Territory Northern Territory MP Chansey Paech Demographic Remote Member of parliament Chansey Paech Namesake Albert Namatjira | Created 2012 Electors 5,435 (2016) Founded 2012 Elector 5,435 (2016) Party Australian Labor Party | |
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Area 351,294 km (135,635.4 sq mi) | ||
Namatjira is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory. It was created in 2012 when the former division of MacDonnell was renamed after the Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira. Namatjira is an almost entirely rural electorate, covering 351,294 km², and taking in the resort town of Yulara, the remote communities of Hermannsburg, Kintore and Papunya, and part of southern Alice Springs. There were 5,435 electors enrolled in Namatjira as of August 2016.
Map of Namatjira NT 0872, Australia
The seat's first member, Alison Anderson, the former Labor-turned-independent-turned-Country Liberal member for MacDonnell, won the seat handily at the 2012 Territory election amid a large swing to the CLP in the remote portions of the Territory. Anderson left the CLP in 2014, and briefly served as Territory leader of the Palmer United Party before serving out the rest of her term as an independent.
Anderson did not contest the 2016 election. Despite her previously fraught relations with Labor, she endorsed the Labor candidate in the seat, Alice Springs councillor Chansey Paech. Although a redistribution seemingly consolidated the CLP majority in the seat by pushing it into Alice Springs, most commentators believed Anderson's endorsement, combined with the CLP's lackluster polling numbers, made Namatjira a likely Labor gain. Paech took the seat on a swing of over 29 percent—almost unheard of in Australian politics—amid Labor's landslide victory that year.