We find ourselves at an unusual place ahead of this election.

The Northern Territory is broken and repairing it is going to take more than bringing in a political party with old ideas and tossing another party out. But getting rid of a stale government that stinks of corruption, that long ago gave up listening to the voters is a good first step.

The public’s faith in its institutions is the lowest it has ever been, brought about by a Labor Government who failed to lead and took us to new lows we could not even contemplate four years ago.

What the academics and political pundits fail to grasp in their assessments of this election is an old truism in Territory politics: corrupt governments go away.

Labor still stinks of the $12 million corrupt grandstand, the misuse of public funds to try to win the last election, buying shares for themselves in companies that raised serious conflicts of interest, covering up corruption from being investigated, hiring gas lobbyists to tell them how to lie to the public for industry, all the other glaring lies and removal of facts, the ‘deny, delay, cover-up and accept no responsibility’ approach to dealing with scandals – this does not amount to a “minor scandal’ as one academic tried to classify it. No, that there is a pattern of behaviour, a modus operandi that we’ve all had enough of.

It’s Labor’s culture.

A party that had the gall to tell us it would restore integrity to government when elected in 2016.

When a deeply unpopular Michael Gunner left in May 2022, the party continued its arrogance and deception with Natasha Fyles carrying Gunner’s poisoned torch, failing to reverse course two-and-a-half years out from the election.

She instead went down in scandal, but not before angering the public with her lies and arrogance.

That Fyles will now not commit to personally supporting the Middle Arm industrial precinct as the candidate for Nightcliff – the very project she flew to Canberra to spruik at taxpayer expense, where she evoked Margaret Thatcher and said the Territory “is not for turning” – tells you all you need to know about her. She’ll say anything for a vote, but lacked any courage or conviction while leader.

Eva Lawler has proven to be much more formidable than the CLP expected. She achieved that by throwing whatever was left of Labor’s tarnished values after Gunner and Fyles were done desecrating them out the window and moving the party to the right.

She has essentially disowned everything her predecessors did (but only recently admitted that) and brought in a new approach: More money for police, more prisons, full subservience to the gas industry, ignoring Indigenous issues and a lot of “tough love” talk.

If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the CLP’s bread-and-butter. Hell, Labor even bested the CLP on some of the scandal and corruption that that party was known for while in government between 2012 and 2016. They are indistinguishable.

This campaign was an absolute bore and designed by both parties to be just that. There were no real arguments around policy or attacks on leadership, because both Lia Finocchiaro and Eva Lawler have similar policies and appear to lead in the same way.

We were still subjected to a Weekend at Bernies-style campaign, with tortuous public debates in which the leaders said nothing of value.

All we got out of those debates is that both leaders have the same old, lifeless ideas that will not fix the Territory.

Neither provided a fresh solution for any of the problems that ail us. Building more prisons to lock people up is not going to solve our crime crisis and does nothing to address the root causes of poverty and disenfranchisement that led to the state we’re currently in.

The flailing economy and the $11 billion debt will not be fixed by the old ‘spend and the Lord will provide’ mentality both parties have adopted, with neither offering anything in the form of how they’ll deal with our debt, that will continue to balloon with no firm end in site, despite what Treasury claims.

The real solutions are out there, we just need leaders with integrity to put us ahead of their party and personal ambitions.

But it’s that lack of integrity in government that will come back to haunt Labor.

Lawler had a chance to properly change things under her leadership, but failed at every occasion she had to restore integrity to whatever is left of Territory Labor and our institutions of government.

It’s time for them to leave. Corrupt governments go away.

But the CLP has done nothing to deserve your vote besides existing. Frankly, that is not enough. Their small-target campaign that revolved solely around crime provided us with next to nothing to judge the party and its leader Lia Finocchiaro on (unless we count the five election losses she has overseen as leader, that shows us she has a serious problem connecting with Territorians).

The CLP has basically said, we’ll take over from where Labor left off and keep digging the hole.

The best outcome for all of us would be a hung parliament where the CLP has to rely on the support of independents to form a minority government.

That would ensure that the two-party monopoly that has brought the Territory to its knees finally has to work with others to get its legislation passed, which can only benefit our democracy.

The party system is killing us. This election is offering strong independents who could end up holding the balance of power. That includes incumbents Robyn Lambley, Yingyia Guyula and Mark Turner and could also include Justine Davis in Johnston, Graeme Sawyer in Wanguri and possibly even a Green in Fannie Bay in Suki Dorras-Walker.

Those seats are all expected to be close.

More people in our Parliament who aren’t there to serve their party political masters and large corporate donors is healthy for our democracy and should start to elicit some much-needed change.

The swing against Labor is definitely on. But we can’t help feeling the Clown Town merry-go-round will keep on spinning.