Bartlett's Blog

I am sure there are lessons to be learned from the Northern Territory election result – which may even yet see the Labor government tipped out of office – but I wouldn’t suggest I know what all those lessons are. Still, if the reported comments in this story are anything to go by, even long-time federal Labor NT MP Warren Snowden isn’t sure yet what the lessons are yet either.

The result wasn’t predicted by electoral pundits. This means it will now be called a ‘shock’ result, although one could just as easily say it just means the pundits weren’t paying enough attention. Having said that, there are factors about NT politics which do make elections harder to predict. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to be taken out of the result – just that we shouldn’t uncritically assume that the lessons are whatever they are allegedly determined to be by the same pundits who were so wrong in their pre-election predictions.

While there is unlikely to be anything in the NT result to give Kevin Rudd any direct concern (as opposed to some state Labor governments), the fact the Territory has some major differences from other jurisdictions is no reason to ignore the lessons it might provide.

Maybe one possible lesson from this result is that voters hate early elections being called for no good reason, (other than the incumbent government seeing a short-term political opportunity). If this was a factor in the NT result, then Alan Carpenter and the Labor government in WA might have a shock coming up soon too.  And if Anna Bligh was thinking of calling an early election in Queensland based on little more than beating up on Lawrence Springborg for allegedly not having any backbone, she might also want to think twice.

One could also theorise – without any solid evidence unless some proper post-election surveying was done – that having a Labor government federally might now be working against Labor governments at state and territory level, as voters seek to provide some balance against total Labor domination.

It is doubly dangerous/dubious trying to analyse the reason/s behind election results in places one doesn’t live in – even more so in the case of somewhere like the Northern Territory, where a number of local factors make it quite distinct from anywhere else in Australia. These include the very small electorates (which make personal factors around the candidates more significant), the significant differences between Darwin and the rest of the Territory, the majority Aboriginal population outside the major cities, and even the small number of candidates in most seats (including the very rare occurrence this time around of two electorates where the sitting Labor members were returned unopposed, which some wrongly saw as a sign of how weak the CLP Opposition was).

As an outsider but occasional visitor, I would also suggest that living in the Territory feels much more like you are ‘somewhere else’ than any other part of Australia. Even in Darwin, you can’t get a newspaper from elsewhere in the country until after midday, and it is commonly stated that the local paper is far more likely to run stories about crocodile sightings and the like than anything remotely political.

In my experience, Australian blog Club Troppo gives more regular locally based insights into NT politics than anywhere else on the web, including the mainstream media. (although before anyone suggests I am just engaging in blogosphere triumphalism, I should note they didn’t do any better than the professional pundits in predicting the loss of seats that occurred.)

My impression of the CLP has always been very much coloured by their past approach of regularly adopting policies campaign messages which seemed to me to be nothing less than blatant appeals to racist bigotry. But I didn’t see the same thing this time (at least from afar), even when the favourable High Court ruling came down in the middle of the campaign recognising Aboriginal rights to the intertidal zone along much of the Territory coast.

The tendency with election results is for people to interpret them in a way which suits their preferred worldview. I could do the same here, but I would be doing so on the basis of pure supposition and minimal evidence. Of course virtually every other interpretation you read in the newspapers (or on blogs) about the result will be doing the same.

I could be truly heroic and suggest NT voters were expressing their disgust at the failure of the Labor government to direct adequate funding to Indigenous communities, and (from what I could see from a distance) the CLP Opposition seemed to take Indigenous issues more seriously this time around than the government did.

A less uplifting interpretation is that NT voters were so outraged by the High Court ruling during the campaign recognising the land rights of Aboriginal people to coastal intertidal zones – and thus threatening the ‘right’ of people to fish where they liked – that they protested by voting against the government of the day. However, from what I could see, the CLP didn’t respond like it might have in days gone by with a frenzy of racially loaded and inflammatory rhetoric. Indeed (again with the qualifier that it was very much from afar), the response to the High Court finding from the CLP Leader Terry Mills looked less tilted to potential anti-Aboriginal prejudice than the Labor Leader’s statements.

Another potentially positive take on the result is that voters are not as driven by self-interest as is often assumed. Jacques Chester on Club Troppo lamented last week (wrongly as it turned out) that CLP Leader Terry Mills’ policy of cutting back on some of the public sector in the NT – whilst in Chester’s view a very sound approach – would only serve to lose the CLP votes in the crucial Darwin seats where the same public servants lived. Chester suggested that Terry Mills’ “fatal flaw” is that “he is too honest for politics”. It would be a nice thing indeed if a lesson from this election is that honesty in politics might actually be something which reaps electoral rewards, although again one shouldn’t make wild assertions without some solid research or polling to back it up.

ELSEWHERE:

• Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy provides some details, including the potentially signficant drop in voter turnout (and/or a much higher number of absentee votes than usual) and the possible confusion caused by the election being called very soon after a recent redistribution had been finalised.
• Ken Parish at Club Troppo (and a former NT MP) gives his take – which is basically that arrogance and hubris cost Labor big-time both in losing votes and low turnout.
• Larvatus Prodeo provides a range of links on the election result, including The Poll Bludger site, which is the best place to go to follow any unfolding developments in late counting.
• Stephen Johnson in New Matilda.