There’s a fair bit of analysis of and commentary on the Northern Territory election results around the blogosphere.
The Poll Bludger is progressively updating late counting, while Tim Dunlop discusses the low turnout. Antony Green also looks at the impact of absentee votes and is critical of the administration of the election and Andrew Bartlett discusses the coverage of the election, and has some other interesting observations.
I noticed the usual predictable “it spells doom for the Rudd government” and “no it was fought on territory issues” dichotomy being produced in comments by pollies yesterday. I doubt that either Julie Bishop on one hand or Chris Bowen and Stephen Smith on the other were really following the election closely and that they are speaking with any authority on this matter. It’s always possible that they were privy to some internal polling, but unlikely in my judgement. I’d prefer to get some information on the dynamics of the contest from someone who’s actually an informed Territorian, so I’d take a lot more notice of Ken Parish’s take on the campaign and the result at Troppo.
If the election does produce a change of government, there will of course be federal implications – for governance and federal politics. Probably not so much in terms of the “coast to coast Labor” thing, as the territories are supplicants to the Commonwealth for money, and not among the most influential COAG players, but certainly in terms of Indigenous and resources policy where a significant amount of what’s going on occurs in the territory of the Northern Territory. I also think it’s foolhardy to suggest that the fact of calling an early election which didn’t produce the desired result necessarily has all that much to tell us about Alan Carpenter’s decision in WA. As Peter Beattie could tell us, early elections sometimes pay off in spades – but they do need a relatively convincing rationale.
Alan said:
It really is mickey mouseville up there isn’t it? 40 per cent just didn’t turn up to vote and in electorates with so few people in them of course that makes a difference. I agree the ALP were sucking on the hubris lozenge and obviously made no attempt to ensure their voters were a; on the rolls and B; were going to come out and vote.
I just did the sums and it seems more people will vote in my local government area in September than voted in the whole of the NT. When I see how much Federal funding goes to my local government area and how much liquid pork flows to the NT it makes me wonder. The thing that really pisses me off is how up there they swagger around as “Proud Territorians” independent hard men and ready to show those poofy southerners a thing or two. You cop it sweet so as not to offend and you haven’t the heart to tell them their life style is underwritten by the decadent southerners. They are a prickly lot up there when you tell them they are less than perfect.
A little more gratitude would be nioe. Federal implications? Maybe but it is such a shallow pool mentally and demographically that it is hard to tell. If Kev went up and bought them all a beer they’d probably vote for him.
My big worry about Rudd is he is starting to remind me of Bob Carr the man who for ten years turned style and spin into an art form. As Sydney’s infrastructure crumbles because it was neglected for all that time so Bob and Michael Egan could spin up a nice set of accounts, Bob is nowhere to be seen. He is a greeter down at Mac Bank, a sinecure from a grateful board of directors. But they are not silly enough to actually let him do anything that might effect the bank’s bottom line. Sling him a sackful of the stuff, wheel him out when a pseudo intellectual is needed to soften the bank’s hard avaricious edge. Let Bob get on the writers festival circuit boring us spitless with his literary wankery. Keeps him away from the office. I fear Kev is cut from the same cloth.
I hope there is a lesson in here for cynical election focused governments and their populist leaders treat the electorate with disdain and get your hand burnt. But I doubt that is what happened, probably a bit of wishful thinking on my part.
But it seems to be the order of the day for this election. I’m from QLD, I don’t have an explanation but we can understand some of the motivation or lack thereof. It would seem that the only method by which the electorate can hold a government accountable is also cause the rise of the type of politics we saw in the NT. We don’t want the terrible opposition party in control, but we don’t want to reward the fat lazy government for doing nothing, it’s the most pathetic catch 22 of all, because it’s of our own doing.
It doesn’t exactly leave us with much hope for our little democracy, does it?
PinkyOz
Here’s Antony Green’s lunchtime comments on the turnout:
“Very badly reported this morning. The turnout on Saturday was 63%. Once all the declaration votes are included, it will be up to about 78%. The turnout in 2005 was 80%, so the turnout is not down that much.”
http://www.pollbludger.com/?p=913&cp=1#comment-177608
Well FWIW, here’s my counter-narrative: ALP state and territory govts were always going to start tumbling once Howard was out.
I actually think the NT ALP has done rather better than they might have – just by hanging on. Especially given the historical depth of non-Labor rule there. It also looks like they’ll keep out of a minority govt tussle.
Give it a year or so – this will seem like a good effort in retrospect.
I’m living in Alice Springs this year and I’ve just done a bit of an anlysis of my own and come to pretty much the same conclusions as others who have followed. Little implication or Rudd federally. Mostly comes down to an overconfident ALP that delivered a rather poor campaign.
My 5c worth is that this was a natural levelling. The 2005 result was at the outer limit of possible ALP support in the NT, enabled by a temporary outbreak of un-electability in the CLP.
This result simply returns Labor to where it was when it first won in 2001.
Mark says:
The news on the ground in the NT is that the federal LN/P initiated intervention is working – improving the necessities for indigenes and amenities for the rest. Undoubtedly this has improved the standing of the territory CL/P.
The fed LN/P is converging on the ALP where it should, on industrial equity and ecological sustainability policies. Nelson is not a bad Opposition leader, he is just an ?pposition leader in a bad time.
Ok, so we’ve got a poll where all the pundits got it totally wrong, in the absence of data.
Then we’ve got Jack Strocchi weighing in with his grand narrative.
FWIW, the reporting I saw suggested Indigenous issues were studiously ignored by both parties in the NT election.
“The news on the ground in the NT is that the federal LN/P initiated intervention is working – improving the necessities for indigenes and amenities for the rest. Undoubtedly this has improved the standing of the territory CL/P.” – Jack
What a load of bollocks.
Oh Michael, Jack’s just funning with you.
Despite all his amorphous talk of “news on the ground” he’s actually a firm believer in strictly testable and quantifiably verifiable results.
No doubt any minute now he’ll produce the hard data from which he’s drawn his grand conclusion. And then you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face. Or his.
Given tomorrow’s Newspoll is Rudd 68, Nelson 12 – what a load of bollocks.
(Jack’s last para)
I don’t believe Jacks intervention centred narrative either.
Neither party said much about the intervention at all, and the election was fought in the suburbs of Darwin. Outside Darwin, where the intervention has been hotting, there were some interesting swings for sure, but not so many seats changed hands, and the story continued as normal – Aboriginal dominated bush seats go to the ALP, town seats go to the CLP, with the main narrative from the CLP being that the ALP spends too much time paying attention to Darwin and not enough to Alice Springs and Katharine.
Where the intervention really hurt the ALP was in the loss of Clare Martin, who was leader who came across much better in the media than Henderson, and who could probably (pre-intervention) have pulled off the leadership centred campaign that failed the ALP this time. But the intervention hit her leadership too hard in her Indigenous issues blind spot to ever recover.
Certainly some indigenous politicians migtt claim that the big swing against Scrymgour was due to her anti-intervention stance being unpopular with the Aboriginal population in her seat – its well known that there is division on the issue. But I don’t think any of the Darwin based losses can be traced to it.
The intervention remains too complicated to just characterise as good or bad. There are plenty of parts of it that are controversial. But the experience on the ground remains dominated by two things that overwhelm the ideology — the big increase in the resources being thrown at some of the poorest communities is a good thing, and the incompetence and blundering caused by an almost total lack of planning and consultation is a bad thing. Some things seem to work, some don’t, and half the time it is hard to tell if the failure is just due to poor implementation.
A good thing, too.
“Certainly some indigenous politicians migtt claim that the big swing against Scrymgour was due to her anti-intervention stance being unpopular with the Aboriginal population in her seat ” – dave
It’s much more easily explained by the CLP running 2 (and a third unoffical) candidate against Marion.
It could well work in future, but the CLP will need to run 3-4 candidates and hope that the preference flow is better for them.
Just out of interest, does anyone know how unusual (or not) it is for a party to run multiple candidates in a single seat?
No it isn’t. The CLP have run 2 candidates in large bush seats many times before, this was a business-as-usual approach for them. The swing was against Scrymgour.
Alan reckons that
“40 per cent just didn’t turn up to vote and in electorates with so few people in them of course that makes a difference”
Well, it has the same effect in any electorate, of any size at all, actually. That’s what’s so useful about percentages, Alan.
We say “a 2% swing against C, but an 11% swing against D”, rather than “450 voters switched their vote in Fanny Bay” or “Labor lost 765 votes in Love Cove”.
Jacques,
Yes, clealry there was a swing against Marion – I’m suggesting why.
On both previous ocassions Marion has contested the seat, there has been only one CLP candidate.
And both times they have gained just over 600 votes. This time with two CLP candidates, they each gained around 500. I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue that if you removed one or other of these two, their votes would flow to the remaining candidate. They were picked for their local appeal in 2 specific areas- Tiwi Is and West Arnhem.
Alan posted exactly the same rant over at Club Troppo.
http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/08/11/what-happened-in-the-nt-arrogance-hubris-and-complacency/
And Jack S., you don’t know what you are talking about.
And Moira Rayner thinks the mutineers got what they deserved.