Dethroned Terry Mills to carry ‘fairly big’ responsibility for Territory Alliance loss

Dethroned Territory Alliance leader and Blain MLA Terry Mills said he will carry a “fairly big responsibility” for the party’s failed election campaign.

DETHRONED Territory Alliance leader and Blain MLA Terry Mills said he will carry a “fairly big responsibility” for the party’s failed election campaign.

Emerging for the first time after election night to speak to Katie Woolf on Mix 104.9, Mr Mills also admitted he knew he hadn’t put in the effort to “hold the hearts and minds” of the voters of Blain.

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It has been a drubbing for the long-term MLA in the seat he’s held, bar a short break between 2014 and 2016, since 1999 as Mr Mills look set to secure less than a 1000 first preference votes, half as much as what Adam Giles did when he lost Braitling in 2016.

Mr Mills said he had predicted, as the shock of the results made way for pain, that Territory Alliance candidates would come out in anger and start “pointing fingers this way and that”.

Territory Alliance's Terry Mills voting at Palmerston Shopping Centre before speaking to the media. Picture GLENN CAMPBELL

But at the end of the day he said the party would work it out among themselves.

Mr Mills again blamed coronavirus as the “most significant factor” for Territory Alliance’s inability to cut through.

But candidates beg to differ and are adamant it came down to the party’s core front-facing leadership failing to listen to their concerns and running a presidential-style campaign that they disagreed with.

It is understood Territory Alliance party members are due to meet to discuss its future.

Mr Mills said it was the party’s move to come out against fracking that “threw the cat amongst the pigeons” in where voters believed Territory Alliance sat on the political spectrum, effectively shifting the its identity and causing the conservative vote to drift away.

“The reality was that the majority of the membership had already indicated that they were not supportive of fracking,” he said.

“And I think the Labor Party would find the same if they were to honestly assess their own membership.”