Federalism in Australia - The Territories

The Territories

The place of the Australian Territories within the federal system has been controversial. The power to "make laws for the government" of the Territories, assigned to the Commonwealth Parliament by s 122 of the Constitution, is not confined by any words of limitation. It is generally assumed to be a plenary power, equivalent to the "peace, order and good government" powers of self-government assigned to the States by their own Constitution Acts.

However, the Constitution makes almost no provisions as to the role of the territories within the federation. For example, the Senate was to be composed of equal numbers of Senators from each state. A particularly troublesome matter was whether this excluded territories from participation in the Senate. The issue has now been settled with two seats for each of the mainland territories, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, while each of the states has twelve. Two of the three inhabited external territories, namely Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands, are represented by the senators and representatives of the Northern Territory. Norfolk Island, however, has no representatives in the Senate or the House of Representatives, as it has a higher degree of autonomy than any other part of Australia.

The Northern Territory referendum, 1998 narrowly rejected a Statehood proposal for the Northern Territory; a contributing reason is that the Northern Territory would have had only three senators instead of twelve in the Federal upper house.