The vote for the leadership was held among Senator Scullion and the four Nationals Senators. The nine lower house MPs did not vote. Federal Nationals leader Warren Truss was informed of the planned change only last night. It was unclear today whether he supported the move.

During the counting of votes for this month’s Northern Territory general election, media commentators were telling us that the swing against Labor was 9 per cent. Several people have asked me to tell them what that figure really may mean.

The big news of the week, rather surprisingly, wasn’t the Olympic Games. However, the media still found time to complain about the Chinese government. On the local front, Labor managed to hang on in the Northern Territory, Federal Labor actually made a decision, and Peter Costello waited some more for his book launch.

The make up of the Northern Territory parliament rested on the result in Fannie Bay. If Labor had failed to secure the seat, Independent Gerry Wood would have held the balance of power in the hung parliament.

The Northern Territory poll produced the first threat to Labor’s historic hold on power federally and in every state and territory across the nation. If Labor loses the seat of Fannie Bay as well as the three other electorates that are all but certain to fall to the Country Liberal Party, there will be a hung parliament with the balance of power resting with an independent - former chicken farmer Gerry Wood.

It has been predicted that the Labor Government will drop from 19 seats to 13, while the Country Liberal Party will climb from four to 11. The shock result stunned Chief Minister Paul Henderson, whose party has suffered a 9 per cent swing, which claimed the scalps of three of his ministers.

In the last Northern Territory election, Labor stormed to victory with an 11 per cent swing in its favour to eventually win 19 of the Territory’s 25 seats. Former chief minister Clare Martin says the buoyant NT economy will cushion Labor from any swing.