Carney faced her first re-election bid at the 2005 election. While commentators were generally divided on whether she would hold her seat, as it was the CLP's most marginal, almost no one expected the final result. On election day, there were massive and unprecedented swings to Labor in every seat in the Territory—except Araluen. While Burke, who had not long before regained the leadership, lost his seat of Brennan, which was the safest CLP seat in the Territory, Carney easily held her seat with a swing in her favour in the vicinity of five percent, proving to be in the least danger of the CLP's elected members. Araluen was the only seat that saw a swing to the CLP, which was cut down to only four seats.