More than just a flag

The governance problems of the ACT are further magnified by the Constitution and the federal electoral system. Both treat Canberrans as second-class citizens. The problems disappear, and full democratic rights are restored, across the border.

Canberra does poorly compared with other small jurisdictions when it comes to representation in the Federal Parliament. Tasmania has a population of about 490,000 people and five representatives in the House of Representatives and 12 in the Senate, but the ACT, with 340,000 people, only has four MPs in Federal Parliament. This is the same number as the Northern Territory, which has a population of about 200,000. This can have a major impact in the division of resources between jurisdictions and, combined with its lack of marginal seats, makes the ACT an unlikely target for any pork-barrelling. The few representatives of the ACT in Federal Parliament can be especially telling when the Commonwealth is considering whether to use its veto and other powers in the Self-Government Act.

The voice of people in the ACT is also muted in referendums to change the Constitution. People living in a territory did not get to vote in any referendum until 1977, and even since then their vote has been given a lesser value than people living in the states. A successful referendum needs both a national majority of ''yes'' votes and a majority of ''yes'' votes in a majority of the states. The votes of people living in the ACT only count for the national vote and hence only have half the weight of people living in a state.

The Constitution confers very few human rights. However, those that it does include are often expressed or have been interpreted by the High Court only to protect people who live in the states. For example, federal laws cannot discriminate between the states in how taxes are imposed, but this is possible when territories are involved. Similarly, the Constitution says no law can discriminate on the basis of which state a person lives in, but discrimination is permissible against people because they live in the ACT.

These legal realities leave Canberrans in a very unsatisfactory position. We have self-government, but pass laws that diverge from federal policy at our peril. The ACT can also lack the numbers and thus political clout to defend its interests effectively in the federal arena, leaving it open to opportunistic interventions and as an easier target in tough times for funding and other cuts.

This is not just a problem for the ACT, it is also a weakness in Australia's federal system. In the case of civil unions, the problems undermine the ability of the ACT, with the support of its population, to be an Australian leader in recognising same-sex relationships and removing discrimination. It would be a real loss to the diversity that is meant to underpin Australia's federal system if the new ideas and innovations that may only be likely to first emerge in the ACT cannot be tried and tested.

The position of the territories in Australia has always been awkward. The Commonwealth was given extraordinary powers over them in 1901, including full power over the terms of self-government because the Commonwealth was expected to assume responsibility over internal territories and also external ones Australia might acquire in the Pacific or elsewhere. Internal territories such as the Northern Territory were contemplated by the framers of the Constitution as having a transitional status. Being a territory was just a step on the way to statehood. The framers did not anticipate the problems of the ACT that might never be able to escape this transient status and thus allow it to achieve its full powers of independence.

Fortunately, because most of the problems are of the Commonwealth's making, they are within its power to fix. With this year marking the 20th anniversary of the grant of self-government to the ACT, it is time to review the structure of how the territory is governed. It is long past time that the ACT was given a system of self-government that lived up to the name.