The ABC has word of moves on the hill to give the Legislative Assembly the power to change its own composition, in turn paving the way for Chief Minister Gallagher’s favoured 25 seat Assembly.
Chief Minister Katy Gallagher says Julia Gillard has written to Minister for the Territories Simon Crean asking for legislation to be drawn up to give MLAs the power over their numbers.
Currently only the Federal Government can change the numbers in the 17 member Assembly.
Ms Gallagher says the current number is too small for the workload involved.
“We were 17 members when self-government started, the population was half the size it is now,” she said.
“The job has got bigger and I think to deliver good government there is an acceptance that we need to increase the size.”
Ms Gallagher says she would like to see the Assembly increased to 25 members at the next election in 2016.
There’s something in this for everyone.
Traditionally holding the biggest single block of seats Labor gets more MLAs and more staffing positions with which to reward factional spear carriers.
But more MLAs means a smaller number of votes needed to get a candidate up. The Greens will like the idea of that.
For the Liberals the appeal is a better chance of getting the amenable independents into the Assembly they need to form Government.
With everyone seeing an upside these things can happen very fast.
Chief Minister Gallagher has blogged the letter from the PM to the Minister.