By Dr Robyn Smith

Following the government shellacking that was the 2024 Northern Territory general election, it is timely to consider the relatively short history of citizen democracy in the NT.

Created in 1974 in preparation for self-government in 1978, the Legislative Assembly comprised 19 Members and replaced an archaic form of governance imposed on the Territory by Commonwealth masters domiciled in the national capital in southeastern Australia.

The former model was the Legislative Council, a patronising pretence of democracy disguised as an ‘advisory body’ that ensured the Commonwealth retained absolute control with more appointed than elected members reinforced by the [appointed] presiding officer having both a deliberative and a casting vote.

If nothing else, it was hybrid.

The less charitable among us might suggest that it was gob-smackingly arrogant, anachronistic and autocratic.

Post-war Australian rationale, withering from Northern Australia’s vulnerability that was so devastatingly exposed in February 1942, included ‘that the Northern Territory is not self-supporting financially, and that the greater part of the expenditure on its development must be provided by the Commonwealth…’.

It was and remains ever thus.

Nonetheless, that was the prevailing model from 1947 until 1974, notwithstanding compositional tinkering arising from relentless political agitation over that time.

On 19 October 1974, however, the good citizens of the Northern Territory had the opportunity to fully elect their own representatives for the first time.

For this toe-dip into the world of democracy, the CLP was led by widely respected veterinarian Dr Goff Letts and the ALP by widely respected lawyer Dick Ward, both of whom were elected Members of the Legislative Council.

With the exception of two Independents – Dawn Lawrie and Ron Withnall, also elected Members of the Council – it was a clean sweep to the CLP.

That is, the ALP failed to win a single seat.

Fifty years on, the August bloodbath was the ALP’s worst electoral result since that time.

There is no point in comparisons between 1974 and 2024 because the elections have nothing and no one in common.

An overview, however, may be beneficial:

From these figures, it is evident that the NT regularly experiences low voter turnout; fewer than 80 per cent of enrolled voters routinely exercise their right to vote.

No doubt there are numerous reasons, including the Territory’s notoriously high urban population turnover, but when compared with the national average of 96 per cent, it is clear that something else is at play.

In a 2020 presentation on declining electoral enrolment, former electoral commissioner Iain Loganathan said that one-third of Aboriginal people are not enrolled and that in the order of 25,000 eligible voters are not on the electoral roll.

That represents significant disenfranchisement.

The Electoral Commission has made concerted efforts to increase both enrolment and turnout rates in remote communities, but the figures remain stubbornly low.

Remote enrolments increased in the lead-up to The Voice referendum last year, yet the NTEC indicated that fewer than 45 per cent of eligible remote voters exercised their votes in August.

The NTEC cited “voter fatigue and general apathy” as the reasons.

The question must be: why?

I recently wrote about some of the reasons for voter disengagement in an article in The Conversation.

While it is unclear whether remote disengagement is a matter of fatigue or mistrust, what is apparent is that government and policy relevance are major issues that must be addressed at both NT and federal levels before any change can be expected.

Dr Robyn Smith is a Lecturer in colonial history at Charles Darwin University and is well written on the politics and history of the Northern Territory. With Dean Jaensch, she co-authored Turning 40: The Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory 1974-2014 and wrote Licence to Kill: Massacre Men of Australia’s North, which was published in 2024.