BY RUTH RATCLIFFE
DARWIN — "A new era for the territory begins today", proclaimed the August 23 NT News editorial, the day after Chief Minister Denis Burke formally conceded that the 26-year reign of the Country Liberal Party over the Northern Territory had ended.
Prior to the August 18 NT election the CLP held 17 seats to Labor's seven, with one independent. After the August 18 election, the ALP holds 13 seats, the CLP 10 seats and two seats are held by independents.
Linked to the Liberal and National parties, yet fiercely proud of its own unique "Territorianess", the CLP staked its political fortunes on being rabidly right wing. Several media commentators noted during the election that Pauline Hanson's One Nation party had never become a serious threat in the NT because it was so similar to the CLP.
The CLP had notorious influence over the public service in Darwin. It is common knowledge in the Top End that people will not win management promotions unless they are CLP members. The CLP has consistently refused to introduce any kind of freedom of information legislation. There are thus very few avenues for public scrutiny of government.
The last days of CLP rule were characterised by rorting, nepotism and vote buying.
Earlier this year the CLP was hit with claims of travel rorting when two CLP back-benchers racked up $68,000 in air flights, including a trip to Barbados. In a implied attempt to create a dynasty, retiring CLP incumbent MP Steve Hatton ensured the pre-selection of his son, Jason Hatton, for his seat of Nightcliff. During the election, CLP candidate John Elferink engaged in blatant vote buying, travelling throughout his central Australian electorate giving kangaroo tails to his Aboriginal constituents until stopped by the electoral commission.
The August 18 election result was the political equivalent of Cyclone Tracey. It demolished the accepted wisdom among mainstream political commentators that the NT is full of racist, red-neck cowboys who assure the CLP of eternal rule over the territory. In fact, the big majority of NT voters live in the northern suburbs of Darwin, where there are large migrant communities and a large Aboriginal population.
The election result follows national trends — a swing of 9% against the CLP, only 2% of which was picked up directly by Labor, the other 7% going to independents and smaller parties (13.6% of the total vote). The overwhelming bulk of these the preferences of those not voting for the CLP went to Labor.
While there were pre-election fears of a high One Nation vote, the Hansonites received a negligible 1.3% of the NT-wide vote.
Other reasons for the CLP's defeat have been given by mainstrweam political commentators. The perceived arrogance and corruption of the CLP certainly played a part. In an unlikely agreement, both Burke and federal NT Labor MP Warren Snowdon have suggested that the swing against the CLP was due, in part, to resentment about the GST.
The CLP defeat has also been attributed to its decision to preference One Nation before Labor in the five seats in which One Nation ran.
While this is the first election in which the CLP has not run a scare campaign against "blackfellas taking our land", racism was still a big election issue. The CLP's Public Order and Anti-Social Conduct Act was enacted to give the police the legal right to push Aboriginal people out of public space in towns. The CLP ran on a repressive "law and order" platform and claimed that a vote for Labor would be a vote against mandatory sentencing.
During the election campaign, the CLP and Labor sought to out do each other in racist "law and order" policies. Both parties, and the mainstream media, claimed these policies were popular with NT residents. Yet, voters negotiated their way to polling booths through seas of CLP posters declaring that "Labor will scrap mandatory sentencing" and still voted in a Labor government.
While Labor has promised to repeal mandatory sentencing legislation as it currently exists, the "sentencing guidelines" it plans to introduce will have virtually the same effect as the current mandatory sentencing laws. Labor has not made any suggestion that it will repeal the anti-social conduct act. It has said that it will impose a 10pm curfew on young people and a "kid's night patrol".
Even before the election, Labor leader Clare Martin was described by Paul Toohey in the August 18-19 Weekend Australian as "hard on homeless people, [with] a poor record of visiting Aboriginal communities ... a law and order freak ... [who is] more pro-development than the CLP".
The ALP has been elected with massive expectations. First among these is that it will remove racist legislation, but its position on "sentencing guidelines" or "mandatory punishment" implies otherwise.
There is also widespread concern in Darwin about the impact the proposed Timor Sea gas developments would have on the ecosystem of Darwin harbour. Labor accepts the environmental impact statement which was commissioned by Methanex, the company responsible for the (currently on hold) development.
Nurses and teachers who held industrial action during the election period will be anxious to see how the new Labor government addresses their wage claims.
The newly formed Socialist Alliance ran in three seats demanding an end to the police approach, people before profits and no refugee detention centre in Darwin. The alliance received 4% of the vote in the seats it ran in, or 0.5% NT wide vote, without any letter-boxing or door-knocking. This result was achieved almost entirely on the strength of the Socialist Alliance campaign against the anti-social conduct act.
This should serve as a reminder to the new NT Labor government that there is a small, but growing constituency to its left. The radical activists who mobilised to support the Socialist Alliance will continue to campaign to demand real, rather than Labor's cosmetic, changes in favour of greater social justice in the NT.
[Ruth Ratcliffe is a member of the NT Socialist Alliance.]