The Northern Territory election of 24 August 2024 was a landslide election in favour of the Country Liberal Party, providing the Territory with an overhaul of its election chances as well as the end of eight years of Labour rule in one of the most demanding jurisdictions in Australia.
To the Territorians and Australians observing the changing political picture in the country, the election outcomes in the Northern Territory signify much more than a change of government. The vote portrays a strong sense of frustration among the people in the community with high levels of crime, a stagnant economy, and the heavy government debt of 11 billion. This knowledge of the Northern Territory election, its results, and prospects is very crucial to anyone keen on Australian regional politics and the issues confronting the least populated jurisdiction in Australia.
Who Won the Northern Territory Election 2024?
In the 2024 2024 election of the Northern Territory, the Country Liberal Party (CLP), with Lia Finocchiaro leading it, won a huge majority government. The CLP won 17 seats in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly of 25, a 10.4 percentage point swing in its favour and one of the biggest sweeps in the history of Australian elections.
Lia Emele Finocchiaro was the first woman Chief Minister of the CLP and the second youngest Chief Minister in the history of the Territory at the age of 39. She has the Spillett electorate, which now has the largest majority of any seat in the Territory – her margin expanded to about 29.5 percentage points. Finocchio has pledged to add the police minister as another portfolio to the Chief Minister, which is an indication that her government will put law and order at the forefront.
Territory labour was destroyed. The party lost 14 seats to only 4 seats – its lowest number of parliamentary representatives since joining the Legislative Assembly in 1977. It was also a personal catastrophe for the Labour Chief Minister Eva Lawler, who lost her own seat of Drysdale with a 20-plus per cent swing against the CLP’s Clinton Howe. Only eight months before, Lawler had taken the Chief Minister’s office after the previous Chief Minister, Natasha Fyle, resigned due to unspecified shareholdings.
The Greens won their first seat in Northern Territory Parliament, and Suki Dorras-Walker, the candidate, took her seat in the Nightcliff seat in Darwin, defeating Labour by 24.5 per cent. There were also three Independent candidates who won seats.
What Were the Key Northern Territory Election Issues?
The Northern Territory of the 2024 election was solely based on one issue: community safety and law and order. This was not a coincidence; the CLP conducted a campaign whose main focus was to address the crime crisis that was sweeping the Territory.
The Northern Territory has the highest rates of domestic violence in Australia, and yet the election result was still led by the public discontent with crime, though there were the highest number of police per capita in Australia. The previous Labour government, although it spent the resources on law enforcement, could not assure the Territorians that the situation was improving. Violent crime, youth crime, and the revolving door of bail have kept hard-core criminals back on the streets, and this became a lightning-rod issue, which the CLP mercilessly used.
An excellent symbolic example of community issues was the homicide of 20-year-old Declan Laverty in March 2023. Laverty, who had been selling liquor at a Darwin bottle shop, was stabbed by a client who was on parole for a violent attack. The case caused an uproar among the people, and it turned into a highly charged issue for those who wanted the criminal punishment to be more severe and the bail conditions also to be more demanding.
In addition to law and order, the Territory had to deal with interrelated crises: an $11 billion government debt, years of spending more than revenue; a population stagnation, as Australians leave the Territory to pursue other opportunities; a creaking medical system, unable to cope since COVID-19; escalating cost-of-living demands; and a moribund economy with no clear growth options.
With the people of the Indigenous Territory, which amounts to about 30 per cent of the population of the Territory, the situation was especially deplorable. A recent coronial inquest into the deaths of Indigenous women murdered by intimate partners showed a system that is swamped by need, not able to manage the issues of alcohol addiction, cramped housing and lack of healthcare and education provision in remote communities.
When Was the Last Northern Territory Election?
The last state election in the Northern Territory was held on 24 August 2024. This election concluded the fourth term of the Territory Labour government, which had ruled the territory for the last eight years since its election to office in 2016 and 2020.
The last territory-wide election had been conducted on 22 August 2020, with Labour winning its second consecutive term with a narrower majority, with 12 seats to 8 to CLP. That election was representative of the pre-COVID politics, with the Labour Party still enjoying the support of a significant number of Territorians.
The Northern Territory general election of 2016 was also notable, having sparked a CLP landslide in 2016, with the Labour Party winning 11 seats against the 2 seats of the CLP- another landslide in historic proportions. The 2016 election was so disastrous to the CLP that Lia Finocchiaro was the sole CLP parliamentarian to be elected in Greater Darwin, and her survival in Parliament would play a pivotal role in ensuring the party would eventually recover.
When is the Next Northern Territory Election?
With the four-year fixed electoral cycle of the Northern Territory, the next Northern Territory state election will be in 2028 (sometime in 2028, which is the usual cycle in the Territory).
This, however, is on condition of a full four-year life of the Finocchiaro government, without occasioning an early dissolution of Parliament by dissolution of Parliament–a contingency which is always open, especially in case the government is popular and is fulfilling its promise of law and order.
The difference between the territorial state election and the Australian federal election must be made. The Australian federal election took place on 3 May 2025 and was held in new electoral division boundaries in the Northern Territory following a redistribution exercise that had been carried out. The Northern Territory has two federal seats of the House of Representatives: Solomon (Darwin and Palmerston) and Lingiari (the rest of the Territory).
How the CLP Won Back the Territory: Electoral Geography and Swings
The 2024 election victory of the CLP was geographically condensed in a radical change in the voting of Territorians, more particularly in urban regions. The party attained something incredible considering that they had been reduced to only two seats in 2016: they swept back to power by recording massive swings in their traditional labour strongholds.
The most dramatic shifts were realised by Darwin and Palmerston. The CLP won all four Palmerston seats and all but two seats in Darwin on swings of more than 10 per cent. Above all, CLP achieved huge incursions into the northern Darwin suburbs, the Leanyer, Nightcliff, Port Darwin, Sanderson, and Wanguri electorates, which had been a stronghold of labour since the beginning of the millennium. These were suburbs that had delivered Labour majorities in parliament almost without fail over the last twenty years, and so their defeat was very symbolic of the disastrous Labour defeat.
Alice Springs was not so much of a clean sweep with the CLP winning five seats out of seven, but Labour and Independents holding footholds. The regional and remote electorates shifted massively to the CLP in a range of 5 to 12 per cent with a swing in favour of the CLP.
The CLP gains had no countermeasure except the labour bleeding away its votes to smaller parties, and Independents, especially the Greens, on environmental issues. This proposal of the Middle Arm industrial precinct was especially hurtful to the position of labour among environmentally conscious voters in the northern suburbs of Darwin. This saw the Greens force Labour into third place in several Darwin seats, with the Greens winning Nightcliff outright and running a strong second in Fannie Bay and Braitling.
Territory Labour’s Path to Reconstruction
Territory labour has four seats left and a mammoth task of rebuilding. The new party leader, Selena Uibo, was now elected to carry Labour out of the political wilderness as both Natasha Fyles and Eva Lawler stated that they would not seek the office of party leadership.
Uibo bequeaths a caucus which is virtually decimated, virtually no parliamentary representation in the Territory in the heartland, and the challenge of analysing why, after eight years in government, the message of labour could not reach Territorians. According to analysts, labour bled votes in two contradictory directions at the same time, to the CLP on the grounds of law-and-order, meaning labour was thought to be weak on crime, and to the Greens on the grounds of the environment (meaning labour was thought to be weak on the progressive).
To be reelected in 2028, Labour will have to re-engage with the territory’s voters and persuade them that a Labour-led government can both provide law-and-order policies and, at the same time, safeguard and maintain environmental values and address the pressures on the cost-of-living. It is an intricate political stance that was evasive to the former Labour government.
The Finocchiaro Government’s Mandate and Agenda
Lia Finocchiaro will be in the Chief Minister position with such a huge mandate and huge responsibilities. The CLP government under Finocchiaro has been determined to be true to three pillars, which are crime reduction, economic rebuilding and re-establishing the NT as a desirable place to live, work and invest.
On law and order, the government of Finocchiaro has already enacted legislation that would reduce the criminal responsibility age from 12 to 10 years old and impose punitive bail against violent offenders- part of the reforms on crime response contained in Declan’s Laws that are a reaction to the anger of the community over the poor response of the courts to violent offenders. Amnesty International has condemned such reforms as a possible violation of human rights requirements, yet the Finocchiaro government seems to be intent on applying them despite all.
On the economic front, to ensure that the Territory is a destination of investment and other projects, the government is developing its economy to take responsibility so that agriculture, fisheries, mining, energy, and renewable energy are all taken care of, with the Deputy Chief Minister, Gerard Maley, in charge. Formation of a new Territory Coordinator office has been seen to be controversial because it provides exemptions on mining and resource projects against some environmental approval processes.
To Territorians, the Finocchiaro government marks a clean cut of the labour years, but it will have the burden of providing immediate deliverables. Unless the government can clearly lower the crime rates and meet the cost-of-living strains, the electorate can be even more brutal to the CLP in 2028 than to Labour in 2024.
