IND 25.3% vs CLP
Incumbent MP
Kezia Purick, since 2008.
Geography
Regional areas in north-western Northern Territory. Goyder covers rural areas to the east of Darwin, including Bees Creek and Humpty Doo.
Redistribution
No change.
History
The electorate of Goyder has existed since 1990. The seat has generally been dominated by the Country Liberal Party.
The CLP’s Terry McCarthy won Goyder in 1990. McCarthy had held the seat of Victoria River since 1983. He saw off a challenge from the Nationals’ Ian Tuxworth, a former CLP leader who had held Barkly since 1974.
McCarthy held Goyder until his retirement in 2001, when he was succeeded by Peter Maley.
Maley was kicked out of the Country Liberal Party shortly before the 2005 election, and retired. The seat was won by Labor’s Ted Warren as part of Labor’s landslid victory.
Warren only lasted one term, losing in 2008 to the CLP’s Kezia Purick.
Purick served as a shadow minister in her first term. After the 2012 election, she was dropped from the frontbench and elected as Speaker. She resigned from the CLP in 2015, and after that was able to resist an attempt to remove her as Speaker.
Purick was re-elected as an independent MP in 2016, and was retained as Speaker despite the new Labor government winning a massive majority. She resigned as Speaker in June 2020 after a finding of corrupt conduct by the ICAC.
Candidates
- Rachael Wright (Territory Alliance)
- Ted Warren (Independent)
- Phil Battye (Country Liberal)
- Trevor Jenkins (Independent)
- Kezia Purick (Independent)
- Mick Taylor (Labor)
- Karen Fletcher (Greens)
- Pauline Cass (Independent)
Assessment
Purick holds her seat with a massive margin. Her reputation might be dented by recent scandal but it seems likely she will be re-elected.
2016 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Kezia Purick | Independent | 2,496 | 55.0 | +55.0 |
| Carolyn Reynolds | Country Liberal | 919 | 20.2 | -41.4 |
| Mick Taylor | Labor | 860 | 18.9 | -11.0 |
| Billee Mcginley | Greens | 188 | 4.1 | +3.7 |
| Peter Flynn | Citizens Electoral Council | 76 | 1.7 | +1.7 |
| Informal | 78 | 1.7 |
2016 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Kezia Purick | Independent | 3,109 | 75.3 | +75.3 |
| Carolyn Reynolds | Country Liberal | 1,020 | 24.7 | -41.3 |
Booth breakdown
A majority of votes in Goyder were cast at pre-poll, but there were also two booths: Bees Creek and Humpty Doo.
Purick polled most strongly in the pre-poll vote, but won a majority of the primary vote at every booth. Labor outpolled the CLP in the pre-poll vote, while the CLP came second at the election day booths.
| Voter group | ALP prim | CLP prim | IND prim | Total votes | % of votes |
| Pre-poll | 18.2 | 17.7 | 65.1 | 2,385 | 52.5 |
| Humpty Doo | 19.4 | 23.4 | 54.6 | 998 | 22.0 |
| Bees Creek | 15.3 | 25.1 | 58.2 | 654 | 14.4 |
| Other votes | 26.3 | 19.9 | 53.0 | 502 | 11.1 |
There’s another couple of independents. Carolyn Reynolds, CLP candidate in 2016. She might have a website, but this is funnier:
https://transparentnt.wordpress.com/2020/07/02/goyder-gossip-2020/
And Ted Warren, the one-term Labor MP who Purick first beat back in 2008 (and also ran for Labor in Jingili way back in 1994), also minus his old party. He has a FB page, and seems more sane than Reynolds.
That’s as well as the new CLP candidate, and TA. And Labor, if they bother to nominate anyone (this seems to be the only seat where they haven’t yet).
What a total dog’s breakfast. It’ll end up being one of those elections where the vote splinters between half a dozen different candidates, and it takes a week to count. (See Morwell, Vic 2018, where an independent won with less than 20%). Purick’s probably still the favourite, but not by much.