In September 2025, a rigger named Troy packed up his donga at Bladin Point on Middle Arm as the Barossa gas project finished construction and switched over to production. Santos and its partners had employed around 600 workers to build the project and extend the life of the Darwin LNG plant that processes its gas; only about 350 permanent jobs remained to run it for the next two decades, and most of Troy's crew were left chasing whatever the next big Territory build turned out to be (Santos, Darwin LNG Life Extension project statements, 2025). Barossa is also the single project behind the headline economic growth Territory Treasurers have been citing all year: gross state product is forecast to jump 7.8% in 2025-26, largely because one gas field switched from being built to being sold (NT Department of Treasury and Finance, Northern Territory Economy, 2025-26 Budget Papers, May 2025). For a construction worker, and for a Territory economy that has run for a generation on a handful of mega-projects, the public payroll and the resources sector, a growth number like that says less about how broad the economy has become than about how narrow it still is.
What the government did
The Finocchiaro CLP government took office in August 2024 promising to "grow the economy" as one of its three central pledges, alongside cutting crime and the cost of living. As Opposition Leader, Lia Finocchiaro used her May 2024 budget reply to set the frame: the Territory would "unashamedly pursue mining, gas, defence, tourism and agriculture," the sectors she said reflected "where our inherent wealth sits." In office, that framing became policy. In 2025 the government published Rebuilding the Economy: Northern Territory Economic Strategy 2025, setting out five strategic priorities and 20 initiatives for agencies to implement over three years, built around a goal of Territory growth outpacing the national economy (NT Department of Treasury and Finance / Department of the Chief Minister and Cabinet, Rebuilding the Economy: Northern Territory Economic Strategy 2025). Alongside it, the government created a Territory Coordinator role and a Territory Growth Initiative charged with fast-tracking approvals and unlocking private investment, cut payroll tax for Territory businesses, and in 2026 passed the Pipelines and Petroleum Legislation Amendment (Industry Development) Bill to accelerate development of the Beetaloo Sub-basin's shale gas. It also inherited, and has continued to fund, the Northern Territory Agribusiness and Aquaculture Strategy 2030, first put to public consultation under the previous Labor government, which sets a target of lifting the sector's gross value of production from $1.3 billion to $2 billion by 2030.
The strongest case
A small, remote, resource-rich economy has fewer levers than a state government — and this one has genuine advantages to work with
The government's diversification push deserves to be judged against the economy it actually inherited, not an idealised one. The Northern Territory has an estimated population of around 265,000 — about 1% of the national total — spread across a landmass roughly six times the size of Victoria, most of it hours by road or an expensive flight from Darwin, the only city of any size (Australian Bureau of Statistics / Centre for Population, National, State and Territory Population, September 2025). No government of either party can conjure deep private capital markets, a large local workforce or a diversified manufacturing base into a jurisdiction this small and this remote; some of the constraints are structural, not a product of any one administration's choices. Nor did the CLP design the Territory's dependence on Canberra: Commonwealth GST and grants have supplied around 72% of Territory Budget revenue for years under governments of both colours, a function of the national GST distribution formula rather than a Finocchiaro government decision (Commonwealth Grants Commission, Northern Territory State Snapshot). Within those constraints, some of what the government points to is real. Territory employment reached a record 150,136 people in May 2026, the fastest month-on-month jobs growth of any state or territory on the ABS's trend measure, and the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector grew output by 12.9% to $1.4 billion in 2024-25 on the back of live cattle exports, new cropping on pastoral leases and expanding aquaculture (ABS Labour Force, May 2026; NT Budget, Industry Outlook — Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing, 2025-26). In May 2026, Arafura Rare Earths reached final investment decision on its Nolans Bore project near Alice Springs — a genuinely new export industry for the Territory, not a relabelled version of an existing one, targeting initial production able to supply an estimated 5–10% of global neodymium-praseodymium demand (Arafura Rare Earths, FID announcement, 21 May 2026). A government backing a rare earths mine, a critical minerals plan spanning 17 recognised minerals and a $2 billion agribusiness target is at least trying to build something beyond the three pillars it inherited.
The evidence
The scale of what the diversification push is working against is visible in the Territory's own accounts. Gross state product reached $34.6 billion in 2023-24, and mining alone supplied around 28.5% of it — the largest single-industry share in the Territory economy (NT Department of Treasury and Finance, Gross State Product, Economic Briefs). Government and community services — public administration, health and education combined — added a further 23.9% of GSP in the same year while employing 43.7% of the Territory workforce, the largest employing group in the economy (NT Budget, Industry Outlook — Government and Community Services, 2023-24 data). Between them, mining and the public sector generated more than half of everything the Territory economy produced in 2023-24, before defence spending — estimated at around 10.2% of the Territory economy and roughly $1.5 billion a year in Australian Defence Force outlays, hosting close to 6,100 ADF personnel, near 10% of the national total — is even added to the count (NT Budget, Industry Outlook — Defence, 2025-26).
Against that base, the sectors the "Rebuilding the Economy" strategy is meant to grow remain small. Agriculture, forestry and fishing — the strongest of the diversification stories on the government's own numbers — contributed 4.8% of GSP in 2024-25, worth $1.4 billion (NT Budget, Industry Outlook — Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing, 2025-26). Public sector employment still sits at 25% of all Territory jobs, well above the 18% national average, evidence the "big three" shape of the workforce has not meaningfully shifted (ABS, Public sector's share of jobs decreases over the past nine years, 2025). And people are still voting with their feet: net interstate migration took an estimated 2,105 more people out of the Territory than it brought in over the year to June 2025, even as government strategy talks of the Territory "outpacing" the rest of the nation (ABS / Centre for Population, National, State and Territory Population, September 2025).
The gas bet
Of the "big three," gas is the one the CLP government has chosen to lean on hardest as the engine of its rebuilding agenda, rather than simply administering what it inherited. The Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct near Darwin was conceived under the previous Gunner Labor government in July 2020 as a gas-processing and petrochemical hub, later rebranded a "sustainable development precinct" — that origin belongs to Labor, not the CLP. What belongs to the CLP is what it has done with it since. In 2026 the Finocchiaro government passed the Pipelines and Petroleum Legislation Amendment (Industry Development) Bill, designed specifically to accelerate development of the Beetaloo Sub-basin, the shale gas deposit around 400 kilometres south of Darwin that is meant to help feed Middle Arm. Tamboran Resources completed its largest-ever Beetaloo drilling program in October 2025 and expects to begin gas sales of up to 40 terajoules a day to the Territory government from mid-2026 (Tamboran Resources, ASX and company announcements, October 2025).
The government frames Beetaloo and Middle Arm as diversification — new industry, not just more of the LNG exports Barossa and Ichthys already produce. But the underlying economics look familiar. Independent analysis commissioned as part of a review of the precinct's approval found the combined Middle Arm and Beetaloo projects' emissions had been understated by around 45%, implying roughly 1.2 billion tonnes of emissions over 25 years — a finding CSIRO and the Territory government dispute in its particulars, though not the general point that a large new gas hub adds materially to the Territory's and the nation's emissions task (Climate Analytics, independent review analysis, labelled secondary source, 2024). And on jobs, the pattern from Barossa repeats itself: Nolans Bore, the government's flagship non-gas diversification project, is itself forecast to support around 600 construction jobs tapering to about 350 ongoing roles once built (Arafura Rare Earths, project statements) — the same build-high, run-low profile that already defines the gas project it is meant to help the Territory move beyond.
The critique
None of the steelman case answers the central structural question: does "Rebuilding the Economy" actually change the shape of the Territory economy, or does it mostly make the existing shape bigger? On the government's own figures, agriculture and aquaculture — the diversification sector with the clearest runway and the strongest recent growth — contributes roughly one-sixth as much to GSP as mining alone, and critical minerals output remains too small to appear as its own line in the Budget's industry breakdown. A $2 billion agribusiness target by 2030 is a roughly 40% increase on a $1.4 billion base over five years — real growth, but not remotely large enough on its own to rebalance an economy where two sectors already generate more than half of everything produced.
Two industries already generate more than half of everything the Territory produces; the government's flagship diversification sector generates about one-sixth as much as mining alone.
The debt trajectory tells the same story from the fiscal side. Non-financial public sector net debt is forecast to rise to around $11.35 billion in 2025-26 and toward $13.2 billion by 2027-28, even with mining royalties running at close to record levels — $388 million in 2025-26, or 23.2% of all Territory own-source revenue (NT Department of Treasury and Finance, Budget Paper No. 2, Budget Strategy and Outlook, 2025-26 Budget). A resources cycle strong enough to lift headline GSP growth to 7.8% has not been strong enough to arrest the growth in debt, because so much of what the Territory spends is still funded by Commonwealth transfers and borrowing rather than a broadening private tax base. And the CLP's own list of priority sectors — "mining, gas, defence, tourism and agriculture" — still puts gas second, ahead of the sectors genuinely capable of employing Territorians in occupations other than fly-in-fly-out construction or the public service. Rebuilding an economy this narrow around one more gas hub is not obviously different, in kind, from the economy the strategy says it wants to move beyond.
The risk to the future
A rebuilding strategy that stakes its credibility on the same commodity that already defines the Territory's narrowness
The Territory's growth forecasts for the next several years lean heavily on gas: Barossa reaching full production, Beetaloo's approvals surviving legal and environmental challenge, and Middle Arm attracting the downstream processing investment it was designed around. Any one of those can slip — gas prices soften, native title or environmental litigation delays a Beetaloo drilling program, or a future Commonwealth government tightens the climate settings a multi-billion-dollar shale gas province depends on (IEEFA, Beetaloo commercial analysis, labelled secondary source). If it does, the Territory will have staked its "rebuilding" credibility on the one sector least within its own control, while the sectors it says it wants instead — agriculture, aquaculture, critical minerals — remain years away from being large enough to cushion the fall.
The slower risk is already visible in the population figures. Net interstate migration keeps pulling working-age Territorians south even during a jobs boom, which suggests the "big three" are not yet offering the kind of career people want to build a life around in Darwin, Katherine or Alice Springs. A diversification strategy that cannot outrun that departure rate risks arriving at 2030 with the same three-pillar economy it started with — larger, more indebted, and no closer to the broad-based private sector it was named to build.