This report examines federal implications of statehood for the Northern Territory, including the historical context of the campaign for statehood and recent developments. Committee Chairman, Peter Slipper MP, said that the establishment of the first new state in the constitutional history of Australia is no simple matter. "The prospect of statehood raises a host of...

Introduction Many Members of Parliament (MPs) aspire to ministerial office. Kim Beazley Jr once said: ‘being a minister, that really was something special from the moment I got it’.1 Garfield Barwick was said to have arrived at the Attorney-General’s office with ‘more ideas than a dog has fleas’.2 A lack of preferment, on the other...

In April 2002, the Council of Australian Governments commissioned the Steering Committee to produce a regular report against key indicators of Indigenous disadvantage. This report has the long-term objective of informing Australian governments about whether policy programs and interventions are achieving positive outcomes for Indigenous people.

This report summarises the discussion of issues affecting regions in Australia and around the world by participants at the Growing Regions Conference, hosted by the Department of Transport and Regional Services last year. Speakers included leading regional development practitioners, researchers and policy makers who discussed how best to grow regions and communities to improve the...

This chronology starts with the addition of the area that would eventually become the Northern Territory to the Colony of New South Wales in 1825 and concludes with the 2007 report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on statehood matters. It also includes some complementary coverage of relevant electoral...