The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Marshall Perron, said yesterday that the size of the Senate should be halved.
If each state had six senators, instead of the present 12, it would make statehood for the Northern Territory easier to attain.
There was urgent need for constitutional change in the Northern Territory he said, but the question of representation in the Federal Parliament would be a stumbling block.
Mr Perron made the comments in an address to a conference in Darwin on “”Constitutional Change in the 1990s” and elaborated on them during an interview later.
The conference is held by the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly.
Since self-government in 1978, the Northern Territory, with its $2 billion budget, had proved it could govern itself responsibly. However, it remained a “”colony of the Commonwealth” without the remaining state powers: these included industrial relations, Uluru and Kakadu National Parks, the mineral rights over uranium, land administration and the removal of the right of veto by the Commonwealth over territory legislation.
Mr Perron envisaged a two-stage process to statehood. In the first, the territory would get the remaining state powers. In acknowledgment of the concerns of people in the rest of Australia he would agree to the Commonwealth retaining the veto over land-rights legislation in this period. In the second stage, the territory would get full statehood with the same representation rights in the Federal Parliament.
“”We demand no more and will accept no less,” he said.
He accepted that the proposition that the State of the Northern Territory (a name he supports) with a population of only 180,000 have 12 senators could be an impediment to statehood. But the Northern Territory could not be a state without being equal to the other states, he said.
He thought the solution would be to cut the size of the Senate. A referendum would have to be held to cut the nexus under the Constitution which said the Senate had to be half the size of the House of Representatives.
The territory had resources and capacity to rival other states. Only politicking prevented it.
The Aboriginal land right and environmental debates had held up statehood and as a result Territorians were being treated as second-class citizens.
The present position was unsupportable. There were two separate states: one controlled by the Northern Territory and the other comprising Aboriginal land, controlled by land councils and responsible to the Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.
“”Those who live on Aboriginal land have few rights, little say and no control,” he said.
The Federal Government should not control half the Northern Territory through the Land Rights Act. The Northern and Central Land Councils had great power and a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
“”If the present Federal Government does not fix it; the next one will,” he said.