Section
121. New States may be admitted or established
122. Government of territories
123. Alteration of limits of States
124. Formation of new States
128. Mode of altering the Constitution
[The Schedule to the Constitution, formally belonging at the end, is included in the Chapter 1, Part 4 file, because it relates to that Part.]
New States may be admitted or established
121. The Parliament may admit to the Commonwealth or establish new
States, and may upon such admission or establishment make or impose such
terms and conditions, including the extent of representation in either
House of the Parliament, as it thinks fit.
[Unaltered]
Government of territories
122. The Parliament may make laws for the government of any territory
surrendered by any State to and accepted by the Commonwealth, or of any
territory placed by the Queen under the authority of and accepted by the
Commonwealth, or otherwise acquired by the Commonwealth, and may allow the
representation of such territory in either House of the Parliament to the
extent and on the terms which it thinks fit.
[Unaltered]
Alteration of limits of States
123. The Parliament of the Commonwealth may, with the consent of the
Parliament of a State, and the approval of the majority of the electors of the
State voting upon the question, increase, diminish, or otherwise alter the
limits of the State, upon such terms and conditions as may be agreed on, and
may, with the like consent, make provision respecting the effect and operation
of any increase or diminution or alteration of territory in relation to any
State affected.
[Unaltered]
Formation of new States
124. A new State may be formed by separation of territory from a
State, but only with the consent of the Parliament thereof, and a new State may
be formed by the union of two or more States or parts of States, but only with
the consent of the Parliaments of the States affected.
[Unaltered - but see comment on the interaction of
sections 123 and 124.]
Seat of Government
125. The seat of Government of the Commonwealth [is] within [the
Australian Capital Territory] which [is] vested in and belong[s] to the
Commonwealth [ - and was required to be in the State of New South Wales,
distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney, and to contain an area
of not less than one hundred square miles.]
[Edited; see Comment]
Power to Her Majesty to authorise Governor-General to
appoint deputies
126. The Queen may authorise the Governor-General to appoint any
person, or any persons jointly or severally, to be his deputy or deputies
within any part of the Commonwealth, and in that capacity to exercise during
the pleasure of the Governor-General such powers and functions of the
Governor-General as he thinks fit to assign to such deputy or deputies,
subject to any limitations expressed or directions given by the Queen; but
the appointment of such deputy or deputies shall not affect the exercise by
the Governor-General himself of any power or function.
[Unaltered, but see Comment]
[Section 127 was repealed by referendum in 1967]
Mode of altering the Constitution
128. This Constitution shall not be altered except in the following
manner:-
The proposed law for the alteration thereof must be passed by an absolute majority of each House of the Parliament, and not less than two nor more than six months after its passage through both Houses the proposed law shall be submitted in each State and Territory to the electors qualified to vote for the election of members of the House of Representatives.
But if either House passes any such proposed law by an absolute majority, and the other House rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with any amendment to which the first-mentioned House will not agree, and if after an interval of three months the first-mentioned House in the same or the next session again passes the proposed law by an absolute majority with or without any amendment which has been made or agreed to by the other House, and such other House rejects or fails to pass it or passes it with any amendment to which the first-mentioned House will not agree, the Governor-General may submit the proposed law as last proposed by the first-mentioned House, and either with or without any amendments subsequently agreed to by both Houses, to the electors in each State and Territory qualified to vote for the election of the House of Representatives.
When a proposed law is submitted to the electors the vote shall be taken in such manner as the Parliament prescribes.
And if in a majority of the States a majority of the electors voting approve the proposed law, and if a majority of all the electors voting also approve the proposed law, it shall be presented to the Governor-General for the Queen's assent.
No alteration diminishing the proportionate representation of any State in either House of the Parliament, or the minimum number of representatives of a State in the House of Representatives, or increasing, diminishing, or otherwise altering the limits of the State, or in any manner affecting the provisions of the Constitution in relation thereto, shall become law unless the majority of the electors voting in that State approve the proposed law.
In this section, "Territory" means any territory referred to in section
one hundred and twenty-two of this Constitution in respect of which there
is in force a law allowing its representation in the House of
Representatives.
[Third paragraph edited; see Comment]
[The Schedule to the Constitution, formally belonging here at the end, is included in the Chapter 1, Part 4 file for convenience.]
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The drafters and the members of the Conventions were clearly losing their collective concentration and sense of order by the time they got this far. The Chapter is titled "New States", but of the four sections only two are about new States, one is about Territories and another is about altering State boundaries.
Though it may seem that sections 123 and 124 both apply when a new State is formed by separating territory from a State (since the boundaries of the existing State would be changed), Quick and Garran were of the opinion that they did not overlap; section 123 applied to only those shifts of boundaries where no creation of a new State was involved, and only section 124 was relevant where a new State was to be created. If that is right, my comment on the Chapter title (just scroll up) is strengthened; section 123 has nothing to do with new States and really belongs in Chapter 5.
The full section is:
125. The seat of Government of the Commonwealth shall be determined by the Parliament, and shall be within territory which shall have been granted to or acquired by the Commonwealth, and shall be vested in and belong to the Commonwealth, and shall be in the State of New South Wales, and be distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney.Such territory shall contain an area of not less than one hundred square miles, and such portion thereof as shall consist of Crown lands shall be granted to the Commonwealth without any payment therefor.
The Parliament shall sit at Melbourne until it meet at the seat of Government.
I have preserved not only the part of the section that is permanently acting, but also, in the square brackets, enough of the rest to explain the constraints on the choice of locality for the Australian Capital Territory. (A sensible choice like Lismore, Casino, Kyogle or Murwillumbah would have complied with the section, but it was generally assumed that it would be somewhere along or near the Sydney-Melbourne axis, so the politicians and public servants got stuck with Canberra - described by Doc Evatt, according to Kristin Williamson's script for The Last Bastion (as I remember it), as:
bushfires in summer, get yer balls frozen off in winter, and all set in scenery that's only maaarginally more interesting than walkin' around with a brown-paper bag over yer head.)
This section has never been used. The deputy Governors-General provided for are not to be confused with the Adminstrators referred to in section 4. An Adminstrator is appointed when the Governor-General is not in Australia or is ill, or the office is vacant; the deputies would have held office concurrently with the Governor-General and, presumably, represented him/her in the remoter areas. Even back when it could take days or weeks to travel from one part of the country to the other, no deputy was ever appointed, and it seems unlikely that one will these days, when the Governor-General can attend a mid-morning function in Brisbane and a lunch in Perth on the same day. Though the section has not expired, and has not been superseded by the development of the nation in quite the same way as sections dealing with disallowance of Acts by the Queen or Privy Council appeals, it is probably a dead letter, and my decision not to delete it was on the toss of a mental coin.
The third paragraph (not counting the introductory phrase) continues:
But until the qualification of electors of members of the House of Representatives becomes uniform throughout the Commonwealth, only one-half the electors voting for and against the proposed law shall be counted in any State in which adult suffrage prevails.
When the Constitution was drafted, all male British subjects (white ones, at least) had the right to vote in all the colonies, but women had voting rights only in South Australia (and got them just before federation in Western Australia). It was felt that the contribution of each State to the total of "all the electors voting" ought to be proportionate to their populations, so the votes from the States where both men and women voted were scaled down.
This was only to apply until the Commonwealth Parliament had passed its own voting laws, which, it was assumed (though not actually required elsewhere in the Constitution) would provide a uniform qualification for voting. Since section 41 preserved the Commonwealth voting rights of the women of South Australia and Western Australia, it was also generally assumed (even by misogynists) that the uniform qualification would extend to females. The first Commonwealth Electoral Act, of 1903, fulfilled these assumptions, and the quoted words then became superfluous.