Representative
Government

Constitutional Convention South Australia - March 21st, 2003
Submission by Kath Crilly

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Foundation Act of South Australia Amendment required

The Board of Emigration to Lord John Russell
- British Secretary of State - 7th July, 1840

"Those who pay for local improvements must be the best judges whether the value of such improvements is equivalent to the cost. ...We would therefore venture to recommend, as preparatory to the representative constitution to which the colony of South Australia will be entitled when its population shall amount to 50,000, that there might be added to the council of government some members representing the colonists at large."


Colonel Robert Torrens 1780 - 1864
Chairman of the South Australian Commission 1835-1840 and The Board of Immigration 1840-1842

"...The late Commissioners recommended in (1835) that elective municipal institutions should be granted to the towns of South Australia as they respectively attain a population of 2,000.
The plan which we would suggest for effecting this extension is, that the mayor the senior alderman, and the chairman of the common council of Adelaide for the time being, should be ex officio members of council; and that as elective municipal institutions are successively established in other districts and secondary towns, the chairman of each common council shall be ex officio a member of the general council of the province.

The colony of South Australia, as originally projected, was to have been a chartered colony, founded upon the principles which had been acted upon on the establishment of the British settlements of North America in the seventeenth century.

According to this plan, an incorporated company would have exercised, by delegation from the Crown, some of the powers of sovereignty within the intended settlements; and while advancing from their own resources the sums required for planting the colony and providing for its government, would have disposed of the waste land, levied the taxes, and controlled the local expenditure. The plan of a chartered company was rejected as not conformable to modern usage;...

The Commissioners under authority of an Act of the Legislature, and acting as officers of the Government, appointed by the Crown, have planted in South Australia a British Settlement which will contain, on the arrival of those now proceeding to the colony, a population of 15,000. The population thus planted cannot be left without a government. ..."

South Australia remained the only instance of a Crown/Chartered Colony until February 1843

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