The 1965 election was the first in which a majority of candidates were members of political parties and the first at which the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had faced an organised opponent. The NAP fielded five candidates – three in Central Australia, one in Darwin and one in Katherine – compared with seven for the ALP. The party won a single seat, with Tony Greatorex winning a large majority in the sparsely populated seat of Stuart. Rose was defeated in Alice Springs by 17 votes. The results in both seats were controversial, with the unsuccessful candidates claiming that their opponents had engaged in illegal conduct to secure the votes of Indigenous constituents. Rose claimed that the ALP candidate Charles Orr in Alice Springs had bribed voters with alcohol and petitioned the Court of Disputed Returns to overturn the result. David Smith, the ALP candidate in Stuart, petitioned the court to unseat Greatorex on the grounds that campaign voters had intimated and misled Aboriginal voters.
