The ACT constitutional position was canvassed obliquely a couple of times in the past week. One fanciful idea was that its boundaries could be extended to embrace Goulburn and perhaps other places in NSW who feel ill-served by NSW. The other more significant one was floated by the Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, who suggested that his people’s convention which would canvass the republic and other constitution could canvass the possibility of new states, particularly the Northern Territory. The only other possibility on the mainland is the ACT and off-shore island territories. The latter simply do not have the economic or population base to be considered. In any debate about the ACT’s boundaries or possibility of statehood, the historical position of the territory must take paramount place.
The territory was created because jealousies between Melbourne and Sydney caused them to rule each other out. The only way through the impasse was to create a separate capital. It was provided for in the Constitution. It was to be within the state of NSW, more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) from Sydney, 100 square miles or more in area and vested in the Commonwealth. The large area and the vesting in the Commonwealth were thought necessary to prevent land speculation. If the Commonwealth owned the land and could only lease it to holders and if there were enough of it, land speculators could not buy up the land around the new capital and make a killing. Beyond that, the ACT’s borders have no geographic, ethnic, linguistic or historic foundation. To use them as the basis for the creation of a separate state would be absurd. Mr Howard did not suggest this, but it is possible that others might pick up his words about new states to suggest the ACT might be a candidate.
The ACT was created for the purposes of the Federal Government. It would be self-defeating to make it into a separate state. The federal government has and will always continue to have a legitimate interest in the territory immediately surrounding the national parliament. To that extent it will always need to carry some sovereignty over the parliamentary area. That said, the people who live in that area have a legitimate call for some form of self-determination about matters which do not impinge on the exercise of the functions of the Federal Parliament and Federal Government. Some may argue about the extent of the present arrangements, but in the context of the provisions of the federal Constitution, especially its area the consequence that about 300,000 people live in the Territory, the present arrangements are a fair balance.
The Federal Government has a veto right over ACT laws in extreme circumstance and retains a statutory scheme to ensure that land use and planning in the territory are broadly consistent with Federal requirements. Far from extending the boundaries or creating a separate state from the existing boundaries, the better argument runs the other way: that only the triangle (where no-one lives) should be federal territory and the rest should be NSW sending representatives to the NSW Parliament. NSW law would apply in the Federal Triangle unless there was a contrary Federal law. But this, too, is a far-fetched option. Rather than dwelling on schemes to expand or contract borders or expand sovereignty, the ACT must make the best of what it has got.