Political miracle at the Top End

The final factor in the CLP's downfall was its suicidal decision to preference One Nation ahead of Labor. This can only be explained by panic. Darwin is the most multi-cultural city in Australia. Even Shane Stone, with all his faults, would never have dreamed of preferencing One Nation. The One Nation decision had a dramatic effect in the critical northern suburbs of Darwin.

The other side of this tropical electoral equation was the unexpectedly strong Labor performance: a telegenic ALP leader with great media skills (Clare Martin is an ex-ABC 7.30 Report presenter) and an awesomely slick Labor campaign, striking just the right mix between positive and negative ads. Labor even did a sanitised "push-poll" out of Sydney on election eve, "pushing" hundreds of Darwin households in the most marginal seats with a reminder of the fact that the CLP was preferencing One Nation, despite the fact that the Electoral Commissioner had only the day before ruled that a Labor TV ad making precisely that claim was false and misleading.

Do any of these events have any wider Federal political significance? If anything, the NT election result certainly shows that John Howard won't get away with selling mixed messages on One Nation. Denis Burke tried to do so by claiming that he wasn't really preferencing Pauline, just putting Labor (the true enemy) last. People didn't buy it.

The other significant factor was that Labor clearly used the NT election as a trial run for its newly-developed sanitised push-polling techniques. Both parties will certainly be using it to maximum effect in the forthcoming Federal election. The NT election was a spectacularly successful trial for Labor, and the Coalition already has the guru of push-polling, Darwin boy Mark Textor, on its team.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Darwin you can almost feel the relief, excitement and optimism in the air. Mandatory sentencing laws are being repealed, and we are finally going to get Freedom of Information legislation and a range of other accountability measures that the rest of Australia takes for granted. Clare Martin's team certainly lacks experience in government, and that makes some people a little nervous (a fear the CLP campaign tried unsuccessfully to exploit). However, the same was true of the CLP when it assumed power in 1978. The logical result of accepting that line of argument is perpetual CLP rule, a prospect Territorians decisively rejected on Saturday 18 August.

Democracy in the Territory can only be enhanced by the fact that, for the first time, we finally have two parties that can realistically aspire to government. That fact alone provides a level of public accountability that has simply not existed in the Territory until now. As Don Chipp once suggested in a different context, it helps to keep the bastards honest.