Without Gary Higgins’s support the CLP was like a lamb to the slaughter

There were plenty of lessons from the Daly by-election, including the CLP’s dire mistake of not tapping into the seat’s beloved former member.

THERE were plenty of lessons from the Daly by-election. Reports of Michael Gunner’s political demise have been greatly exaggerated, for a start.

But last Saturday’s result was more instructive for what it said about the Country Liberal Party.

The CLP should have had every advantage in Daly, yet a series of own goals saw the party suffer a spectacular defeat.

Its first failure was timing.

The CLP knew months ahead of time Ian Sloan wanted to quit the parliament.

Yet when his resignation was finally made official, the party didn’t have a candidate ready to replace him.

Labor announced Dheran Young as its candidate almost a week before the CLP preselected Kris Civitarese.

That gave Young an extra week on the ground campaigning; a crucial advantage in a campaign that only went for three weeks.

Its second mistake was its candidate.

Civitarese is a good bloke and will no doubt make an excellent politician one day.

But, as someone from Tennant Creek, he was the wrong choice for Daly.

Territory elections are more about personality than ideology, and in Daly, no one had a clue who Civitarese was.

In contrast, Labor picked Young, who had lived and worked in Wadeye for four years. But the CLP’s biggest mistake in Daly was to turn its back on a former leader.

In 2012 the CLP’s Gary Higgins won Daly from Labor’s Rob Knight in a watershed election that had seen many voters in remote Indigenous communities turn against the ALP.

Higgins’ win didn’t come on the back of traditional CLP voters in the rural area, but because of huge swings in remote communities, particularly Wadeye.

He won 58 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in Wadeye, and more than 59 per cent from the main mobile polling team, which takes in most of the smaller communities.

These people voted for Higgins because they knew him, and they trusted him.

In 2016, when the CLP was almost wiped out in the landslide Labor victory, Higgins was one of just two MLAs who hung on.

At a time when the CLP was about as popular as coronavirus, he still won more than 42 per cent of the primary vote, with most of the swing against him coming from white voters in the rural area.

In Wadeye, Higgins gained 419 primary votes, more than double Labor’s Anthony Venes with 173.

Gary Higgins announcing he was stepping down as opposition leader in 2020. Picture Che Chorley.

Before that election, many people in Higgins’ own branch had tried to have him disendorsed.

If they’d succeeded there might not be a CLP to speak about today.

As one of just two MLAs left in the parliament, Higgins became the CLP’s parliamentary leader and he led admirably under difficult circumstances.

He handed the leadership over to Lia Finocchiaro gracefully at the beginning of last year, giving the CLP the best possible chance to topple Labor at the 2020 general election.

Had it not been for Covid, that might have happened. After announcing his retirement from the parliament, Higgins helped Sloan campaign in Daly.

His influence – particularly out bush – was without doubt the difference in an election decided by just 100 votes.

Higgins has treated his party far better than it has treated him.

By the time this by-election arrived, the relationship between the CLP and its former leader was already strained.

There were some within the party who believed they didn’t need Higgins to win Daly.

This could be a campaign spearheaded by Finocchiaro where a win would cement her authority and put more pressure on Gunner and Labor.

It was a serious miscalculation.

Eventually, Civitarese reached out to Higgins for help but by this stage he wasn’t interested in providing it.

In fact, he and his wife had already let their CLP memberships lapse.

Last weekend Labor managed 1162 first-preference votes across the two mobile remote polling teams, compared to just 451 for the CLP.

But the result in the rural area was also a concern.

Civitarese was out-polled by independent Rebecca Jennings at Berry Springs.

For the entire electorate the CLP’s primary vote fell to less than 34 per cent.

Back in 2012, Higgins managed to win 51 per cent.

Without Higgins’s support the CLP was like a lamb to the slaughter, up against a highly motivated and well organised Labor machine.

And that’s something the party should have known from the outset.