Territory Northern Territory MP Lia Finocchiaro Area 76 km (29.3 sq mi) Member of parliament Lia Finocchiaro Elector 5,203 (2016) | Created 2016 Electors 5,203 (2016) Demographic Urban Date formed 2016 Namesake Peter Spillett | |
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Spillett is a division of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in Australia. It was created in 2016, for the 2016 general elections, and covers the northern portions of Darwin and Palmerston, including Darwin Airport. It is named for Peter Spillett, a historian and former member of Darwin City Council.
Historically, Palmerston has been a stronghold for the conservative Country Liberal Party. However, Spillett is based on a particularly conservative portion of Palmerston. It was created with a notional CLP majority of 17.9 percent, making it on paper the CLP's safest metropolitan seat.
Before the election Lia Finocchiaro, the then-CLP member for Drysdale, opted to transfer to Spillett after much of her old base was redistributed there. She defeated former Treasurer Dave Tollner for preselection; Tollner had contested Spillett after his old seat of Fong Lim had been made extremely marginal by the redistribution. Finocchiaro weathered the massive Labor wave that swept through the Territory at the 2016 election—a wave that saw Labor win her old seat of Drysdale on a large swing. In the end, Finocchiaro proved to be in the least danger of the CLP's elected members. She was the only CLP member to win a majority of the primary vote, and went on to win with only a small two-party swing against her. This left Spillett as the only CLP seat in the metropolitan area, and the only safe CLP seat in the legislature. After the election, Finocchiaro was named deputy leader of what remained of the CLP, and hence Deputy Leader of the Opposition.