Braitling
Northern Territory—Legislative Assembly
Interactive map of boundaries
TerritoryNorthern Territory
Created1983
MPJoshua Burgoyne
PartyCountry Liberal
NamesakeBraitling, Northern Territory
Electors5,830 (2020)
Area9 km2 (3.5 sq mi)
DemographicUrban
Electorates around Braitling:
Namatjira Namatjira Namatjira
Namatjira Braitling Namatjira
Namatjira Araluen Namatjira

Braitling is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory. It was created in 1983, when the electorate of Alice Springs was abolished as part of an enlargement of the Assembly. Braitling is an almost entirely urban electorate, covering 9 km² in north-western Alice Springs. The electorate takes its name from the Braitling family, an early pioneering family in the district. There were 5,830 people enrolled in the electorate as of August 2020.

The city of Alice Springs has, along with the Darwin satellite city of Palmerston, traditionally been one of two conservative bastions in the Northern Territory. For most of its first three decades, Braitling was a comfortably safe seat for the Country Liberal Party. The seat's first member, Roger Vale, transferred here after his former electorate of Stuart was made somewhat less friendly for the CLP. Indeed, Braitling included most of the Alice Springs share of the old Stuart. Vale retired in 1994 and handed the seat to Loraine Braham of the CLP. Braham, who served as Speaker and later a cabinet minister, was stripped of her CLP preselection before the 2001 election amid accusations of branch-stacking. She won re-election as an independent, and was narrowly re-elected in a very close race against the CLP in 2005. Braham opted to retire at the 2008 election, and Adam Giles won the seat back for the CLP, reverting it to its traditional status as a comfortably safe CLP seat. Giles became the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory in March 2013.

Although opinion polls and commentators had already universally written off the CLP government both before and during the 2016 election campaign, there was no suggestion that Giles was in any danger in his own seat. He sat on a seemingly insurmountable margin of 19.6 percent, and Labor had never come close to winning the seat. Even during the Labor landslide of 2005, Labor was pushed into third place. However, in a result not foreseen by any commentators, let alone either party, Labor challenger Dale Wakefield narrowly led Giles on election night. Ultimately, Wakefield defeated Giles by a knife-edge margin of 27 votes. Not only is Wakefield just the second challenger to unseat a sitting Chief Minister/Majority Leader in their own seat and the third challenger to oust a major-party leader in the Territory, she is also the first Labor member to represent an Alice Springs seat. Wakefield served only one term before the CLP's Joshua Burgoyne narrowly reclaimed it for the CLP in 2020.

Members for Braitling

MemberPartyTerm
  Roger Vale Country Liberal 1983–1994
  Loraine Braham Country Liberal 1994–2001
  Independent 2001–2008
  Adam Giles Country Liberal 2008–2016
  Dale Wakefield Labor 2016–2020
  Joshua Burgoyne Country Liberal 2020–present

Election results

This section is an excerpt from Results of the 2020 Northern Territory general election § Braitling.[edit]
2020 Northern Territory general election: Braitling[1][2]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Country Liberal Joshua Burgoyne 1,548 35.2 −4.3
Labor Dale Wakefield 993 22.6 −11.2
Independent Kim Hopper 648 14.7 +14.7
Territory Alliance Dale McIver 488 11.1 +11.1
Greens Chris Tomlins 379 8.6 −2.3
Independent Scott McConnell 199 4.5 +4.5
Australian Federation Marli Banks 140 3.2 +3.2
Total formal votes 4,395 97.0 −1.3
Informal votes 137 3.0 +1.3
Turnout 4,532 77.7 −5.2
Two-party-preferred result
Country Liberal Joshua Burgoyne 2,256 51.3 +4.3
Labor Dale Wakefield 2,139 48.7 −4.3
Country Liberal gain from Labor Swing+4.3

References

  1. ↑ "Electorate summary: Braitling". NTEC. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
  2. ↑ "Braitling". ABC Elections. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 7 September 2020.

23°40′51″S 133°52′9″E / 23.68083°S 133.86917°E / -23.68083; 133.86917

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