From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Electoral division of Arnhem

Field	Value
name	Arnhem
state	nt
image
caption	Interactive map of boundaries as of the 2024 election
created	1974
mp	Selena Uibo
mp-party	Labor Party
namesake	Arnhem Land
electors	5431
electors_year	2020
area	115522
class	Remote
near-n	Arafura
near-ne	Mulka
near-nw	Daly
near-s	Barkly
near-se	Barkly
near-sw	Daly
near-e	Gulf of Carpentaria
near-w	Katherine

Arnhem is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory. It was first created in 1974, and takes its name from Arnhem Land, the region encompassing much of the northern part of the Territory.

Arnhem includes the Arnhem Land towns of Barunga, Beswick, Mataranka, Jabiru and Kakadu. In the redistribution before the 2016 election, gained territory from Arafura and Stuart, while losing territory to Nhulunbuy. There were 5,431 people enrolled within the electorate as of August 2020.

History

Arnhem was one of the initial electorates created along with the introduction of the Legislative Assembly in 1974. Though it consisted of predominantly indigenous towns which voted strongly for the Labor Party at a federal level, it was won by the Country Liberal Party amidst their landslide victory at the election of that year, in which the Labor Party won no seats. Arnhem returned to expectations at the 1977 election, when it was won by Labor candidate Bob Collins, who was elected leader of the party in 1981. After much of the northern portion of the seat was transferred to the new seat of Arafura in 1983, Collins transferred there and was succeeded in Arafura by new Labor candidate Wes Lanhupuy. Lanhupuy was comfortably re-elected three times, but died suddenly in 1995.

Labor candidate Jack Ah Kit won the 1995 by-election resulting from Lanhupuy's death, and went on to serve as a Cabinet minister in the Martin government from 2001. He retired at the 2005 election, with former ABC TV presenter Barbara McCarthy being comfortably elected as his replacement. McCarthy was reelected unopposed in 2008, only to be ousted by the CLP's Larisa Lee in 2012 as the CLP swept into government. Lee herself sat under three different banners during the next parliament, leaving the CLP to sit as an independent, joining the Palmer United Party, before returning to be an independent. Selena Uibo regained the seat for Labor at the 2016 election. Lee won only 117 votes or 4.0 percent, finishing in fifth and last place.

The high proportion of indigenous people in the Arnhem population has been reflected in the seat having had five consecutive indigenous MPs, and McCarthy (now a Senator) having been an outspoken advocate of indigenous rights in parliament.

Members for Arnhem

Member	Party	Term
		Rupert Kentish	Country Liberal
		Bob Collins	Labor
		Wes Lanhupuy	Labor
		Jack Ah Kit	Labor
		Malarndirri McCarthy	Labor
		Larisa Lee	Country Liberal
		Independent	2014
		Palmer United	2014
		Independent	2014–2016
		Selena Uibo	Labor

Election results

Notes

References

"Division of Arnhem". Northern Territory Electoral Commission.
"Electorate: Arnhem". Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

electoral-divisions-of-the-northern-territory

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Electoral division of Arnhem — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report