Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
The most momentous change to the political make-up of the Australian state was undoubtedly the independence of Papua New Guinea in 1975. But decolonisation was not a foregone conclusion until late in the 1960s. Through the mid-1960s politicians on both sides of the Torres Strait considered the option that the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG) might become the seventh state of Australia. The option had global and domestic implications and exposed the fault lines of Australian policies towards its northern most territories. The rights to free movement within the nation state, the right to welfare, and the benefits of full citizenship for Papua New Guineans were considered across Australian government departments before being comprehensively rejected following an extraordinary Canberra meeting in 1966 between the elected representatives of the TPNG and federal ministers led by Charles (Ceb) Barnes whose equivocation on statehood fed speculation throughout TPNG.
Underhill et al. (Tue,) studied this question.