Can Australia’s other territory Canberra learn anything from its Top End partner?

The scale of the Labor Party’s crushing defeat in the Northern Territory election a few months ago shocked many people.

Most experts predicted a tighter contest, but voters ousted Labor so ruthlessly that even then-NT Chief Minister Eva Lawler lost her seat and conceded the election an hour earlier than usual.

Thousands of kilometers away, in another part of Australia, the ACT Labor party faithful watched closely.

More than 70,000 people have already voted in the national capital ahead of ACT election day on October 19, when Canberrans have the power to oust ACT Labor after almost 23 years in charge or bring the Canberra Liberals back from the wilderness political.

Likewise, the surprise devastation witnessed in the NT could foreshadow a similar outcome this weekend. Or is the shared “territory” label where the similarities between the NT and ACT end?

Crime won in NT

The vote in the Northern Territory was won by the Country Liberal Party (CLP), which capitalized on voter outrage over a key issue – law and order.

Both parties promised tougher penalties to combat crime, but “voters were ready to attack the government,” said Rolf Gerritsen, an associate professor at Charles Darwin University.

The CLP has successfully framed the Labor Party’s record on law and order as the cause and symptom of many of the NT’s greatest weaknesses – the NT has the highest rates of domestic violence, alcohol dependence and incarceration in the country, the poorer performance on Closing the Gap targets, intense cost of living stresses and hospital systems under extreme pressure.

This was highlighted by a series of curfews introduced in Alice Springs earlier this year, “emergency” measures that captured national attention and cemented the issue of crime as an enduring political toy.

And it all happened in a jurisdiction defined by its small population, vast size and limited resources for disadvantaged residents.

No ‘hot button’ issues in Canberra

ACT couldn’t be more different.

Its challenge is to find the resources expected by the often high-income and rapidly growing population within the limits of its coverage area of ​​2,358 square kilometers – approximately 570 times smaller than the NT.

Services such as health, transport, housing and taxes are highly regarded as issues of concern to Canberrans.

Crime appears only occasionally in the fair policies of the ACT, and its prevalence is negligible compared to the NT.

In 2022-23, police took action against 13,591 people in the NT, compared to 3,564 in the ACT (although police prosecution methods differ between states).

The contrast is also sharp on environmental issues – at the same time as the ACT announced its transition from gas to renewable electricity, the NT approved new gas projects.

But so far no “hot” issue has emerged that is mainstream enough to force an outrage-based expulsion of the incumbent ACT Labor Party, according to Gerritsen, a former public policy academic at the Australian National University now based in Alice Springs. .

And in Canberra, there is a wide spectrum of choice, given the lack of local government in the ACT.

It means that whichever party forms the government oversees everything from schools, hospitals and the national office to garbage collection, taxes and the cutting of nature strips.

There is one thing in common

Despite the obvious differences, the territories are linked by a common characteristic: the worsening of debt.

Net debt in the NT recently surpassed a record $11 billion – about $42,649 per resident, per year – too far for a federal bailout.

Most of it has been spent on roads and infrastructure across the vast expanse of the NT, with a recent increase in spending on police and education.

“By the end of the decade, we will have a tax debt of more than 30 billion dollars and my estimate is close to 34 billion dollars,” said Gerritsen.

Gerritsen said this left the NT with almost no choice but to give the green light to fracking to get gas out of a fiscal black hole.

But without resources or an industrial sector, the ACT does not have a similar rescue solution.

Instead, it relies on payroll tax, transfer tax and income tax, which leaves Canberrans among the highest taxed jurisdictions in the country.

Budget documents record that ACT’s debt amounts to almost $8.8 billion, but this includes gains made from super fund investment – ​​a measure not used in any other jurisdiction, making ACT’s debt difficult to compare.

This is why some critics, including the Canberra Liberals, argue that Chief Minister Andrew Barr – who is also ACT Treasurer – has never run a surplus during his time in office and estimate that comparable debt levels in the ACT are much higher.

What could Canberra Liberals learn from the NT?

A key target for ACT Labor’s biggest competition – the Canberra Liberals – is how long Labor has been in charge.

ABC election analyst Antony Green described ACT Labor as a “forever government where Labor provides the chief minister”.

The Labor Party has been in power for almost 23 years, with Barr now at the helm for a decade, making him the longest-serving incumbent in Australia.

But ACT is no stranger to changing its mind.

After all, he expelled one of the country’s most conservative senators, Zed Seselja, in favor of progressive climate independent David Pocock.

And if there’s one thing Canberra Liberals could learn from Pocock’s popularity – beyond his regular ice baths in Canberra’s freezing rivers – it’s that a more moderate view is more palatable to more Canberra voters.

ACT was, of course, the only jurisdiction to vote yes in the national referendum on an Indigenous Voice in Parliament, had the highest yes result in the gay marriage plebiscite and has some of the most environmentally progressive policies in the country.

While ACT has led the country in raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14, the CLP has moved in the opposite direction, pledging to reduce the minimum age from 12 to 10.

In contrast, under the leadership of Elizabeth Lee, today’s Canberra Liberals closely resemble the more moderate Canberra Liberals who managed to maintain power in the ACT in the 1990s under Kate Carnell.

So perhaps the biggest takeaway from the NT election is for the Canberra Liberals: the less they look like their Northern counterparts, the more likely they are to emerge from the political wilderness.

The voting system

There is also another factor that makes elections in the ACT complicated – the voting system.

The Northern Territory uses a preferential system similar to that of the federal House of Representatives, although it was adjusted to an optional preferential voting system in 2016.

This results in single-member electorates.

But they can be susceptible to volatility, such as the double-digit swings seen against Labor in the NT elections.

It is a contrast to the single Hare-Clark system in which votes are counted in the ACT (and Tasmania), which produces five members for each electorate, to sit in the 25-member Legislative Assembly.

“The (ACT) system is more predictable and, I would say, more stable,” Gerritsen said.

The Labor-Greens alliance

The other key factor that has kept ACT Labor in power for so long is its 16-year power-sharing agreement with the ACT Greens.

“So the stability is partly the electoral system and partly the fact that there has been a long-term alliance between the Greens and Labour,” Gerritsen said.

Although the NT elected a Conservative government, voters also handed the Greens their first seat, albeit by a margin of less than 40 votes. And that may have surprised some.

The surprise factor in the ACT could be the rise of independents.

Even Antony Green doesn’t know what successful independence would mean for the main parties, and whether they make enough waves to shake up the status quo in Canberra.