Election 2022: ‘ALP to blame for its rejection in bush’

Labor’s Aboriginal candidate for the outback NT seat of Lingiari has blamed her party’s perceived failure to deliver for the bush for a significant swing against her.

Labor Lingiari candidate Marion Scrymgour.

Labor’s Aboriginal candidate for the outback Northern Territory seat of Lingiari has blamed her party’s perceived failure to deliver for the bush for a significant swing against her at Saturday’s federal election.

Marion Scrymgour, a Tiwi woman and former Territory minister, is battling Coalition candidate Damien Ryan for the right to replace former Labor member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon.

Mr Ryan and Mr Snowdon are non-Indigenous males.

With some postal and absentee ballots still to be counted, Ms Scrymgour was leading Mr Ryan by about 1000 votes late on Monday, and pundits were predicting she would win. But Labor looks to have suffered a 4.23 per cent negative swing in Lingiari on a two-party-preferred basis at an election where the national tide was turning red.

Labor made up ground in some areas, winning a booth at RAAF Base Tindal for the first time, but performed relatively poorly in remote and Aboriginal-majority areas, with double-digit swings to the Coalition recorded by several mobile polling teams.

Ms Scrymgour said bush voters were “cranky with the Labor Party” because they felt the Territory Labor government had not adequately delivered and because they perceived little improvement in their lives after three decades of federal representation by Labor.

“A lot of people when I was travelling around said, ‘Marion, 35 years and not much has changed for us,” she said. “Overcrowding is still a really big issue … (but) it’s not just housing; it’s housing, jobs, the cost of living and people being impacted by all those things.”

The news comes as NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles unveiled her first cabinet, a progressive nine-member line-up featuring seven women and three Aboriginal members, two of them female, and just one non-Indigenous male.

Ms Fyles said ensuring remote community voices were heard was one of her government’s priorities, but she rejected suggestions Territory Labor’s delivery of remote housing was part of the reason federal Labor lost ground in Lingiari.

“When you look at Warren Snowdon, the legend of Australian politics, the legend of bush politics, certainly for him, incumbency was a huge factor,” she said. “I congratulate Marion Scrymgour, someone who will be an excellent representative.”

The Coalition campaigned heavily in Lingiari on Territory Labor’s alleged failure to deliver on a federally funded remote housing partnership agreement according to schedule.

Ms Scrymgour, until recently the head of the Northern Land Council, said she and other land council leaders had urged former federal Indigenous Australians minister Ken Wyatt to “take a big stick to the NT government” over housing.

She said Canberra ought to consider alternative options such as housing collectives “if the NT cannot deliver”.

Ms Scrymgour, herself a former Territory Labor minister, praised the inclusion of three Aboriginal people in Ms Fyles’ first cabinet but questioned why some of them appeared to have been given “touchy-feely” portfolios.

“NT government ministers have got to stop focusing on the northern suburbs (of Darwin) … and get out and look at the bush,” she said.

“(It’s great having Aboriginal people in the cabinet but) they need to make a difference, not just be ministers in title.”

She referenced a number of occasions during her own time as an NT Labor minister when she fought publicly for Indigenous ­issues and urged the current crop of Aboriginal cabinet members to “do the same”.