Darwin Australia

Will the Northern Territory become a state in the near future?

I can estimate that like here in the U.S., population determines whether a territory or s'mother possession can become a state in Australia. & I'd assume that almost all the Austrian states & the Northern Territory contain some part of the outback. Would I guess that the N.T. has less people than the Australian states? & if the pop. gets high enough, can it become a state? (called North Australia, perhaps?) Well, I probably won't expect the Australian Capital Territory to become a state. U'no, it's similar to the District of Columbia here in the U.S. & some other capital cities around the world that have their own sovereignty of some sort.

Public Comments

1. Sure. Population is the key - if too few people live there, it can not be administered economically. But once the population hits a target figure, there's incentive to form its own government.
2. Our 2 territories have the smallest populations from the rest of Aus and i don't see them becoming states in the near future. Though the NT is quite big most of it is desert and unable to support people. The ACT (Australian Capital Territory) is small and has the Great Dividing Range going along the edge eliminating easily accessed places to live. EDIT: We only have the ACT because they couldn't decide which was to be our capital Melbourne or Sydney so they made a new city (Canberra) and a territory about half-way between the two.
3. Maybe. I live in Australia. Maybbeee in the future! (not so near though)so yer i dont think it will!
4. No, there will never be enough people in the NT. Of course it's population will grow, but comparatively with other states it will still be small population. You can't make a territory with a population of 200,000 a state because then it would have to have the same number of people in the senate as the other states. So 200,000 people have as much influence on the country as 6 million people in a state. In the future, if the NT gets to 1 million people, other states will have 15 million people in them, it isn't fair to give them the same amount of influence. It would never work. Because Australia is a federation, the country doesn't work as a single unified power. Instead, states are given power to influence the rest of the country in the federal government. Because the states federated to become one. The territories are governed solely by the federal government, the states are governed by themselves and the federal government. ----------------------- however, if the NT did manage to get enough people as the other states, maybe they could become a state, but not just yet. It will probably never happen. Most people would rather live elsewhere than the NT.