Scrymgour to pull the plug on politics

The first Indigenous woman to hold a cabinet ministry in an Australian government is retiring from the Northern Territory Parliament.

Marion Scrymgour was elected in 2001 and has been the Labor Government's deputy chief minister and held several portfolios including education minister.

She says she had been planning to run in the August election.

"I felt however the time had come for me to come back home," she said from the Tiwi Islands yesterday.

"Which is what I'm planning to do beyond August, is to come back here to this community.

"And to back who I am and work on the ground with my people which is something I've been wanting to do for some time."

She regards her work on fighting petrol and glue sniffing during her early years with the Labor government as the most important.

"I was the chair of the select committee that went around a lot of those communities when we came to government in 2001," she said.

"To see 14-year-old girls prostituting themselves in some of these communities for petrol.

"To see what was happening in some of these communities was an absolute disgrace."

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Scrymgour to pull the plug on politics