The ACT has been self-governing now since 1989 - nearly a quarter of a century. Self-determination was not fought for by the residents of the ACT, as with other democracies in which populations forced, sometimes by armed rebellion against their rulers, to get the right to choose their own representatives.

Self-government was foisted on the people by their rulers - the federal government. It was imposed on us against our wishes - more as a duty than a right. In a referendum in 1978 the people voted as followed: self-government 30 per cent; local government 6 per cent; the then existing arrangement of federal control 64 per cent.

The Fraser government was taken aback by the result. At the time there was no hidden agenda, just a democratic feeling that the people of the ACT should decide state-style things for themselves. Well, they said they did not want to, so that was that.

At the time, a large part of the electorate were federal public servants who had great faith in the ability of the Commonwealth Public Service to provide good government, so why opt for anything different, especially as for more than two decades the federal government had poured enormous largesse into Canberra.

Ten years later the Hawke government did things differently - more politically. It decided that the streets of Canberra were no longer to be paved with federal gold. Canberra was to be like everywhere else and pay its own way. But it did not want to simply cut funding to Canberra because that would result in Canberra voters inflicting a backlash on federal Labor. Labor had already seen a federal ACT seat (held by Kep Enderby) being won by a Liberal (John Haslem) in 1975 and again in 1977.

The ACT seats were not a guaranteed win for Labor. So if the (Hawke Labor) federal government were to cut spending on Canberra it would need a scapegoat. It was to be a locally elected ACT government. It would take the blame, not the feds, for funding cuts, and the ACT Labor federal members would be spared the backlash.

All federal political parties nodded piously to the principle of ACT self-government. And all federal political parties fought tooth, claw and nail over the electoral system which would determine the individual seats and therefore the number of staffers and hangers-on a political party would get.

Labor did not have a majority in the Senate, so had to accept a proportional system. As it happened, a proportional system was essential for ACT democracy. A single-member system like the House of Representatives would have been cataclysmic for the ACT.

In a single-member system one of the major parties would have won between 15 to all 17 of the seats in all but the first two elections if you translated the booth-by-booth figures to virtually any boundary set-up for 17 electorates.

No effective opposition means no effective government. The proportional electoral system - a variation of the Hare-Clark model used in Tasmania and approved by the people of the ACT in two referendums - has served us well.

We have two electorates with five members and one electorate with seven members. Seats are allocated according to the percentage of the vote. It means that even a dismally performing major party with, say 30 per cent of the vote gets six of the 17seats (about 30 per cent of the seats). In a single-member system 30 per cent of the vote could translate into less than 10 per cent of the seats, as the last election in Queensland proved.

Further, the ACT has less diversity among its voters - no places of rusted-on rural and regional conservatism or pockets of rusted-on industrial Labor support. So a swing would run across the board and deliver one party or the other all or nearly all the seats in a single-member system.

The proportional system in the ACT is highly refined. A mechanism called Robson rotation ensures the political parties do not determine which of their members gets elected. The parties can select their candidates, but they cannot select the order of their candidates on the ballot paper. In the seven-seat electorate of Molonglo, for example, only one in seven of the ballot papers will have Katy Gallagher at the top of the Labor column, another seventh will have Andrew Barr, another seventh Simon Corbell and so on.

A voter might well go into the polling booth and receive a ballot paper which has Katy Gallagher in the last or seventh position in the Labor column. So it is up to the voters to determine which of the Labor (or Liberal) candidates on offer should get elected. Since 1989 it has been almost equally as likely for a sitting MLA to lose their seat to a candidate from their own party as to lose to a candidate from the other major party.

This is why our parliament is the most democratic in Australia. We not only choose between parties; we also choose from within parties. The electorate as a whole becomes, in effect, pre-selectors and well as electors. The fact the system is complicated does not mean it is unfair. After all, elections in the old communist countries were very simple - vote for the Communist Party candidate - but they certainly were not fair.

The ACT does not have a governor, administrator or governor-general like the other jurisdictions. There is no need to because the constitutional arrangements are self-executing.

The election dates are fixed as the third Saturday in October every four years. So there is no election-date discretion to be approved by a ''head of state''. Similarly, there is no role for a head of state in ''calling'' on a political leader to form a government after an election.

After every election in the ACT the Electoral Commission declares who is elected and at their first meeting the members are sworn in by the chief justice. The first business must be to elect a speaker and the second piece of business is to elect the chief minister.

So the chief minister must be elected by the people's representatives on the floor of the Assembly. There can be no connivance with a head of state to oust an elected government as happened federally in 1975.

Another element of the ACT system is that our state-level government also looks after local-government matters. This is a major efficiency. Anyone familiar with local councils in the states will know of the significant corruption and ineptitude that bedevil that system.

But it is not all roses. The ACT still has some federal oversight and interference not borne by the states. It also suffers from a large portion of its population - public servants - being removed somewhat from the political process because they feel they should be seen as impartial or they are worried about their careers.

Further, the ACT suffers from a great deal of apathy. That is common in Australia, but in the ACT it reaches into the usually engaged, educated, informed and community-spirited people who form the backbone of political systems elsewhere.

There is almost a reverse snobbery here - as if it is beyond the pale to take an interest in local politics. But that is changing - particularly as people see the influence the ACT government has on their lives. Recent rates changes is but the most recent example. It will be a significant factor in this election.

The impasse over the size of the ACT Legislative Assembly is likely to be overcome sometime in the next term.

The Assembly's size has remained at 17 members since it first met in 1989.

The population growth since then would warrant an increase.

The ACT is the most under-governed jurisdiction in Australia.

The major parties and the Greens federally and locally agree the Assembly should be expanded but they vehemently disagree on how this should be done.

As a practical matter, a change requires agreement locally and federally (including the Senate).

So for a long time the majors have had an effective veto.

So nothing has happened.

The Greens want more seven-member electorates. As a minor party they do better in electorates with more members.

Labor prefers five-member electorates, figuring they can achieve three seats (60 per cent of the seats) with a vote in the high 40s.

The Liberals prefer seven-member electorates because, at least hitherto, they have thought getting three of five seats is near impossible, but getting four of seven possible in a good election - particularly if that seven-member seat were based in Tuggeranong.

My guess is that if, as seems highly likely, the Liberals win the next federal election, Labor's effective veto will end.

The Liberals and the Greens together locally and in the Senate could push through an increase to the size of the Assembly on their terms - three seven-member electorates.

Incidentally, political ideologies and traditional enmities go out the window when it comes to bums on seats and hard electoral numbers.