NATIONAL: The Northern Territory election last month is the most historic in our nation, for one simple reason: it’s the first time Aboriginal people have ever changed a government in Australia. Tracker writer BRIAN JOHNSTONE analyses an electoral result that changes everything.
Saturday, August 25. 2012. It was the day the Northern Territory’s political landscape was turned on its head.
It was the day Aboriginal voters in squalid impoverished communities in the remote dustbowls of Central Australia and the swamp lands of Arnhem Land handed Government to a backwater Country Party.
A party which had previously held power for an unchallenged 26 years of ceaseless black bashing and race-based campaigns, while Aboriginal communities were left to fester in poverty. It’s a fractured party which had spent the past 11 years in the political wilderness.
In doing so, those voters consigned the minority Henderson Labor Government to electoral oblivion.
It is the first time in Australia’s electoral history Aboriginal voters have determined the outcome of a general election in any state or territory.
The shock result is all the more astonishing, particularly to southern political commentators and observers, when you consider government changed hands on the back of just over two thousand primary votes across five bush electorates in the 25-seat parliament.
It will be the first time in NT electoral history the Country Liberal Party has governed the smallest polity and parliament in the country with a swag of mostly freshly-minted Aboriginal MP’s.
It will also be the first time since 1978 the Australian Labor Party will be represented, in opposition or government, without a significant Aboriginal presence on the floor of the sole chamber of NT parliament, the Legislative Assembly.
For the first time ever the Tories have claimed a mandate to talk on behalf of the Territory’s first peoples in government, instead of seeking power by bashing, marginalising and ignoring them.
The election result defied the predictions of all but a handful of pundits. The bookies and the smart money, as usual, got it dead right. There was a general expectation the Henderson Government had done enough to win the ALP a fourth term in government after 11 years in power.
All previous NT elections have been a tale of two campaigns; firmly divided between the bush and the ‘burbs.
All have been won or lost in Darwin’s northern suburbs.
The Country Liberal Party, since the granting of self-government in the late 1970’s, have chased and secured the white town vote; the Australian Labor Party has held a political mortgage on the black bush vote.
The town vote kept the CLP in power, and the Territory as a one party state, for more than a quarter of a century up until 2001 when Clare Martin became the Territory’s first Labor Chief Minister.
This campaign was different.
For the first time a well-planned, resourced and executed CLP bush campaign won the day. Claims are beginning to surface of dirty tricks. Time will tell, of course. But in any event the CLP delivered it government by decimating Labor’s bush vote.
The CLP, for the first time ever, pre-selected strong Aboriginal candidates against sitting Aboriginal Labor members.
Election night casualties included three high profile Aboriginal ministers.
The shock and awe in Labor campaign HQ on election night can be fully appreciated when you consider the history of the seats that tumbled to the Tories, the tiny remote and pastoral electorates of Arnhem, Arafura, Stuart, Daly and Namatjira (formerly MacDonnell).
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4 Comments
While it’s undeniable that the CLP got elected due to the Aboriginal vote, I feel it’s wishful thinking to conclude “the days of top-down paternalism have finally been laid to rest”.
The CLP have already reneged on the promise made to many communities that they would reinstate community councils – saying they will have to cop a “regional” model.
And in town the level of anti-Aboriginal racism is at more extreme levels than I’ve ever seen it. The proposal to build concentration camps for black drunks, if it comes to fruition, would see Aboriginal people in the NT become the most incarcerated group of people on the face of the entire planet by an order of some magnitude.
Here’s the real CLP colours flying high:
http://www.alicespringsnews.com.au/2012/09/26/rehab-of-drunks-is-secondary-to-getting-them-off-the-streets-says-a-g/
While there has been vague rhetoric about engaging with Aboriginal people in remote communities, I am shocked (but not really surprised knowing CLP’s history) to hear Dave Tollner’s plans to break down Aboriginal communities in Darwin like Bagot and turn them into suburbs. This racist vein has not been severed, and we will soon see CLP’s true colours.
I see the win as political opportunism that has taken advantage of the broad discontent with the Intervention, the Hub Towns model of service delivery, the blackmail of signing over land for housing, the gutting of community councils for super shires, the basics card etc.. CLP did well to convince people that this was all Labour, which won them the votes, but failed to remind people that they introduced the Intervention at the beginning with no consultation, and have supported Labour’s extensions.
They will lose support very quickly if there is no real restoration to community governance and self-determination, and this “hitting the (black) symptom” approach in town won’t do them any favors either.
It will be interesting to see the rise of grass-roots organisations in the bush (and in town) over the term of this government, as well as the First Nations Political Party and the Greens in future elections.
I think indigenous voters are trying to vote against the kind of governance which got advantaged by those ill with alcoholism and addictions. And maybe the change of government was what had to happen for men to know that the CLP was hardly less likely to have a negatively racially biased framework they comprehend how to combat the diseases of addictions within…
. . . .indigenous communities have experienced themselves being blamed for their negative behaviour especially when drunkenness was involved, to a far larger extent that we white Australians normally care to observe. And when blame against addictive habits was furthering those habits, the folk laying the blame need to begin to account for the costs.
The harsh reality was of the NTER having worsened substance abuse as a social issue which prevented the safety of women and children in family living. And tracing the sources of what that was the issue, have caused many Aboriginal communities throughout Australia, to work hard at eradicating incidents of any blame against white people from within their own communities, so as to better observe which way the bone was being pointed. Us white Australians can ill afford to ignore the efforts within indigenous society, to ensure black people were not the aggressors.
Its extraordinary refreshing to see a woman of such stature, rise up through the ranks of predominant male orientation. Not only is she a woman, but an indigenous woman. Mrs Price is a prime candidate for addressing the real issues of our mob. Here is a culmination of two worlds drawn together for the benefit of first, her people, then all indigenous peoples across NT. She is the prime example of becoming skilled up, only to take her skills back into her home region, benefitting and voicing the very real concerns, issues, solutions and of course arguements. She is a strong black woman who sees with her own naked eyes, the detriment that surrounds her people. Here stands a woman of fierce courage and determination to speak on behalf of thousands. It is in the very best interest of Governemtal bodies to take herd of what she speaks of and how potentially, she carries the ability to cause a rebirth of sustainability of lands, people and laws.