Additionally, Labor had never come close to winning any seat in Palmerston in the Assembly's history. Robertson Barracks, long a solid base of Army support for the CLP and particularly for Burke, had been redistributed out of the electorate. Even with the loss of the barracks, Burke still held Brennan with a seemingly insurmountable majority of 19 percent, making it the CLP's safest seat. However, James Burke rolled him on a 20-point swing, which came as a shock even to Labor. Burke had promised to resign if he failed to win the election, but his unseating forced the CLP to immediately replace him with Carney. From 2007 to 2011 Burke worked in the United Arab Emirates as a high level Advisor to the Abu Dhabi Government. He is married with two children, Sam Burke (a former prosecutor with the Department of Public Prosecutions and now Ministerial Advisor to the Northern Territory Attorney General) and Tom Burke (lawyer at global law firm Linklaters and based in Moscow). He also has two daughters from his first marriage, Lisa and Angela. His second wife, Annette, was elected Mayor of Palmerston in 1998 and resigned in 2007 after winning consecutive elections. The Burkes returned to the Northern Territory in 2012 and reside in Darwin.