does this low turnout simply mean that Labor didn’t put much effort into contesting remote electorates, which they were taking for granted? Or does it mean many indigenous Australians feel so disconnected with politics that they cannot be bothered participating in elections, maybe because no candidates’ policies seem to be worth supporting, or because the whole process appears to be disconnected from their interests. And maybe it’s because the message they inferred from the Voice referendum was that 60 percent of Australians don’t care about them.
Samantha Dick, of the ABC’s Darwin bureau, believes that failure of the referendum and a belief that there was nothing in the parties’ offerings that aligned with their interests explains low turnout: Low remote voter turnout in 2024 NT election linked to “fatigue” and failed Voice referendum. (As an aside, while low turnout has had no consequences for Labor in the Territory election, it could present a significant risk for Labor in the federal election, which will see a contest for the second Senate spot, presently held by the Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy.)
Commenting on the election, Rolf Gerritsen of Charles Darwin University, writing in The Conversation, remarks that “Indigenous issues were hardly mentioned by politicians or the media in this election campaign.” He states:
This election was essentially an urban election played out mainly in Darwin-Palmerston and, to an extent, Alice Springs. It only paid some attention to Indigenous issues as a covert subtext to the broader community angst about crime.
On the ABC website Thomas Morgan writes about the “monumental task ahead” for the incoming government. Although the campaign was in the cities, that monumental task relates largely to the needs of people who live in, and come from, the rest of that vast landscape. Health care, housing, alcohol addiction, and domestic violence are all issues with which the government has to contend.
The low turnout in indigenous communities is a serious issue. So too is the low prominence of indigenous issues, other than youth crime, in a jurisdiction in which almost a third of the population identify as Aboriginal.
Youth crime: can we do better than “lock them up” or “let them trash the joint”?
Youth crime dominated the discussion on election night, and in the post-election announcements by the incoming government. There is widespread agreement that an apparent failure to deal with youth crime was probably the strongest reason for the large swing against the government.
All state and territory governments need to take heed of the way youth crime has been so prominent in this election. The problem is somewhat amplified in the Northern Territory by local conditions – young people drifting into the cities from unsustainable communities, overcrowded and intolerably uncomfortable housing, and adults unable to supervise their children because they are barely coping with their own difficulties.
In the campaign the Coalition included a proposal to enact “Declan’s Law”, a suite of changes to bail provisions meaning that refusal of bail would be the default for certain offences. The name comes from a high-profile case where Declan Laverty, a 20-year-old bottle shop worker, was murdered by a 19-year-old who was on bail for a previous serious crime. The new Territory government has also indicated that it will lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10.
This is not just an issue about indigenous Australians: in all states there are instances of serious crimes committed by young offenders on bail.
Nor it just the usual right-wing law’n’order beat up, or a confected Duttonesque scare campaign about asylum-seekers running amok and a flood of Hamas terrorists coming into Australia. It is about real crime and its consequences.
People are losing their livelihood because their businesses are trashed. To many people, particularly those who cannot afford insurance, the cost of having a car stolen or their house ransacked, is ruinous. Cities such as Townsville, Alice Springs and Port Augusta come to be seen as hardship postings, rather than places where people want to live and contribute to the community.
Advocates for troubled young people correctly point out that harsh treatment of young offenders is costly and counter-productive. They also point out that there won’t be a lasting solution to the problem until the systemic drivers of youth crime are dealt with. But surely these concerns can be addressed while there is also attention to community safety: it shouldn’t be a binary choice. If the advocates for children insist that offending children are always given the benefit of the doubt, the community will be attracted to populist lock-‘em-up policies, while more effective measures will be dismissed.
Solutions that protect the community without violating the rights of children are costly, but that cost is minor compared with the cost of uncaring lenience and vengeful punishment. There must be better options.
1. Besides Green’s blog William Bowe has a page of results by electorate on his Poll Bludger site, and the Northern Territory Electoral Commission has a set of electorate maps . ↩
Essential poll: Gaza and immigration
Gaza – little support for Dutton’s unqualified support of the Netanyahu government
The latest Essential poll has three sets of questions on our attitudes to the war in Gaza, the first two of which are about Dutton’s provocative statements about refugees from Gaza.
The media have reported that the poll reveals that Dutton’s statements have traction, citing 44 percent support contrasting with 30 percent opposition. But the statement put to respondents is much milder than Dutton’s stance. It reads “Peter Dutton has claimed that Australia should pause arrivals of Palestinian refugees fleeing the conflict in Gaza. To what extent do you support or oppose Dutton’s call for pausing arrivals of Palestinian refugees?”. Dutton’s statement was actually about refusing to issue visas, and even cancelling already-issued visas. “Pausing arrivals” has a host of less harsh meanings.
On this question there are predictable partisan differences, and older people are more supportive of a pause than younger people.
In the next part of the survey respondents are asked whether they think Dutton’s position reflects his genuine care for national security, or his interest in driving division for political purposes. The responses come out 54:46 for the first statement. Responses dependent on voting intention are predictable, and older people are more inclined to believe that Dutton has a genuine concern for national security than younger people are.
The third part of the survey asks respondents whether they think the government’s response to the war has been too supportive of Israel, too harsh on Israel, or about right. About half of respondents are satisfied with the government’s response. Of the other half twice as many go for “too supportive” as go for “too harsh”. Women are more likely than men to go for “too supportive”, but there is little evidence of significant differences by age. Even 71 percent of Coalition supporters believe the government’s response has been satisfactory or too supportive of Israel.
It seems from these surveys that Dutton’s uncritical support of the Israeli government does not align with public opinion.
Finally there is a set of questions about our attitudes to Israel’s military action in Gaza. Only 17 percent of respondents believe the Israeli government should stay on its current course.
Racism and immigration – we’re confused and embarrassed
There are three sets of questions on immigration and racism.
The first is about our attitudes to immigration. Five years ago 50 percent of respondents believed immigration is positive for the country, while 35 percent believed it is negative. Responses are now even, at 42 percent. Women are more negative towards immigration than men.
Then there is a set of statements about the effects of immigration on the economy, jobs, the environment, and house prices, asking respondents whether immigration is positive or negative in these aspects. We’re about evenly split on its effect on the economy, and negative on other aspects, particularly housing. Again, women are more negative than men on all aspects. Labor voters are much more positive about immigration than Coalition voters.
The third set of 9 statements is about racism. The first statement is “People are scared to say what they really think because they don’t want to be labelled as racist”. On this statement 64 percent of respondents agree. On a more direct statement “Australia is a racist country” there is less agreement – only 37 percent – and 47 percent of respondents believe “Australia is less racist than it has been in the past”.
The responses to the first statement can be interpreted in two ways. One is that we have all become hyper-sensitive in our language. The other is that we would really like to express racist attitudes, but are afraid of the opprobrium. This sort of question is often used by social scientists to tease out opinions that people do not want to express openly.
Greens voters stand out in agreeing with the statements “Australians from an Anglo/European background enjoy a privileged position in our society” (57 percent), and “Australia is a racist country” (63 percent). These responses suggest there is a significant belief in the existence of “structural racism” in Australia – a concept that seems to have meaning to some people but which, because of its irrefutability, is meaningless in a scientific sense.
Surveys about “race” are fraught with interpretation problems. Scientifically, the term “race” has no meaning for humans, but it is interpreted in many ways – skin colour, facial appearance, religion, country of origin, and one politician even believes aboriginality is a “race”.
So we don’t really know what 59 percent of respondents were thinking when they agreed with the statement in the survey “There is tension between people of different races and nationalities in Australia”, but it’s a worrying figure.
On the set of nine statements on immigration and race there are significant age differences, but they may simply reflect the changing ethnic composition of Australians. For example, about 30 percent of all Australians have personally experienced racism or racial discrimination, but that proportion is greater among young people.
Australia Institute events
A reader has suggested that the roundup provide reminders of the Australia Institute’s upcoming events. Their scheduled events are:
Tuesday 3 September, the next fortnightly Unparliamentary webinar.
Thursday 5 September webinar Mike Rann: Power Shift: Australia’s Energy Future Beyond Fossil Fuels.
Friday 6 September webinar Harris vs Trump: the contest for the soul of America.
For those in and near Melbourne on Thursday September 5 there is the 2024 Laurie Carmichael Lecture delivered by Allan Fels.
For those in and near Canberra on Tuesday September 17 there is the Dr Hugh Saddler Memorial Lecture, delivered by Lenore Taylor.
Click occasionally on the Australia Institute website for research reports, press releases, petitions, webinars and other links. Or better still bookmark it.