Overview

Electoral arithmetic

In seeking a third term at the election on August 24, Labor hopes to extend a period of dominance in Northern Territory politics that began with the watershed of 2001, prior to which the Country Liberal Party held power without interruption from the inception of self-government in 1974. Labor has won five out of six elections from that time, losing office for a term in 2012 before returning with a landslide win in 2016. The latter result reduced the Country Liberals to two seats in a chamber of 25, raising doubts about their status as the official opposition when three independents united as the Territory Alliance in early 2020. The election in August 2020 restored normality by boosting the Country Liberals to eight seats, with Labor retaining a comfortable majority with 14.

The Legislative Assembly is composed of 25 single-member divisions with an average of around 6000 enrolled voters each. This includes nine seats of Darwin and four of its satellite town of Palmerston, with the remainder accounting for 12, including five with majority Indigenous populations. Labor retained its stronghold on the nine Darwin seats in 2020, with the CLP recovery reflecting the gain from Labor of a second seat in Palmerston, the regional seats of Katherine and Barkly, and the Alice Springs region seats of Braitling and Namatjira. The CLP also gained the Darwin hinterland seat of Nelson upon the retirement of long-serving independent Gerry Wood. However, its eight seats became seven in September 2021 with Labor's win in the Daly by-election, boosting Labor to 15 seats until June 2023, when Blain MP Mark Turner was forced to the cross bench.

Typically of single-member electoral systems, the Northern Territory parliament tends to be dominated by the two major parties, although they have accounted for less than three-quarters of the total vote at the last two elections. The Territory Alliance was founded by former CLP Chief Minister Terry Mills with hopes of disturbing the status quo, but of the three parliamentarians who gathered under its banner (two with backgrounds in the CLP and one with Labor), only Araluen MP Robyn Lambley won re-election. The Greens have never been represented, and typically contest only a limited number of seats at each election. One Nation's only entry was when it contested five seats 2001, and other familiar enterprises such as Shooters Fishers and Farmers have never made the effort.

Independents, on the other hand, have shown the small size of the territory's electorates can play to their advantage, although the number elected fell from five at the 2016 election to two in 2020. This reflected the retirement of Gerry Wood in Nelson and the fact that two of the five from 2016 were now with the Territory Alliance. Robyn Lambley resumed her independent status shortly after the election, which together with Mark Turner's breach with the ALP increased independent representation from two to four. The only one not seeking re-election is Goyder MP Kezia Purick, who represented her seat of Goyder east of Darwin for 16 years, the first seven with the CLP. The other independent is Yingiya Mark Guyula in the Indigenous majority seat of Mulka, which he won from Labor in 2016 (when it was called Nhulunbuy) and retained in 2020.

In addition to Kezia Purick, two Labor members are retiring: Paul Kirby in Port Darwin, a highly marginal seat that has traditionally leaned conservative, and Nicole Manison in Wanguri, an apparently safe seat for Labor. Purick's seat of Goyder has historically been conservative, but the CLP must reckon there with a self-described conservative independent running with Purick's endorsement. A redistribution process proved something of a bureaucratic debacle, but the new boundaries have had little impact on the overall picture electorally.

Labor in government

Labor came to power in 2016 with a landslide win under Michael Gunner, the beneficiary of a chaotic term in government for the Country Liberals after unexpected wins in Indigenous majority seats propelled them to power in 2012. Gunner's government proved only moderately more stable than its predecessor, with three MPs being expelled from the caucus in December 2018 after criticising the government's budgetary management. It was nonetheless comfortably re-elected at the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020, though not so easily that it continued to face a rump opposition.

The government has grappled with two leadership changes in its second term, the first unfolding in May 2022 when Michael Gunner resigned citing the experience of a recent heart attack in 2020 and a desire to spend time with his family. The Left-aligned Natasha Fyles prevailed in the ensuing leadership tussle over Nicole Manison of the Right, the numerical superiority of the latter faction being countered when two of its members supported Fyles. Manison agreed to withdraw rather than pursue a contest that would have involved a ballot of the rank-and-file membership against the backdrop of a federal election campaign.

Fyles lasted little more than 18 months as Chief Minister, resigning in December 2023 after it was revealed she had failed to declare a conflict of interest relating to shares in a mining company. She had also been undermined by poor polling and, according to The Australian, a view that she had been insufficiently concerned about the difficulty the government faced with rising crime. Her successor was Eva Lawler, Right-aligned Treasurer and Education Minister, with Nicole Manison again conceding the race after initially being identified as a front-runner.

The Country Liberals in opposition

The Country Liberals have spent the entirety of the current term under the leadership of Lia Finocchiaro, who emerged as something of an accidental leader when Gary Higgins stepped aside in January 2023, being the party's only remaining parliamentary member. Her claim was strengthened by a creditable performance at the 2020 election, then tarnished by the party's defeat in the Daly by-election in September 2021. A report in the Northern Territory News in November 2022 suggested three of the party's seven MPs favoured a leadership change, not including an unidentified prospective challenger who had not determined whether to proceed. Nothing further was heard of this, although an unsuccessful no-confidence was moved against her at the party's central council in June 2023 by branch members who accused her of failing to support Peter Dutton and Jacinta Price in their pursuit of concerns over child sex abuse in remote communities.