By Zoe Moffatt

Outgoing Territory Alliance leader Terry Mills said the party’s backflip on fracking did not cost them the election, adding that he preferred losing his seat and the potential death of his party, over what he called “just fading away”.

Mr Mills led Territory Alliance to their first general election on the weekend where they were humiliated at the poll, currently looking to just barely hang on to one seat from the three they had going into the election and the 21 candidates they had running.

“I made the decision to contest this coming election on the basis of having no regret, and I felt that that was either just do nothing and then just fade away, or to do what I believe a lot of people felt needed to occur, and that was to make an attempt to sort of renovate the way politics works in the Territory,” Mr Mills said on Mix104.9 on Monday morning.

He did not provide any details as to how he would have “faded away” if elected as an independent.

Mr Mills first won the seat of Blain in 1999 as a CLP candidate and became chief minister in August 2012 when he led the party back into power after 11 years of Labor rule. He was rolled by Adam Giles in March 2013 while he was on a trade delegation in Japan and retired from parliament in April 2014.

This triggered a by-election in Blain where he endorsed disgraced CLP candidate Nathan Barrett and was made the NT’s commissioner to Indonesia. He was sacked from that gig by chief minister Giles after he tweeted a photo of himself laughing during an ultimately failed leadership coup against Mr Giles.

Mr Barrett did not contest the 2016 general election after he was firstly forced to resign from Cabinet after it emerged he sent a short video of himself masturbating with his left hand to a woman who was not his wife but with whom he was in a relationship with.

Mr Mills made a comeback as an independent, winning Blain back at the last election, but he came third out of three in the seat in Saturday’s race, receiving just 22.7 per cent of the votes, with 64.7 per cent of the votes counted so far.

On Monday afternoon Labor’s Mark Turner was sitting with a two per cent lead over the CLP’s Matthew Kerle.

In reflecting on what went wrong in his own seat Mr Mills did not identify anything to do with his qualities as a candidate.

“I knew that I was not putting in the effort that I needed to [and] to hold the hearts and the minds of the people in the Blain electorate,” Mr Mills said.

“It feels like we peaked about six weeks ago and then something changed.”

TA backflipped on their fracking policy on June 23 when they announced they would ban fracking if they won the election, citing an anti-fracking group Lock the Gate survey which said 86 per cent of 1,264 surveyed Territorians said they opposed fracking.

This was announced nine weeks ago.

Mr Mills said that “something” that changed was not their decision to ban fracking if elected.

He said TA had to respond to their membership’s views over fracking but said it “threw the cat amongst the pigeons in terms of people… viewing [TA] in one particular way”.

TA’s August failure followed their February shortfall in the Johnston by-election where they failed to capture the seat despite a 12.1 per cent swing against Labor and high hopes by the party.

As of Monday afternoon, former CLP and independent MLA Robyn Lambley looked to be the only member of the party who will win a seat – Araluen in Alice Springs. She has 1,917 votes, ahead of CLP’s Damien Ryan’s 1,891 votes in the two-candidate preferred count with 68.4 per cent of the votes counted.

Despite the February loss occurring prior to coronavirus forcing Australia into lockdown Mr Mills said “the COVID factor was the most significant factor” in Saturday’s elections.

“[It] really took the wind out of our sails in some respects,” he told Mix 104.9.

With counting set to wrap up in the coming days the party’s only other MLA, Jeff Collins, who tried to hold his seat of Fong Lim, has received just 11.6 per cent of votes with 60.1 per cent of the votes counted so far.

“The anaesthetics wearing off… and then the pain starts to kick in…after that there would be some anger,” Mr Mills said about the loss on the weekend.

“I carry a fairly big responsibility in having led this [party] but I’m proud of those who put in an enormous and high quality effort”.

Mr Mills said he remains committed as a citizen and the next term is “going to be the biggest challenge.”

Labor is set to form a majority government in parliament for the next four years.