Introduction

In 1988, the Australian Commonwealth Parliament passed legislation providing for the grant of self-government, at the state/territory level, to the people of the Australian Capital Territory (the ACT).

The Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988 (Cth), made the ACT a ‘body politic’ under the Crown and granted the ACT Legislative Assembly power to ‘make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Territory’.

With the passage of the Act and the first sitting of the Assembly on 10 May 1989, the residents of the ACT enjoyed, for the first time, similar democratic rights, to those residents living in the Australian states and in the Northern Territory - the right to have a say about state/territory functions such as health, education, criminal justice, and local municipal or local functions such as roads, garbage collection and public libraries.

Yet the road to self-government was not smooth. Residents were sceptical of the proposal, as the territory had been governed by the federal government since 1911. This scepticism was confirmed in 1978, when 63.75% of ACT residents voted to maintain the political status quo in an advisory on self-government. Only 30% voted for self-government.

In its original form, the Assembly comprised 17 Members and represented approximately 280,000 residents (approximately 2% of Australia’s population) coming from an area of 814 square kilometres. The first ACT election in 1989 took over eight weeks to count due to the complexity of the electoral system. Somewhat paradoxically, four Members were elected on no self-government platforms. In the first Assembly, the government changed two times following successful no confidence motions moved against the Chief Minister.

However, since those early days, the Assembly has grown more confident and the people of the ACT have developed greater acceptance of the important role that the Assembly plays in passing laws that affect their daily lives.

The Assembly and its Members also forged deep links within parliamentary community - both learning from and contributing to the ongoing dialogue about strengthening Parliaments and the development of procedures and practices that facilitate the institution’s representative, accountability, and legislative function.

Over the years, Speakers, Members and parliamentary staff of the Assembly have been keen contributors to The Parliamentarian with a dozen or so articles having appeared addressing various innovations and reforms that have been adopted and some of the features of the ACT system that make it unique.

It is therefore timely, on this the 40th birthday of the CPA Small Branches network, and 32 years after the Assembly’s first sitting, that I reflect on the twists and turns of our evolution from turbulent young Parliament into a stable, best-practice driven institution.

Elections

Territory governance was significantly enhanced by the entrenchment of our proportional representation electoral system. In 1992, 65.3% of electors voted to adopt the proportional Hare-Clark electoral system, which uses a single transferable vote method.

The electoral system chosen usually means that no party gets enough seats to govern alone, and so parties usually need to come to an agreement with other parties or independent Members to orm government or pass budgets/legislation. As can be seen below, there has been only one majority government (that is, where a majority of Members from a single party formed government). The need for governments to negotiate with the opposition and the crossbench has been a key driver of procedural reform.

Table 1 details the number of government/opposition/crossbench members elected over the ten Assemblies so far, with the type of government formed.