Rob Knight (politician)

Daniel Robert Knight (born 1967) is a former Australian politician.[1] He was a Labor Party member of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly from 2005 to 2012, representing the remote electorate of Daly.[1] He served as Minister for Local Government and Minister for Central Australia from 2008 to 2012.[2][3] He also served as the Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2006 to 2012, having been appointed to the position after the resignation of Len Kiely.[4]

Prior to entering politics, Knight was a park ranger. He contested the newly created seat of Daly in the 2001 election against Country Liberal Party (CLP) candidate Tim Baldwin (who had represented the now-abolished seat of Victoria River, which had been redistributed to form Daly), but was unsuccessful.[5]

He contested Daly again at the 2005 election after Baldwin retired, and was initially thought to have little chance of winning. Daly was a fairly safe CLP seat on paper; after a redistribution, the CLP held it on a notional majority of 9.5 percent. However, on election night the CLP primary vote almost halved, and Knight gained the seat with a swing of 24.6 percent, turning Daly from a safe CLP seat into a safe Labor seat at one stroke. Knight actually won a majority on the first count, allowing him to take the seat from the CLP without the need for preferences.[6] Even considering the size of the Labor wave that swept through the Territory, Knight's victory was considered a shock result, as a swing of this magnitude is almost unheard of at any level in Australia.[5]

Knight was reelected in 2008, but was defeated in 2012 by the CLP's Gary Higgins amid Labor's collapse in the remote portions of the Territory.