Dale Suzanne Wakefield is an Australian politician. She was a
Labor
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
member of the
Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory (also known as the Parliament of the Northern Territory) is the unicameral legislature of Australia’s Northern Territory. The Legislative Assembly has 25 members, each elected in single-member ...
from 2016 to 2020, representing the electorate of
Braitling, defeating former
Chief Minister
A chief minister is an elected or appointed head of government of – in most instances – a sub-national entity, for instance an administrative subdivision or federal constituent entity. Examples include a state (and sometimes a union ter ...
Adam Giles
Adam Graham Giles (né Romer; born 10 April 1973) is an Australian former politician and former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (2013–2016) as well as the former leader of the Country Liberal Party (CLP) in the unicameral Northern T ...
in a major upset.
Early life and career
Wakefield was born in Melbourne. She obtained a degree in social work from Latrobe and Monash University.
After working in road trauma rehabilitation, Wakefield moved to
Alice Springs
Alice Springs () is a town in the Northern Territory, Australia; it is the third-largest settlement after Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin and Palmerston, Northern Territory, Palmerston. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William ...
in 2004. She has been a member of the Alice Springs Health Governing Council and was chairwoman and board member of Central Australian Women's Legal Service. Before entering politics, she ran the Alice Springs Women's Shelter for eight years.
She was a NT finalist for the 2015 Telstra Business Women Awards.
Politics
Wakefield stood against Chief Minister
Adam Giles
Adam Graham Giles (né Romer; born 10 April 1973) is an Australian former politician and former Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (2013–2016) as well as the former leader of the Country Liberal Party (CLP) in the unicameral Northern T ...
in the
2016 election, in the south Alice Springs seat of Braitling. Going into the election, Braitling was the fourth-safest seat in the Territory; Wakefield needed a 19.6 percent swing to win it. Like Alice Springs as a whole, Braitling had long been considered
Country Liberal Party
The Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory (CLP), commonly known as the Country Liberals, is a centre-right and conservative political party in Australia's Northern Territory. In territory politics, it operates in a two-party system wi ...
(CLP) heartland; it had only been out of the party's hands for two terms since its creation in 1984, when CLP-turned-independent
Loraine Braham
Loraine Margaret Braham (born 21 August 1938) is an Australian politician. She was a member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 1994 to 2008, representing the electorate of Braitling. She was initially elected as a representative ...
held it 2001 to 2008. Labor had never won an inner Alice Springs seat before (though it held at least one remote-based seat that spilled into Alice Springs from 1983 to 2012), and had never come particularly close to winning Braitling. For example, even during the CLP's near-meltdown in
2005
2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...
, Labor was pushed into third place behind Braham and the CLP.
However, amid the massive Labor wave that swept through the Territory on election night, Wakefield was ahead of Giles as counting began. Preliminary returns had Giles on 49.9 percent to Wakefield's 50.1 percent—a lead that increased as returns came in during the week after the election. This was mainly because Giles lost 20 percent of his primary vote from 2012. While he was still 10 points ahead of Wakefield on the first count, Wakefield narrowly pulled ahead on preferences. By 2 September, Wakefield led Giles by 23 votes—well within the threshold for a recount under Territory election law. The recount took place on 5 September, and confirmed that Wakefield was still leading on a knife-edge. When the final result was announced, Wakefield won the seat with a margin of 27 votes on a swing of 19.9 percent. This made Wakefield just the second challenger to oust a sitting Majority Leader/Chief Minister in their own seat, and the third to unseat a major-party leader in the Territory.
[ Green, Antony]
Northern Territory Election Result Updates
ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to:
* ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
* ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company
ABC News may a ...
, 2016-08-28. She is also the first Labor member to represent an inner Alice Springs seat.
Soon after her victory was confirmed, Wakefield was named to Cabinet as
Minister for Territory Families.
Despite a redistribution making Braitling slightly friendlier to Labor, the
2020 Northern Territory election saw Wakefield defeated by
CLP challenger
Joshua Burgoyne
Joshua Roland Burgoyne (born 17 October 1989) is an Australian politician who is the member for Braitling in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly.
Burgoyne was born and raised in Alice Springs, and was elected to parliament for the ...
with a swing of 4 points.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wakefield, Dale
Living people
Members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
Australian Labor Party members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
21st-century Australian politicians
Women members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
Year of birth missing (living people)
21st-century Australian women politicians