Territory Alliance is an Australian political party based in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...

. It was founded in 2019 by Terry Mills, an incumbent 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 ...

and former

Chief Minister of the Northern Territory The chief minister of the Northern Territory is the head of government of the Northern Territory. The office is the equivalent of a state premier. When the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly was created in 1974, the head of government wa ...

. He had been elected as a member of the

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 ...

(CLP). In March 2020, two additional independent MLAs joined the party, Jeff Collins (independent, formerly

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...

) and

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 memb ...

(formerly CLP). This saw the Alliance surpass the CLP as the second-largest party in the Legislative Assembly, but failed to gain official opposition status after a secret ballot of non-Government members of the Legislative Assembly instead recognised the CLP in a 5-3 vote. Despite hopes of forming government in its own right, or a coalition with the CLP or Labor in a minority government, the party was left with only one seat following the 2020 Territory election. With Robyn Lambley's departure from the Territory Alliance, the party currently has no representation in the Legislative Assembly.

History

In March 2020 the Alliance gained its second MP, former

(ALP) member Jeff Collins, who had been expelled from the ALP in 2018. Collins' decision to join the Alliance saw it draw level with the CLP as the equal second-largest party in the Assembly. This prompted Mills to suggest his party had a claim to the status of

official opposition Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. This article uses the term ''government'' as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning ''th ...

. On 18 March 2020, independent MLA and former CLP deputy chief minister

announced that she was joining the Alliance. This gave the party its third MLA and saw it pass the CLP as the second-largest parliamentary party. However, less than a week after claiming opposition status, CLP leader Lia Finocchiaro put a motion to the Legislative Assembly seeking recognition of the official opposition, which the CLP won in a 5-3 vote (with the Labor Government abstaining and the three independents favouring the CLP). Lambley was the only member of Territory Alliance to be re-elected in the 2020 general election, narrowly retaining her seat despite an 8.1% swing against her. In October 2020, Lambley confirmed she had resigned from the party and would once again represent Araluen as an independent. This leaves Territory Alliance with no parliamentary representation in the

Ideology and positions

Territory Alliance has promoted itself as an "ideology-free" alternative to the Northern Territory's two major parties, the centre-left

(ALP) and centre-right

(CLP). In November 2019, Mills announced that the party's key issues would be "law and order" and "youth crime", while party secretary and

Charles Darwin University Charles Darwin University (CDU) is an Australian public university with a main campus in Darwin and eight satellite campuses in some metropolitan and regional areas. It was established in 2003 after the merger of Northern Territory University, ...

law lecturer Danial Kelly said that the new party would be "non-religious". The party's first candidate announcements for the

2020 Northern Territory general election The 2020 Northern Territory general election was held on 22 August 2020 to elect all 25 members of the Legislative Assembly in the unicameral Northern Territory Parliament. Members were elected through full preferential instant-runoff voting in ...

included Kelly and Regina McCarthy, a former candidate for the defunct far-right

Rise Up Australia Party Rise Up Australia Party was a far-right political party in Australia. The party's policy platform was focused on nationalist and Christian conservative issues, such as opposing Islamic immigration and religious freedom for Australian Musli ...

. The selection of McCarthy, as well as Kelly's "strong religious conservative" views, led the

Northern Territory News The ''Northern Territory News'' (also known and branded as the ''NT News'') is a morning tabloid newspaper based in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. Owned by News Corp Australia, it is published every week from Monday to Saturday. It prim ...

to describe the party's candidates as having a "far-right tinge". McCarthy stated that her views had "evolved" since her RUAP candidacy in the 2019 federal election. Incumbent MLA Jeff Collins, who joined the Alliance in March 2020, had been elected as a member of the ALP and is a "vocal advocate of progressive issues such as drug decriminalisation". He has stated that the "left/right ideological dichotomy ..has not produced good government for us" and that more conservative members of the party "still are people I can have conversations with". The Alliance preferenced the Greens ahead of the ALP and CLP at the

2020 Johnston by-election A List of Northern Territory by-elections, by-election in the seat of Electoral division of Johnston, Johnston in the Northern Territory was held on 29 February 2020, following the resignation of Ken Vowles, the MLA for Johnston, on 31 January ...

. Another former Labor MLA, Ken Parish, joined the party in early 2020. In June 2020, the party announced its policy of a ban on

fracking Fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing, hydrofracturing, or hydrofracking) is a well stimulation technique involving the fracturing of bedrock formations by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of "frack ...

Election results

In December 2019, the party announced that their candidate in the

would be Steven Klose, the CLP candidate for the seat at the previous election. Klose finished runner-up to the ALP candidate

Joel Bowden Joel Francis Bowden (born 21 June 1978) is an Australian politician, former union leader and former professional Australian rules footballer. He was elected to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly at the 2020 Johnston by-election, repres ...

on both

first preferences In certain ranked-voting systems, a first-preference vote (or first preference, 1st preference, or primary vote) is the individual voter's first choice amongst (possibly) many. In certain ranked systems such as Instant-Runoff Voting or Single T ...

(22.2 percent) and the

two-party preferred vote In Australian politics, the two-party-preferred vote (TPP or 2PP) is the result of an election or opinion poll after preferences have been distributed to the highest two candidates, who in some cases can be independents. For the purposes of TPP, ...

(47.4 percent). At the

, Territory Alliance contested 21 of the 25 seats in the parliament, holding hopes of building on their three seats to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament, with Mills even saying his intention was to win government outright. However, the ambitions of the party were dashed as leader Mills lost his seat of Blain, and Jeff Collins the seat of Fong Lim (both to Labor). The party failed to gain any other seats, leaving

(Araluen) the only remaining member in the parliament. However in October 2020 Lambley confirmed that she had resigned from party to sit in parliament as an independent. Before her resignation, Territory Alliance had considered expelling Lambley for reasons including not being a "team player."

References

External links

Official Website
{{Politics of the Northern Territory Political parties in the Northern Territory Political parties established in 2019 Regionalist parties in Australia 2019 establishments in Australia