The CLP’s near death experience - and how it could happen again

As the Country Liberal Party celebrates its 50th birthday in Darwin this weekend, it’s worth remembering that five years ago, it was almost sent to the political dustbin.

As the Country Liberal Party celebrates its 50th birthday in Darwin this weekend, it’s worth remembering that five years ago, it was almost sent to the political dustbin.

It was March 2020, and former CLP deputy leader and Treasurer Robyn Lambley, who had quit in 2015 because of her gripes with leader Adam Giles and the party’s “boys club”, had announced she was joining rival conservative political movement Territory Alliance.

A few years earlier Alliance leader Terry Mills and Lambley had been the Territory’s chief minister and deputy, until a cowed backbench succumbed to months of leadership white-anting and turfed Mills and Lambley.

Lambley lost the deputy and treasurer’s gigs and was given health and families. Mills sulked on the back-bench before quitting parliament and taking an Indonesian liaison role based in Jakarta offered to him by Giles, his arch political foe.

Country Liberal Party leader Lia Finocchiaro and party president Shane Stone embrace after her 2024 Northern Territory election win. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Mills was later sacked from the plumb role after retweeting another person’s message in support of what turned out to be a failed party room coup, led by senior minister Willem Westra van Holthe, against Giles.

Giles, the former western Sydney local who moved to Alice Springs to help enforce the Howard Government’s intervention, toughed it out and Westra van Holthe accepted the deputy’s role as part of an uneasy peace deal.

Jobless, relentlessly ambitious and bored, Mills decided to return to politics as an independent after his Jakarta gig ended – despite the cost of the by-election he’d caused by quitting and that his substantial superannuation entitlement had been paid.

The voters of Blain forgave him all that, and after being re-elected, Mills formed Territory Alliance, which lured disaffected former Labor Fong Lim MLA Jeff Collins into the fold.

Territory Alliance Leader Terry Mills. Picture GLENN CAMPBELL

Sometime later Lambley jumped on board about five months out from the August 2020 poll.

The CLP had just two members after Giles trashed the political brand and then left for Victoria, after the 2016 poll. Mills was happy to drive a stake through the heart of his former party and – in the process – the ambitions of one of his most loyal supporters back in his CLP days, Lia Finocchiaro.

Finocchiaro liked and respected Mills and wept as she delivered a valedictory speech to him when he first left the Assembly.

Politics being what it is, Mills announced his intention to force the CLP out of the fourth floor opposition suites and into the even more meagre cross-bench rooms.

The CLP’s two MLAs Finocchiaro and Gary Higgins, the Daly MLA who had led the party for three years after the 2016 demolition and who had handed over the leadership reins as part of a transition prior to stepping down, looked cooked.

So cooked, in fact, the big brown boxes were packed ready to move and the small opposition staff were preparing to look for new jobs before Finocchiaro pulled off her first political masterstroke.

Adam Giles with a pie. Picture: Des Houghton

Instead of walking away, she sought a motion in parliament on March 18, 2020 for the CLP to retain opposition status. Incredibly, she won 5-3, backed by the non-Alliance independents. Labor abstained.

For the first time, the NT News can reveal why. Labor leader and chief minister Michael Gunner’s dislike for his predecessor, former Treasurer and deputy chief minister, Delia Lawrie, drove the decision.

After quitting Labor after being dumped by Gunner, she had joined the Alliance as Mills’ chief of staff.

“Relegating the CLP to oblivion would have nicely positioned Territory Alliance to add to their three seats at the 2020 election,” a CLP insider said.

“There was no way Michael Gunner was ever going to let Delia Lawrie take him on again, even if only tactically from the Opposition offices. She’d have made minced meat of him.”

Former Labor leader Delia Lawrie, who went to work for Terry Mills’ Territory Alliance.

With the mere matter of keeping her political party alive sorted, Finocchiaro went on to win eight seats at the 2020 election, which many think she could have won had Covid-19 – and Labor’s strong response – not saved the government.

This began four long years in opposition, during which the CLP endured the resignation of Daly MLA Ian Sloane, the by-election loss that followed, and two other by-election defeats.

Along the way Finocchiaro sharpened her political game, skewering Gunner over his Fannie Bay grandstand grant deflections and mauling Labor on its law-and-order and project delivery record.

Last August’s election rewarded Finocchiaro’s hard work and focus and punished a worn-out government.

Michael Gunner and Delia Lawrie did not get on. Picture: Glenn Campbell

August 24, 2024 was Finocchiaro’s second political masterstroke.

Snatching 17 seats at the election and relegating Labor to its worst election result since self-government, was just part of it.

The seats she won – regaining Darwin’s northern suburbs after 20 years of rejection by the CLP’s former base – had eluded every one of her predecessors since Denis Burke, her father-in-law.

The night was a personal and political triumph, but it was also a catalyst for what could be her third political masterstroke – or not. Purging the old CLP and bringing in the new.

The evening was not without incident. The sight viewers at home saw as the cameras rolled at the CLP’s Italian Club election night gathering was a reminder to many of the “old” CLP.

President, party power broker and former chief minister Shane Stone, who amassed a massive $1.5m war chest to fund the campaign – double Labor’s effort – held court with the microphone after the result was clear as Finocchiaro watched on, waiting her turn.

Insiders say it was actually intended for Stone to be on stage alone and, once done, introduce a triumphant Finocchiaro.

Shane Stone and Lia Finocchiaro on election night. Image courtesy the ABC.

While she flatly denies it, multiple CLP sources claim campaign manager Alyson Hannam had somehow convinced Finocchiaro to take the stage with Stone in a kind of gender/generational power play.

“As I’m sure you’ll understand it was a busy night for me,” Hannam said in September. “I was at CLP headquarters for a large part of the evening as results came in, speaking with candidates as we were able to call seats and dealing with the NTEC on various issues.

“So no such direction from me, launch was managed by party members.”

Six months after the election Hannam, who would have rightly expected a job with government, no longer lives in the Territory.

While her husband Brett stayed around to be Robyn Cahill’s chief of staff, Hannam is likely to have a role in the federal election campaign.

Lia Finocchiaro and Alyson Hannam with LNP campaign media adviser Nigel Blunden, who was never going to stay in the Territory.

Shane Stone too has sold his Darwin house and is preparing to return to Queensland where his children live, relinquishing the presidency in the process.

With his enormous business connections and ties with Asia, many thought he could have been Territory Co-ordinator, but he told the NT News this week he was ready to return to his other home in Brisbane.

“I’m retiring,” he said. “I came back for 12 months and spent 18 months, it’s my third time back and I turn 75 this year.

“I achieved what I set out to do and we’ve elected a CLP government. The announcements this week around the treaty and also those NGOs that have been a handbrake on Territory development and third party appeals are great initiatives and consistent with what the CLP Central Council had been advocating over the past 12 months.

“The timing to go is perfect for me.”

Stone said reports he was denied a fifth-floor pass by the new government missed the point, because he wouldn’t meet on the fifth floor anyway.

Shane Stone speaks after the CLP’s 2024 Northern Territory election win. Picture: Supplied

“I meet at The General,” he said of the Larrakeyah café frequented by many of Darwin’s business community.

As she reinvents the party, Finocchiaro has shown she wants to do it her own way and the past is history.

Former MLA Peter Chandler belled the cat with this January 16 Facebook post.

“While searching for a new opportunity, and after applying for several NT government positions, several have been “cancelled” shortly after I have submitted an application,” he wrote.

“Interested to know if any others within my network have applied for government roles, only to have the positions “cancelled” afterwards. Is this normal?”

While this is just part of the NTPS recruitment process, it’s noticeable, with a few exceptions, the ghosts of CLPs past are being well and truly shed.

August 24 was a great night for the CLP’s ochre army. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

If Finocchiaro completes this third political masterstroke, she might well have to manage a fourth – retaining the leadership.

Despite the good will afforded her within the electorate after knocking off Labor, and her clear-eyed focus on policy delivery, the CLP can be an erratic beast – as evidenced by Mills’ inexplicable dumping in 2013 after just six-months in the job or Shane Stone’s 1999 ouster as leader and chief minister two years after winning 18 seats.

There is talk – and there always is talk - that Barkly MLA Steve Edgington “has the numbers” to take the leadership after the federal election due by May if he wanted to. Were this to happen, the party might as well roll up and die like it almost did before Lia Finocchiaro saved it in March 2020.

Happy 50th birthday, CLP. Will there be many more?

Originally published as The CLP’s near death experience - and how it could happen again