Electoral division of Blain


Blain is an electoral division of the Legislative Assembly in Australia's Northern Territory. It was first created in 1997 and is named after Adair Blain, the second member for the federal Northern Territory electorate, and the only Australian sitting federal MP to ever become a prisoner of war. Blain is an urban electorate, covering 4 km² and taking in Palmerston suburbs of Bellamack and Woodroffe, and most of the suburb of Rosebery and a small section of the suburb of Moulden. There were 5,576 people enrolled within the electorate as of August 2016.
The current member for Blain is Terry Mills, who was elected as an independent at the 2016 election and subsequently created the Territory Alliance in 2019 as a new political party. He previously held the seat from 1999 to 2014 as a member of the Country Liberal Party.

History

Palmerston has always been a staunchly conservative area, and all the electorates in the city have almost always been held by the Country Liberal Party. Blain has even amongst the Palmerston electorates been in the past a particularly safe seat for the CLP, with successive members having little trouble being re-elected. This was further emphasised at the 2005 election, when Blain was one of only four CLP-held seats retained by the party after a landslide victory by the Labor Party, and the only CLP seat in the Darwin/Palmerston area.
Longtime CLP MP Barry Coulter, who had represented Palmerston-area electorates since 1983 held this seat for the final term of his parliamentary career. He was succeeded by Terry Mills, who became a prominent member of the CLP frontbench after the CLP lost power for the first time in 2001. He eventually became CLP leader from 2003 to 2005, returning to the leadership in 2008. After narrowly losing the 2008 Territory election, he led the CLP to victory in 2012 and became Chief Minister.
Mills was deposed in a party-room coup less than a year later, and Nathan Barrett retained the seat for the CLP at the ensuing by-election despite a 10 percent swing.
Barrett was forced out of politics in 2016 after he sent a lewd video to a constituent. At the 2016 election, the CLP was pushed into third place after its primary vote plummeted to 25 percent, losing more than half of its primary vote from 2012. The seat was nearly swept up in the massive Labor wave that swept through the metropolitan area. However, Mills, contesting his old seat as an independent, narrowly defeated former federal MP Damian Hale to return to the legislature.

Members for Blain

Election results