Michael Gunner


Michael Patrick Francis Gunner is an Australian politician and the current Chief Minister of the Northern Territory. He is a Labor member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, having held his seat of Fannie Bay in Darwin since the retirement of then Chief Minister Clare Martin at the 2008 election.
Gunner was elected leader of Labor in the Northern Territory, and hence Leader of the Opposition, in April 2015. He led Labor to a landslide victory in the 2016 Northern Territory election. He was sworn in on 31 August, becoming the first Chief Minister to have been born in the Northern Territory.

Early life and career

Gunner was born in Alice Springs in 1976, the eldest of four children, to Mick and Jane Gunner. His great-grandfather settled in Tennant Creek in the 1930s from Tbilisi in Georgia, fleeing the country after the Russian Revolution. He has indigenous relatives in Utopia north of Alice Springs.
Gunner went to school in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Darwin. He began a law degree at Northern Territory University, switching to a Bachelor of Arts degree which he completed. He supported himself by working at retail chain Big W and as an electorate officer. He has represented the Territory in rugby union. Gunner went on to work as a senior government ministerial and policy adviser between 2001 and 2008 to former Chief Minister Clare Martin.
On 3 December 2017 Gunner married ABC journalist Kristy O'Brien. It is his second marriage.

Politics

Member for Fannie Bay

Gunner was elected to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for the Electoral division of Fannie Bay in 2008 after the retirement of Chief Minister Clare Martin at the 2008 election. The election saw Gunner retain the seat for the Labor Party by only a slight margin, over Garry Lambert, former alderman and acting Lord Mayor.

Opposition Leader

After a failed attempt in 2013, on 19 April 2015 Gunner announced he would stand for the leadership of the Northern Territory Labor Party against incumbent Delia Lawrie, who was facing criticism of her conduct during an inquiry into the gifting of heritage property Stella Maris to Unions NT while she was a minister. Four days later, Lawrie resigned and Gunner was elected unopposed as leader. He held the portfolios of Major Projects, Northern Australia Development, Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Open and Transparent Government and Business and was Shadow Treasurer. Gunner moved a Motion of No Confidence against the Adam Giles Government on 1 December 2015 but was unsuccessful.

Chief Minister

Labor went into the 2016 territory election as unbackable favourites, with Northern Territory opinion polls indicating a massive swing against the CLP. Additionally, at the 2016 federal election held two months earlier, Labor picked up a healthy seven-point swing in the Territory, and took the federal seat of Solomon—which is largely coextensive with the Darwin/Palmerston area—off the CLP in a large swing.
At the 27 August Territory election, Gunner led Territory Labor to one of the most comprehensive election victories on record at the state or territory level in Australia. Labor won 18 seats in the 25-member Legislative Assembly on a swing of over 14 percent, the largest two-party swing on record in the Territory. En route, Labor took all but one seat in Darwin/Palmerston, and even ousted Giles in his own seat—only the second time that a Majority Leader/Chief Minister had been rolled in his own electorate. The CLP was cut down to just two seats − the worst defeat of a sitting government in the Territory's history, and amongst the worst ever suffered by a state or territory government in Australia. Gunner declared that Territorians had "rejected the chaos of the last four years", in part a reference to the numerous reshuffles that had taken place during the previous government, including multiple leadership spills.
Normal practice in Australia calls for a defeated government to stay in office on a caretaker basis until the final results are in. However, with Labor's victory beyond doubt even though counting continued until early September, Gunner arranged to have Administrator John Hardy swear himself, Natasha Fyles, and Nicole Manison as an interim three-person government until all prospective ministers were confirmed as elected. Accordingly, Gunner was sworn in as Chief Minister on 31 August 2016. Gunner held 38 portfolios in the three-person ministry in contrast to Manison solely as Treasurer and Fyles as just Attorney General and Justice Minister. His full ministry was selected on 11 September and sworn in the next day, with Manison as his Deputy Chief Minister after former deputy leader Lynne Walker was narrowly defeated in her own seat. Notably, a majority of the new cabinet -five of its eight members − were women.
Gunner entered office in a formidable position. He won the third-largest majority government in Territory history, and faced only two CLP members as opposition − fewer than the five independents in the chamber. Although Labor was technically the only official party in the legislature, Gunner pledged that the CLP would be properly resourced as an opposition.
Despite Labor's massive majority, Gunner retained CLP-turned-independent Kezia Purick as Speaker of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly for a second term.
A perennial election issue, Labor removed the CLP's open speed limit and implemented a 130 km/h speed limit along a 300 km stretch of the Stuart Highway between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek.
Gunner ordered a moratorium on fracking, and also undertook a review of all water licences issued under the previous government. The moratorium commenced on 14 September. On 17 April 2018, the moratorium was revoked.
In late January 2020, it was reported that Gunner would undergo heart surgery, after suffering a heart attack earlier in the month which had originally been described as a "minor heart scare".