Unlike the legislatures of the other mainland states and territories, the Assembly also has the functions of a local council; the city of Canberra has no other local government. It replaced the House of Assembly when the ACT was granted self-government in 1986.
Members of the Legislative Assembly vote to elect a Chief Minister[5]. In practice, Chief Minister is the leader of whichever party is able to form government. The Chief Minister, in turn, selects ministers to form a cabinet. The leader of the second-largest party in the Assembly usually becomes the Leader of the Opposition.
Election dates for the Assembly are fixed in legislation, with elections held on the third Saturday in October every four years (until 1997, elections were held in February).[6] The term of the Assembly was increased in 2004 from three to four years. The next election is due on Saturday the 19th of October, 2024.
The current Chief Minister is Andrew Barr,[7] who is also the Treasurer, Minister for Climate Action, Minister for Economic Development and Minister for Tourism. The position of Chief Minister is analogous to the Premier in the Australian states.
The ACT Greens has formed coalition governments with the ACT Labor Party since 2012, after supporting a minority Labor government in 2008. This is the only Labor–Greens coalition state or territory government in Australia. It is arguably the first such coalition, with a 1989 agreement in Tasmania not granting the Tasmanian Greens any cabinet positions.
Salary
As of 2018[update] Members of the Legislative Assembly were paid a base salary of $164,382. Most members were entitled to an additional loading, up to a maximum of $345,202 for the chief minister.[8]
The current Legislative Assembly was created by four acts of the Commonwealth Parliament in 1988, including the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988. The first election was held on 4 March 1989[9] and the assembly first sat on 11 May that year.[10] Until this point, the ACT had been directly administered by the Commonwealth Government. It replaced the House of Assembly (also known for a period as the Legislative Assembly), which existed from 1976 to 1986, but had no executive power, with a principal function of advising the Commonwealth on matters relating to the Territory.[10]
At its inception, the Assembly was elected by a modified d'Hondt system, but a 1992 referendum supported the Hare-Clark method, which was introduced for the 1995 election.[4] As of this change, the Legislative Assembly had 17 members, elected from three electorates. Brindabella and Ginninderra elected five members, and the now-defunct electorate of Molonglo elected seven.
On 30 April 2002, the ACT Electoral Commission made a submission to the ACT Legislative Assembly's Standing Committee on Legal Affairs, which inquired into the appropriateness of the size of the Legislative Assembly for the ACT, and options for changing the number of members and electorates. The Electoral Commission recommended increasing "the size of the Legislative Assembly to three electorates each returning seven members, giving a total of 21 members".[11]
In 2014, the Assembly voted to expand the number of members to the present 25, with the change taking effect at the 2016 election.[12]
Powers
As with the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, the ACT Legislative Assembly lacks the full powers of a state legislature. Section 122 of the Constitution of Australia provides that the Commonwealth Parliament "may make laws for the government of any territory" surrendered by any State to the Commonwealth. The Governor-General, on the advice of the Executive, previously had the power to override laws passed by the Assembly.[13] Although this was rare in practice, the Civil Unions Act 2006, which allowed same-sex couples to enter into "civil unions" was overruled following concerns that the civil unions mimicked marriage. In July 2006, the Federal Government again threatened to overrule the ACT Stanhope Government's anti-terror legislation, which was not consistent with other state laws. In 2011 the Federal Parliament passed a private senator's bill which removed this power in respect to both the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.[14]
The ACT is unique among Australian states and self-governing territories, as it has no vice-regal post exercising authority as the representative of the monarch, such as a governor or an Administrator. The functions vested in a state Governor or territorial Administrator as nominal head of the Executive—commissioning government, proroguing parliament and enacting legislation—are exercised by the Assembly itself and by the Chief Minister. Instead of vice-regal or regal assent, a Bill passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly is enacted on "notification"—publication in the Government Gazette of a notice authorised by the Chief Minister.[15] However, the Governor-General of Australia does have the power to dissolve the Assembly if it is "incapable of effectively performing its functions or is conducting its affairs in a grossly improper manner".[16]
