As the Australian political pundit who prides himself on his willingness to predict election results, I have noticed four Saturdays in the foreseeable future being the fixed dates for Australian state and territory elections. They are 24 August for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, 19 October for the ACT Legislative Assembly, 26 October for the Queensland Legislative Assembly and 8 March next year for both houses of the Parliament of Western Australia. There will also be a federal election in the first half of next year on a date to be announced.
I plan to offer predictions on all of these. Unfortunately, however, the most difficult to pick is the event occurring first – the election this month of 25 members of the NT Legislative Assembly. However, I am predicting that there will be a change of government. That would mean the new Chief Minister will be Lia Finocchiaro of the Country Liberal Party replacing Labor’s Eva Lawler.
The reason for my reticence is that I am not aware of any significant recent and reliable opinion polling – and that is normally the main source for punditry. Therefore, I must rely on the three other tools, the laws of electoral history, the betting odds and by-election results. Two of the three point to a change of government – so I have decided to predict Labor’s defeat at the hands of the CLP.
During the term of the parliament now dissolved there have been three Labor chief ministers. The first was the successful Michael Gunner. He became Leader of the Opposdition in April 2015 and then led his party to two successive election victories in August 2016 and August 2020, thus becoming the 11th Chief Minister. The trouble began when he retired in May 2022. His retirement was for genuine family reasons. The party passed over his deputy, Nicole Manison, and chose Natasha Fyles, the first case of an NT Labor leader from the left faction. She was the 12th Chief Minister, and a failure. Then Manison was passed over again in favour of Eva Lawler who became the 13th Chief Minister in December last year.
Commenting on Natasha Fyles in December 2023 a seasoned observer by the name of Matt Cunningham wrote this: “The official reason for the resignation of Natasha Fyles was her failure to declare shares in a mining company. But her leadership had been on life support for months. When she took over from Michael Gunner 17 months ago Labor was still a warm favourite to be re-elected in 2024. Since then, the party’s fortunes have nosedived.”
Lack of space prevents me from giving other cases that may be likened to this. Suffice it to say that there are laws of electoral history which say that a government in this situation goes out of office at the next election.
In this case my second tool of prediction is the betting odds. For the Northern Territory Sportsbet has the CLP at $1.60 and Labor at $2.40. That is better for Labor than in Queensland where the Liberal National Party is on $1.20 and Labor on five dollars. However, it does suggest Labor’s defeat in the NT, even if it is not as guaranteed as in Queensland.
On the other hand, Labor’s record at by-elections is pretty good – and this brings me to my detailed predictions which are made with the attached Mackerras Pendulum in mind. I begin with the right-hand side and confidently predict that the CLP will win the seven seats shown as CLP while the two seats shown as independent will be won by independents.
I predict that the CLP will take these six seats from Labor: Blain, Port Darwin, Fong Lim, Fannie Bay, Karama and Wanguri. That would give the CLP 13 seats, leaving Labor with nine and three independents. So, I am predicting a majority CLP government.
Now here I must give some details about these marginal seats. The first is that Daly was won by the CLP at the August 2020 general election but was taken from the CLP at the by-election in September 2021. That fact is shown on the pendulum. Second, the Palmerston-based seat of Blain is a sure CLP gain but the Labor member, strictly speaking, is an independent, having broken with the party. Third, there was a by-election for Arafura in March 2023 and the Labor vote rose substantially.
So, in my band of marginal Labor seats there are three in the middle I predict Labor to hold, Arafura, Daly and Drysdale, in this latter case because the Chief Minister, Eva Lawler, is the member for Drysdale.
That leaves one exceptional case. I predict Labor to lose to the CLP Wanguri in Darwin’s northern suburbs. It is a natural Labor seat but the sitting member, Nicole Manison, is retiring in circumstances that are very bad for Labor.
Finally, two further things should be mentioned. The first is that there has been what I describe as a “trivial” redistribution of seats. The ideological passion for “one vote one value” in Australia is such that the Northern Territory and South Australia review their electoral boundaries during each parliamentary term. This produces what I call “trivial” redistributions – and such a case might suggest I should revise the pendulum attached. However, no seat name has changed, and no seat has changed parties notionally - so I thought it best simply to ignore this trivial redistribution.
But there is one detail to note. There has been a variation in the boundary between the adjoining Palmerston seats of Blain and Drysdale. Therefore, the buffer statistic for Blain should be 1.4 per cent, not 0.2 per cent. That for Drysdale should be 5.4 per cent, not 7.9 per cent. Not that it matters. The CLP will win Blain and Eva Lawler will hold Drysdale,
The other point is this. There are 153,500 electors enrolled to vote in this election. That is an average of only 6,140 electors per division, tailor-made for good local members. Hence there is bound to be much variation in the swings.
I predict a ten per cent swing, reducing Labor from 54 per cent of the two-party preferred vote to 44 per cent. However, I confidently predict Labor to hold Arafura, Daly and Drysdale but those retentions will be partly offset by the Labor loss of Wanguri described above.
