Discussions on the history and historiography of Australia's New England

Saturday, April 07, 2012

New England's boundaries as recommended by the Nicholas Royal Commission

Recent months have been quite complicated. One side-effect is that I have found it hard to research and write.

Sometime in the next six or so weeks I will be moving. In preparation for this, I have been clearing out papers. One useful side effect is that I found some papers that I thought that I had lost.

The continuing attempts to gain self-government for New England or the North form one of the unifying elements in New England history.

One vexed question has been the best boundaries for the proposed state. This has been a matter of constant debate on this blog and on the New England New State Movement Facebook page.

In the following map I found the boundaries as recommended by the Nicholas Commission and subsequently adopted by the new state movement. These are the boundaries on which the 1967 plebiscite was fought.

I thought that I should put them on line because it is actually very hard to find proper maps.   IMG_0001

2 comments:

Ian Mott said...

The boundaries of a new state should be formed by those who want to be in that new state. The folly of doing otherwise was clearly demonstrated by the 1967 referendum. Earle Page failed because he handed a critical aspect of the campaign to people who did not share his vision, who then drew boundaries that included a critical mass of people who also did not share his vision.

The only logical, and strategically prudent way to approach the question of boundaries is to hold plebiscites in every local government area that might have an interest in doing so. And only those districts that opt-in would then have a say on where boundaries might go,where the capital could be, or how the parliament might be structured.

Any decisions made by us well intentioned proponents are fundamentally presumptuous and in contempt of the very people we would hope to serve.

Jim Belshaw said...

Ian, I have been very slow in responding to comments on this blog. Thank you. A agree with you as a general principle, but there are still issues. How do you select the area in which the plebiscite should be held? And what do you do about positive and negative outriders?