Clare Martin

Martin was one of ten children.[1] Her parents were strong Catholics and passionate Democratic Labor Party supporters.[2] Her uncle, Kevin Cairns, was a Liberal minister and MP in the McMahon government, but the family was not inclined towards his conservative politics. Martin's ancestry includes the Coughlin family, which also had NSW's first female statistician and the noted test cricketer Victor Trumper. The family was originally from County Offaly, Ireland, until the Cromwell invasion, then left County Cork in the 1850s just after the Great Famine. After attending Loreto Normanhurst, Martin graduated from the University of Sydney in 1975 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, in which her major study was Music.[1]

Having spent time in London and other overseas cities, she began working as a typist for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney in 1978. In 1979, she became a trainee reporter.[1] After several years, she began to take an interest in presenting, but was told that she would not be given a position in Sydney unless she had experience elsewhere . In February 1983,[1] Martin was then offered a six-month position presenting a morning radio show in Darwin for the ABC Radio station 5DR.

She had little intention of staying there, and briefly returned to Canberra in May 1983,[1] before being offered a job in Sydney. However, at the same time, Martin's partner was offered a partner's position at the law firm he had worked in Darwin. He liked living in Darwin and was keen to take up the position, so Martin agreed to decline the Sydney job and return to Darwin in May 1985 where she gained another position on an ABC Radio morning show.[1]

In 1986, Martin made the move to television, as the presenter of The 7.30 Report until 1988. After returning from long service leave where she cared for her two young children,[1] Martin returned to work in 1990 to work on ABC Radio's morning program.[1]

Martin had been interested in political journalism for some years, although she was not a member of any party, believing that party affiliation compromises journalistic integrity.[2] In 1994, she was approached to contest the Darwin Legislative Assembly seat of Casuarina for the Labor Party at the 1994 election. However, she was defeated by Country Liberal Party candidate Peter Adamson. She soon resigned from the party and returned to journalism, but when former CLP Chief Minister Marshall Perron resigned from his Darwin seat of Fannie Bay, Martin opted to contest the ensuing by-election as the Labor candidate. Fannie Bay, like most Darwin electorates, had been a CLP stronghold; Perron held it with a majority of 8 percent. However, in a considerable upset, Martin went on to win the seat by 69 votes, becoming one of only two ALP MLAs in Darwin.

Martin worked hard to retain her seat at the 1997 election, and was successful, holding Fannie Bay despite a heavy defeat for the ALP. She subsequently served as Shadow Minister for Lands under then leader Maggie Hickey. When Hickey unexpectedly resigned in February 1999, Martin was in a position to succeed her, and was soon elected party leader, and hence Opposition Leader. She soon emerged as a vocal critic of the Burke government's policy of mandatory sentencing, and began preparing the ALP for the next election, which was then two years away.

Martin faced her first electoral test as leader at the 2001 election. At the time, the Country Liberal Party had held office for 27 years, and Labor had never come particularly close to government. Indeed, it had never managed to win more than nine seats at any election. However, the ALP was coming off a particularly successful eighteen months, and Martin ran a skilled campaign. She was also able to take advantage of a number of gaffes made by then-Chief Minister Denis Burke, such as the decision to preference One Nation over the ALP – which lost the CLP a number of votes in crucial Darwin seats. The election also came during a bad time for the federal Coalition government, which was under fire for introducing a GST after previously vowing not to do so.

Despite this, most commentators were predicting the CLP would be returned for a ninth term in government, albeit with a reduced majority. However, in a shock result, Labor scored an eight-seat swing, achieving majority government by one seat. It did so on the strength of an unexpected Labor wave in Darwin. Labor had gone into the election holding only two seats in the capital—those of Martin and Paul Henderson—and had never held more than two seats in Darwin at any time. In the 2001 election, however, Labor took all but one seat in Darwin, including all seven seats in the northern part of the city. Darwin's northern suburbs are somewhat more diverse than the rest of the city. In the process, they ousted four sitting MLAs; Labor had not unseated a CLP incumbent since 1980.[3] Although the CLP won a bare majority of the two-party vote, Labor's gains in Darwin were enough to make Martin the first ALP and first female Chief Minister in the history of the Northern Territory. Martin herself was reelected with a healthy swing of 9.2 percent in Fannie Bay, turning it into a safe Labor seat in one stroke.

As Chief Minister, Martin immediately set about making changes, repealing the territory's controversial mandatory sentencing laws,[4] and introducing freedom of information legislation, which had been neglected during the CLP's 27-year rule.

In 2008, Martin became chief executive officer of the Australian Council of Social Service, based in Sydney.[12] In August 2010 she returned to the Northern Territory to become a Professorial Fellow in the Public and Social Policy Research Institute at Charles Darwin University.[13]

In June 2019, she was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished service to the people and Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory, and as a community advocate.[14]

• List of female heads of government in Australia

• VIDEO: Clare Martin talks at the Whitlam Institute about the GFC and the long-term unemployed on ABC Fora
• Martin, Clare Majella in The Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in Twentieth-Century Australia