It’s a common complaint amongst Aboriginal people that the only really big get togethers tend to be at funerals. In Darwin, the default church for most funerals is St Mary’s Star of the Sea Cathedral in Smith Street.

Today sees a secular arm of the church—the St Mary’s footy club at Marrara—as the venue for another gathering of Aboriginal Territorians, though potentially also funereal in feel.

The Northern Territory Combined Aboriginal Organisations meets today—the first Aboriginal summit since the Garma Festival’s Leaders’ forum 3-4 August, let alone the Intervention.

Apart from the obvious—the Intervention itself—the meeting will have a special bearing on the coming federal election as a delegation from the meeting will be meeting with Kevin Rudd tomorrow.

Like John Howard earlier in the week, this is Rudd’s first foray into the Territory since the “national emergency” was declared 21 June. Unlike Howard, neither Rudd nor his Indigenous Affairs offsider Jenny Macklin will be visiting an Aboriginal community; and thus far Rudd and Macklin have been supine in their support for the federal government’s line.

As reported by Crikey there is considerable anger out bush at federal Labor’s stance on the Intervention, especially on the issues of permits and compulsory leasing of land. The Territory Labor government has backed the Aboriginal position, and been mildly critical of Rudd and Macklin’s non-stance on matters of principle over land rights (and in fact some dark muttering that Macklin will spend today visiting child care centres rather than looking out for the Indigenous affairs side of her portfolio).

Long time left wing MP Warren Snowdon, sitting on a 53:43 per cent margin in the seat of Lingiari, is probably safe unless there is a big push to boycott the elections as threatened by at least one remote community. But the Darwin-Palmerston urban seat of Solomon might be more interesting.

Held by a small margin by the CLP’s “Dopey” Dave Tollner, it is a seat Labor has to win. Under normal circumstances, his admission that he hadn’t even read the 500 pages of legislation that brought in the Intervention, would guarantee a strong vote against him from the estimated 8-10 per cent Aboriginal electorate in the seat.

Unless something positive comes out of tomorrow’s meeting between the Combined Aboriginal Organisations and Rudd, even a moderate boycott in Solomon might spell the end of Labor’s Damien Hale’s attempt to topple Tollner.