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A general election was held in the Northern Territory, Australia, on 18 June 2005. The centre-left Australian Labor Party, led by Chief Minister Clare Martin, won a second term with a landslide victory, winning six of the ten seats held by the opposition Country Liberal Party in the 25-member Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, bringing their total to 19. It was the second largest victory in any Northern Territory election. The only larger majority in the history of the Territory was in the first election, in 1974. In that contest, the CLP won 17 of the 19 seats in the chamber, and faced only two independents as opposition. The most notable casualty was Opposition Leader Denis Burke's loss of his own seat of Brennan. It was only the second time a party leader in the Territory had been defeated in his own electorate, after Majority Leader Goff Letts losing his seat of Victoria River in 1977. ==Overall result== |} The Australian Labor Party won 52.5% of the vote, which was an increase of 11.9% over the 2001 election. The opposition Country Liberal Party polled 35.3%, a drop of 10.1% from 2001. The two party preferred result was Labor on 59.1% to the CLP on 40.9%, a swing to Labor of 11.1% from the previous election. The Northern Territory Greens ran an increased number of candidates, and managed to increase their vote through much of Darwin, but had very little effect on the outcome of the election. Labor won 19 seats against the CLP's four seats. Two independent members, Loraine Braham and Gerry Wood, were also re-elected. The size of the government's win was very much unexpected. While Labor had been favoured to win a second term, most commentators had predicted a gain of one or two seats at best. Five of the six seats won by the ALP - Brennan, Daly, Drysdale, Goyder and Port Darwin - were formerly safe conservative seats that they had never won before in the history of the Assembly. The ALP also retrieved the seat of MacDonnell, which had been a comfortably safe Labor seat until its shock fall to the CLP in 1997. The CLP also very narrowly failed to win back the formerly safe seat of Braitling from independent Loraine Braham, despite a strong challenge from CLP candidate Michael Jones. Amidst what was their worst ever result, the CLP did have some good news in two seats which the ALP had been openly hoping to win. The ALP had run Fran Kilgariff, the very high profile Mayor of Alice Springs and daughter of CLP founder Bernie Kilgariff as their candidate in Greatorex, against CLP Deputy Leader Dr Richard Lim. Despite Kilgariff's profile and the massive swing against the CLP elsewhere in the Territory, Lim managed to very narrowly retain his seat. There was a swing to the CLP in only one seat - Araluen, where leadership aspirant Jodeen Carney comfortably retained what had been the most marginal CLP-held seat. The severity of the landslide result was all the more surprising considering that the ALP had never before been in government until 2001. The Legislative Assembly had been created in 1974, and the CLP had held government for an unbroken stretch of 27 years before Clare Martin won the ALP's first victory in 2001. The victory was seen in many cases not only as an endorsement of Martin's leadership, but also an endorsement of Labor's ability to govern. The CLP had consistently alleged that the ALP was unfit to govern the Territory, and had used this as a key tactic during election campaigns many times in the past. However, it was also seen as being a vote of no-confidence in the opposition, and in the days after the election result, conservative Prime Minister John Howard strongly criticised the CLP for what he saw as their poor performance in opposition. Furthermore, the reduction of the CLP to just four seats raised questions as to whether it was viable for them to continue to be separate from the Liberal-National Coalition, which operates at federal level and in every other state and territory. There were several prominent casualties of the election, but none was more significant or surprising than the defeat of Opposition Leader Denis Burke in the Palmerston-area seat of Brennan. Brennan was the CLP's safest seat anywhere in the Territory, with a CLP majority of 19 percent. The ALP had never come close to winning any seats in Palmerston before. There had been no suggestion from any major commentators or opinion polls that Burke was even remotely under threat, but he was swept aside on election day with a swing against him of more than 21%. The ALP candidate, James Burke, a virtually unknown labor lawyer, expressed shock at his own win, and became a party legend overnight. Denis Burke had already stated that he would resign as party leader if he lost the election, but the loss of his seat forced the party to find a new leader immediately. The four remaining CLP members unanimously replaced Burke with Shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Health Minister Jodeen Carney.〔()〕 Another shock result came in Daly in the remote northern portion of the Territory. It had previously been a reasonably safe CLP seat; retiring member Tim Baldwin held it with a majority of 9.5 percent. However, Labor challenger Rob Knight took the seat on an unheard-of swing of 24 percent, turning it into a safe Labor seat in one stroke. While the loss of Burke was a major shock, the defeat of three other CLP sitting members, Sue Carter (Port Darwin) Stephen Dunham (Drysdale), John Elferink (MacDonnell) also posed major problems for the party. Elferink had been the Leader of Opposition Business, Opposition Whip and Shadow Minister for Community Development, Housing, Local Government, Sport and Recreation, Regional Development, and Indigenous Affairs, Dunham had been the Shadow Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Lands and Planning, Parks and Wildlife and Essential Services, and Carter had been the Shadow Minister for Family and Community Services, Environment and Heritage, Arts and Museums and Women's Policy. In the aftermath of their defeat, all of these portfolios had to be redistributed among the four remaining CLP members, Jodeen Carney (Araluen), Dr Richard Lim (Greatorex) Fay Miller (Katherine) and Terry Mills (Blain). This has raised concerns from both sides of politics about the CLP's ability to mount any form of effective opposition in the new parliament. The two independent members of the outgoing parliament, disendorsed former CLP minister Loraine Braham and former Litchfield Mayor Gerry Wood both managed to retain their seats. In the lead-up to the election, there had been some suggestion that Wood may have some difficulty retaining his seat, but Braham had been widely expected to win another term. The final result turned out to be the opposite; Wood cruised to victory with a massive swing in his favour, whereas Braham very narrowly retained her seat in a result that was not known for several days after the election. The election was a disappointment for other independent candidates; Wood's successor as Litchfield Mayor, Mary Walshe, fell well short of expectations in Goyder, and Wadeye councillor Dale Seaniger failed to make much impact in Daly. As in past elections, minor parties failed to make much impact at the 2005 election. While the Northern Territory Greens ran an increased number of candidates and increased their votes, none of their candidates, including leader Ilana Eldridge came close to winning a seat, and their preferences had comparatively little effect on the outcome of any seats, let alone the election. The Network Against Prohibition ran in several seats, but did noticeably poorly. The Australian Democrats ran candidates in only two seats, a significant decrease from 2001, and barely rated at all. The Socialist Alliance chose not to run any candidates for financial reasons, instead endorsing the Green and NAP candidates. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Northern Territory general election, 2005」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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