The Opposition in the Northern Territory usually consists of the largest party not in Government. The Opposition's purpose is to hold the Government to account and constitute a "Government-in-waiting" should the existing Government fall. To that end, a Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Ministers for the various government departments question the Chief Minister and Ministers on Government policy and administration and formulate the policy the Opposition would pursue in Government.
At times, the Opposition consisted of both the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Coalition counterpart, the Country Liberal Party (CLP).
The current Leader of the Opposition is Territory Labor Leader Selena Uibo.
The fallout of the 2016 Northern Territory general election resulted in the sitting CLP government reduced to two seats after a landslide result to the ALP who managed to win 18 seats. Independents won the second-largest share of seats with five members being elected. As a result, it was suggested that the independents would obtain opposition status because of their larger amount of seats in the assembly and as such attempts were made in 2019 and 2020. However, this was later rejected by the speaker Kezia Purick and the CLP went into the sitting of Parliament as the official opposition.