A few Australia-related questions

KingByng

1. What's the best way to get Adelaide to be the capital?

2. What's the best way to have Fiji and New Zealand join in on the Australian federation?

3. What's the easiest way to have Queensland carved in two? What's the best name for new North Queensland state? Capricornia? Torresia? Something else?

4. What's the easiest and earliest way to get the Northern Territory to have a population level suitable for statehood? And is Carpentaria the best name for it?

5. Thanks to butterflies, acquisition of Papua New Guinea has changed. What would be the most suitable way to get Papua New Guinea under Australian control? A purchase? A referendum? Seizure by force? Or stick with an ITTL equivalent of a LoN mandate after a brutal world war?

Implausible answers are fine, so long as they are not egregiously so. ASBs are not welcome.

As of right now this is how I'm envisioning the twelve-state Australasian Federation, more commonly known as Australia:

ABWAustralia.png
 
Marc Pasquin

Marc Pasquin

KingByng said:
1. What's the best way to get Adelaide to be the capital?

2. What's the best way to have Fiji and New Zealand join in on the Australian federation?

3. What's the easiest way to have Queensland carved in two? What's the best name for new North Queensland state? Capricornia? Torresia? Something else?

4. What's the easiest and earliest way to get the Northern Territory to have a population level suitable for statehood? And is Carpentaria the best name for it?

5. Thanks to butterflies, acquisition of Papua New Guinea has changed. What would be the most suitable way to get Papua New Guinea under Australian control? A purchase? A referendum? Seizure by force? Or stick with an ITTL equivalent of a LoN mandate after a brutal world war?
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1- canbera was created to have a neutral place as capital so have the adelaide settlement failed and then the emplacement readopted.

4- Most of the territory is not the most suitable place for attracting people in term of agriculture so you would need the mining boom to occur much earlier to have a population growth

5- follow the same way it was under control of australia in OTL but have it get first a status similar to the northern territory then in the 70's have it changed to a state following a referendum.
 

Arachnid

For PNG I think you need massive white settlement which is very hard to do. In the colonial age it's always going to remain a territory so long as white's are a minority and after the colonial era independence is always going to be the preferred option. Both for the PNGians and for Australia.
 

Rush Tarquin

Arachnid said:
For PNG I think you need massive white settlement which is very hard to do. In the colonial age it's always going to remain a territory so long as white's are a minority and after the colonial era independence is always going to be the preferred option. Both for the PNGians and for Australia.
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This TL also has Fiji as part of Australia, so, whatever the case is, I imagine the same happening to it.
 
Hrvatskiwi

Hrvatskiwi

IMO the best way for 2. is to never have New Zealand administered separately from New South Wales (originally NZ was administered under the governor's authority) and for Fiji you could have it transferred from British to Australian control after WWII, maybe along with some other Pacific territories.
 

The Ubbergeek

I learned that there was talks once of something like making a special small state for Torres Islanders, or such BTW... some special status maybe.
 
Pangur

Pangur

Donor
KingByng said:
1. What's the best way to get Adelaide to be the capital?
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Just maybe have your second point happen. If that was to happen Adelaide just might be the nearest city that is equi-distant between all your states

KingByng said:
2. What's the best way to have Fiji and New Zealand join in on the Australian federation?
Click to expand...

NZ is relatively easy as the inclusion of NZ in federation was actively considered in the 1890's I think Fiji was as well but I am not sure. ASAIK NZ dropped of the list due to distance so make distance not to be seen as an `killer' issue and keep Fiji in the mix

KingByng said:
3. What's the easiest way to have Queensland carved in two? What's the best name for new North Queensland state? Capricornia? Torresia? Something else?
Click to expand...

Have a read up on how what was once NSW was split up into Qld and NSW or the various changes in borders between the NT and SA

KingByng said:
4. What's the easiest and earliest way to get the Northern Territory to have a population level suitable for statehood? And is Carpentaria the best name for it?
Click to expand...

You need far higher emigration for the former and as for the latter have the bulk of the emigrants not to be Anglo's That been the case as the writer you can have your new state and as a statement of no longer being a Territory they change the name of their capital

KingByng said:
5. Thanks to butterflies, acquisition of Papua New Guinea has changed. What would be the most suitable way to get Papua New Guinea under Australian control? A purchase? A referendum? Seizure by force? Or stick with an ITTL equivalent of a LoN mandate after a brutal world war?
Click to expand...
Stick to LoN - why get the same result with another means? It may be worth thinking about the Aussies taking high losses evicting the Germans, (emotional ties for Aussie to PNG) and then have gold found really quick (financial ties)
 

MRegent

Most if not all of these states were a part of the Council of Australasia, a pre-federation inter colonial body that resembled the EU in many ways. The goal of the council was to eventually form a federation within the British empire comprised of all member states, though this did not come about with notably Fiji and New Zeland choosing to remain seperate colonies.
As for Queensland it is important to note that when Australia was first being divided into seperate colonies there were many variations that did not last into the presetn day, including a colony known as North Australia that I believe comprised the entirety of the present day Northern Territory and Queensland. One could simply have North Australia being reduced in territory as per OTL but remaining in existence as what is today the northern half of Queensland.
New Zeland came very close to becoming part of the federation OTL, so much so that to this day there is still a part of the Constitution that outlines New Zealand as being a prospective state and as a result it can join at any time.
Fiji could quite easily have gone the same way, however I do believe that as others have suggested a great many more Britons would have to migrate, perhaps have it become a disputed point between the Uk and another power so that London has motivation to populate it. France displaying interest in what would eventually become the Swan River Colony was part of the reason Britain sent over colonists to populate my future home state.
Papua is more difficult due to the large native population, I would suggest a similar position as with Fiji with Germany. If I recall correctly Queensland in the present possesed the southern part of PNG for quite some time, I believe that that area does have substantial resources and if some enterprising explorer should discover them Greed will do the rest.
I hope this has been helpful.

Have a nice day.
-MRegent
 
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Simreeve

Wasn't there also a 'Central Australia' territory at some stage in OTL, between South Australia and the Northern Territory, centred on Alice Springs?
 

Voyager75

Simreeve said:
Wasn't there also a 'Central Australia' territory at some stage in OTL, between South Australia and the Northern Territory, centred on Alice Springs?
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That's right. It was split from the Northern Territories in 1927 but was reincorporated again after only four years. The capital was Alice Springs.
 

Atomicwalrus

KingByng said:
1. What's the best way to get Adelaide to be the capital?
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That's pretty hard, Canberra was made the capital because it was neutral. Adelaide isn't in a brilliant palce for a capital especially when you want Fiji and New Zealand to join.

KingByng said:
2. What's the best way to have Fiji and New Zealand join in on the Australian federation?
Click to expand...

Maybe by haveing New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia join the Federal Council of Australasia in 1885 and have that the mechanism which unites the Australian Colonies, Fiji and New Zealand.

KingByng said:
3. What's the easiest way to have Queensland carved in two? What's the best name for new North Queensland state? Capricornia? Torresia? Something else?
Click to expand...

Have William Kingston motion to split Queensland in 1897 pass OTL it was close until absent members where able to have their vote recorded the next day. Sadly this was the closest North Queensland has ever got to being free of Brisbane, honestly its a travesty that its still apart of Queensland the most common proposed border for North Queensland is well over 600km away from Brisbane and the population of the proposed state is larger then South Australia.

KingByng said:
4. What's the easiest and earliest way to get the Northern Territory to have a population level suitable for statehood? And is Carpentaria the best name for it?
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The only thing I can think of is more immigrant from countries outside of Europe increasing the states population. that could be achieved by less rascit laws in Australia which could also help to have New Zealand and Fiji join Australia at federation.

KingByng said:
5. Thanks to butterflies, acquisition of Papua New Guinea has changed. What would be the most suitable way to get Papua New Guinea under Australian control? A purchase? A referendum? Seizure by force? Or stick with an ITTL equivalent of a LoN mandate after a brutal world war?
Click to expand...

Well it was an Australian mandate OTL maybe as a result of better or no racist laws in Australia instead of independence in '75 it is given a referendum where it chooses to become a state.

Simreeve said:
Wasn't there also a 'Central Australia' territory at some stage in OTL, between South Australia and the Northern Territory, centred on Alice Springs?
Click to expand...

Yep for a short time between 1927 and 1931 then understandably it was abandoned.
 
Julius Vogel

Julius Vogel

Outside of dumb luck, I think you'd need a POD earlier than the 1890s to have a realistic chance of NZ committing to federation. The consensus is that it was a dead issue in NZ politics by the 1890s for all sorts of reasons.

I toyed with the idea of the creation of two NZ colonies - the South and North Islands, rather than a unified NZ, after the abolishment of the Provinces in the 1870s.
 

Atomicwalrus

Wendell said:
When was that?
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In the late 19th century. Fiji was a member of the Federal Council of Australasia which also had every colony in Australia bar New South Wales. The Federal Council of Australasia was the first real official apparatus for inter colony cooperation before federations a kind of early pre cursor to federal government. Now the Federal Council of Australasia failed for a few reasons namely New South Wales wasn't a member but it can't be denied it was a major push for the colonies towards federalisation with things like the Federal Council of Australia act which can roughly be considered an early draft of the Australian Constitution.

Its not unreasonable to have New South Wales join the Federal Council of Australasia and Fiji already a member being drawn into federation.

Fiji is kind of the smaller forgotten New Zealand of the what might have been Australian states.
 
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