Jodeen Terese Carney (born 9 December 1965) is an Australian politician. She was a
Country Liberal Party
The Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory (CLP) is a centre-right political party in Australia's Northern Territory. In local politics it operates in a two-party system with the Australian Labor Party (ALP). It also contests federal ...
member of the
Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory is the unicameral legislature of the Northern Territory of Australia. The Legislative Assembly has 25 members, each elected in single-member electorates for four-year terms. The voting method fo ...
from September 2001 to September 2010, representing the
Alice Springs
Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...
-based electorate of
Araluen. She was the Shadow Attorney-General, and Shadow Minister for Justice, Health, Family and Community Services, Business and Industry, Women's Policy, Territory Development, the AustralAsia Railway, Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Central Australia and Defence Support. Until 29 January 2008 she was also the
Opposition Leader
The Leader of the Opposition is a title traditionally held by the leader of the largest political party not in government, typical in countries utilizing the parliamentary system form of government. The leader of the opposition is typically se ...
.
Carney announced her resignation from parliament on 19 August 2010, effective 3 September. She cited health reasons as the primary cause of her resignation.
Biography
Early life
Carney was born in
Melbourne, Victoria
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung–Taungurung language, Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the St ...
, and studied at Bendigo High School before commencing a law degree at the
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...
. She graduated in 1989, and moved to
Alice Springs
Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...
the following year in order to do her articles. In 1990, she was admitted to legal practice, and worked as a solicitor for the next seven years. In 1997, she opened her own local practice, which she operated until deciding to contest pre-selection for the Legislative Assembly seat of Araluen at the
2001 election. Carney is
openly lesbian
A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
, and has been in a same-sex relationship for over twenty years.
Career
Carney's bid for the pre-selection gained some media attention, as she was a reasonably high-profile candidate, but she was ultimately overlooked by the Alice Springs branch, who instead chose Peter Harvey. However,
John Elferink
Johan Wessel Elferink (born 24 September 1965) is an Australian politician. He is a former member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for the Country Liberal Party.
Early life
Elferink was born in the Netherlands and moved to Austr ...
, a sitting MP who had lost his preselection for
MacDonnell, complained to the party's Central Council, making claims of branch-stacking. The fallout from the letter was immense—on 25 November 2000, in what was dubbed by the local media as "The Night of the Long Knives", all the preselections of the Alice Springs branch were overturned. The Central Council preselected Carney for Araluen, reinstated Elferink's preselection for MacDonnell, and pushed aside sitting minister
Loraine Braham
Loraine Margaret Braham (born 21 August 1938) is an Australian politician. She was a member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 1994 to 2008, representing the electorate of Braitling. She was initially elected as a representative ...
in
Braitling in favour of Harvey. The controversial and largely unprecedented decision from head office earned Carney many enemies in the local branch of the party.
It was generally believed at the time that the Central Council's decision to preselect Carney for Araluen all but assured her a seat in parliament. Historically, Araluen had been a reasonably safe seat for the Country Liberal Party, and
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
had never come close to winning it. Longtime CLP MP
Eric Poole held the seat with a seemingly insurmountable majority of 19.2 percent. However, Carney faced a significant challenge not only from Labor, but two well-known independents. The CLP lost over 27 percent of its primary vote from
1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...
, but Carney ultimately won by 134 votes.
In opposition, Carney took responsibility for several portfolios, including tourism, correctional services and communications. While she often acted as a conservative voice in the assembly on many issues, advocating a particularly hard line on issues of law and order (including
mandatory sentencing
Mandatory sentencing requires that offenders serve a predefined term for certain crimes, commonly serious and violent offenses. Judges are bound by law; these sentences are produced through the legislature, not the judicial system. They are inst ...
) and drug policy, this was not always the case, as she also clashed with her own party on several issues—most notably in 2003, when she crossed the floor to vote with the ALP in supporting legislation decreasing the age of consent for gay males.
In mid-2003, Deputy Opposition Leader
Mike Reed resigned, and Carney was widely tipped as the favourite to succeed him. However, in a surprise result—widely put down to both her poor relationship with the influential Alice Springs branch and her support, against their wishes, for
Denis Burke's leadership, she was defeated by Dr.
Richard Lim
Richard Soon Huat Lim (born 23 December 1946) is a former Australian politician. He was the Country Liberal Party member for Greatorex in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 1994 until his resignation in 2007.
Lim was born in ...
. However, she soon changed sides and decided to support
Terry Mills after Burke refused to allow a conscience vote on the age of consent legislation. She was subsequently promoted, being made Shadow Attorney-General and Shadow Minister for Justice, and then again in late 2004, being made Shadow Minister for Health.
Carney faced her first re-election bid at the
2005 election. While commentators were generally divided on whether she would hold her seat, as it was the CLP's most marginal, almost no one expected the final result. On election day, there were massive and unprecedented swings to Labor in every seat in the Territory—except Araluen. While Burke, who had not long before regained the leadership, lost his seat of
Brennan, which was the safest CLP seat in the Territory, Carney easily held her seat with a swing in her favour in the vicinity of five percent, proving to be in the least danger of the CLP's elected members. Araluen was the only seat that saw a swing to the CLP, which was cut down to only four seats.
Burke had already announced that he would stand down as leader if he lost the election. The loss of his own seat made this promise moot, and speculation turned to who would lead what remained of the CLP. Mills was unlikely to take up the leadership again after having resigned as leader not long before on the grounds that he had been ineffective, and potential aspirants
John Elferink
Johan Wessel Elferink (born 24 September 1965) is an Australian politician. He is a former member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for the Country Liberal Party.
Early life
Elferink was born in the Netherlands and moved to Austr ...
and
Sue Carter
Susan Jill Carter (born 1956) is an Australian politician. She was a Country Liberal Party member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 2000 to 2005, representing the central Darwin electorate of Port Darwin. After winning a by-e ...
had also been swept out in the Labor landslide. Carney emerged as the leading candidate in the CLP's much-reduced party room, and was elected as Burke's replacement with Mills as her deputy.
Though she had not been Opposition Leader for long, Carney oversaw a change in Country Liberal Party policy, shifting it notably to the left—such as attacking the government's law and order policies from a humanitarian, rather than hardline perspective—a position more traditionally aligned with the Labor government. She adopted a somewhat more congenial attitude towards
Chief Minister
A chief minister is an elected or appointed head of government of – in most instances – a sub-national entity, for instance an administrative subdivision or federal constituent entity. Examples include a state (and sometimes a union terri ...
Clare Martin
Clare Majella Martin (born 15 June 1952) is a former Australian journalist and politician. She was elected to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in a shock by-election win in 1995. She was appointed Opposition Leader in 1999, and won ...
than Mills and Burke had taken, and tended to be more subtle in her means of attacking Martin.
On 29 January 2008, Mills asked Carney if she was willing to swap posts with him, with Mills becoming leader and Carney becoming deputy leader. Carney refused, instead calling a
leadership spill
In Australian politics, a leadership spill (or simply spill) is a colloquialism referring to a declaration that the leadership of a parliamentary party is vacant and open for contest. A spill may involve all or some of the leadership positions (le ...
. The vote was tied at two votes apiece. Under CLP rules, Carney could have theoretically remained leader. However, Carney announced that a tie was not a vote of confidence and resigned, echoing Prime Minister
John Gorton
Sir John Grey Gorton (9 September 1911 – 19 May 2002) was an Australian politician who served as the nineteenth Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 1968 to 1971. He led the Liberal Party during that time, having previously been a l ...
's move in 1971. This left Mills to take the leadership unopposed on a second vote.
Carney announced her resignation from parliament on 19 August 2010, effective 3 September. She cited health reasons as the primary cause of her resignation.
The CLP's refusal to disendorse Leo Abbott, who had been charged with domestic violence, as their candidate for the Federal seat of
Lingiari was also a reason for her resigning,
Robyn Lambley
Robyn Jane Lambley (born 26 January 1965) is an Australian politician. She is an independent member representing the division of Araluen in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, having been first elected in a 2010 by-election as a membe ...
, a former deputy mayor of Alice Springs, was elected in her place in a
by-election
A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...
. Terry Mills went on to become Chief Minister by winning the 2012 election. Carney is the earliest CLP leader who did not head a Northern Territory government. Carney resigned from the CLP in June 2015, citing dissatisfaction with Chief Minister
Adam Giles
Adam Graham Giles (born 10 April 1973) is an Australian former politician and former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (2013–2016) as well as the former leader of the Country Liberal Party (CLP) in the unicameral Northern Territory Par ...
.
[Oaten, James; La Canna, Xavier]
Former CLP leader Jodeen Carney makes fresh attack on her former party
ABC News
ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
, 2015-07-26.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carney, Jodeen
1965 births
Living people
Country Liberal Party members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
Members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
Leaders of the Opposition in the Northern Territory
University of Melbourne alumni
21st-century Australian politicians
21st-century Australian women politicians
University of Melbourne women
Women members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
LGBT legislators in Australia
LGBT conservatism