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THE POLL BLUDGER LINGIARI
The Northern Territory gained its first member of federal parliament in 1922, but the member did not get full voting rights until 1968. Perhaps not coincidentally, the seat had recently fallen to Sam Calder of the Country Party after a long period of Labor control. With Calder's retirement in 1980, the seat transferred to the Country Liberal Party, established as a local alliance of Liberals and Nationals to contest elections in the newly established Northern Territory parliament. The seat fell to Labor with the election of the Hawke government in 1983, defeated CLP member Grant Tambling returning to the Senate four years later. It subsequently changed hands with great frequency: future Chief Minister Paul Everingham recovered the seat for the CLP in 1984, Warren Snowdon won it back for Labor in 1987, Nick Dondas held it for the CLP for one term from 1996, and Snowdon recovered it in 1998. The division of the territory into two electorates came with the 2001 election, Darwin and Palmerston making up Solomon and Lingiari taking up the vast remainder, giving it easily the nation's highest proportion of indigenous people. Snowdon took the safer prospect of Lingiari, where overwhelming Labor support in Aboriginal communities outweighs CLP strength in Alice Springs and Katherine, and Solomon fell to CLP candidate David Tollner by 88 votes. In 2003 the Australian Electoral Commission calculated in 2003 that current population left the Northern Territory with 295 people too few to maintain a second seat, but with Labor and the Coalition both convinced they could win both seats, the parliament ruled they had calculated wrong and passed legislation saying so. The Coalition's assessment proved somewhat optimistic, Snowdon surviving a 2.7 per cent swing to prevail by 2.8 per cent. |