Labor’s devastating loss on the weekend’s NT election not only has significant implications for the federal government, the Albanese government played a significant role in the shape of NT Labor’s defeat. Let’s start with the federal implications.

The NT election provides more evidence that the long-term decline in the primary vote of the major parties means that there is no such thing as a ‘safe seat’ anymore. For decades political analysts have thought in terms of an ‘electoral pendulum’ that swings gently from left to right, sweeping away those who hold ‘marginal seats’ and rarely threating those in ‘safe seats’. But that’s not how Australian elections work any more. Labor just lost four of its five ‘safest’ seats and the fifth seat of Nightcliff may yet be lost too.

Just as Scott Morrison managed to simultaneously lose ‘safe seats’ to independents, Greens and Labor in 2022, on the weekend NT Labor seats were simultaneously threatened by the Country Liberal Party, the Greens and a new crop of progressive independents. These days the electorate is more wrecking ball than pendulum.

While it’s true the CLP won a parliamentary majority after a primary vote swing to them of 18 per cent, at the same time Labor looks to have lost ‘safe’ seat Johnston (16 per cent margin) to an independent and may lose Fannie Bay (10.9 per cent margin) to the Greens. Indeed, at time of writing the former Labor Chief Minister Natasha Fyles’ seat of Nightcliff (24 per cent margin) is still in doubt. If a 16 per cent margin doesn’t make a seat safe then the........

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