If any state got this dud treatment, there would be an outrage

Theirs would be a community unlike every other in the Commonwealth, a seat represented by a member of Parliament without a vote. Thousands of Australians voiceless. Powerless. Dubbed a "parliamentary eunuch", their MP would not even count in the formation of governments.

A serious constitutional crisis would have erupted had such a political aberration disenfranchised voters in a suburb of Sydney, Perth, or Brisbane. Protestors perched on statues in Hyde Park would have denounced the tyranny of their new Commonwealth.

Threats of secession would have been screamed in bold letters in Western Australia's Sunday Times, decades early.

One can only imagine Queensland's righteous fury were one of its own seats in Parliament targeted. Our federal experiment could have faced its darkest hour, if not been terminated by such a move.

But history records no national outrage, because the people excluded from democratic participation in real life were not from Sydney, but from the Northern Territory.

So, the arrangement that made them less-than-other-Australians could continue quietly with minimal fuss for decades.

For most of their history, territorians were swallowed up then spat back out by rival neighbouring states like some Central European country dismembered as the spoils of war. Colonised by NSW in the 1820s. Merged with Queensland in 1846.

Absorbed by South Australia in the 1860s. The Commonwealth intervened in 1911, not as our saviour, but as the latest coloniser. The peace terms dictated to territorians were severe. They lacked all political representation whatsoever for a decade. Had no seat in Federal Parliament. Had no legislative assembly of their own.

Were administered by faceless bureaucrats in the capital who, in a heavy hint at territorians' colonial status, worked for the foreign ministry that also ran the territory of Papua.

In 1922, territorians were reluctantly given a seat as observers in their own parliament, like the school children who spectate question time from high up in the galleries behind soundproof glass. Lacking weight of numbers, NT members like Adair Blain grew frustrated at being unable to convince Canberra to listen to the territory's needs and those of constituents.

It's a disgrace that the NT's Corporal Reg Hillier fought and died in Vietnam for a country that deprived him of an equal voice in its parliament. Only in 1968 were MPs enfranchised. Only in 1975 was the territory given senators. Three years later, it gained self-government. In 2000, the NT got two seats.

None of this story of slow-burning emancipation has anything to do with enlightened mandarins and Lincolnesque leaders in Canberra proclaiming the rights of their subjects and recognising the errors of their own policies with contrite hearts.

Ignored and talked down for decades, the territory has had to fight for all the rights it enjoys today - not wait to be handed them. I'm proud to have taken that fight to Canberra as one of the territory's lower-house MPs to ensure it didn't lose a hard-won seat due to an Australian Electoral Commission redistribution in 2020.

Then in 2022, I fought alongside the Australian Capital Territory's Alicia Payne to free territorians from Liberal backbencher Kevin Andrews' two-decade ban on considering euthanasia legislation. It's hard to believe we still need to defend Territory rights in our day and age. But we do. And we will.

Right now, the government is considering a joint standing committee on electoral matters report recommending doubling the NT's and ACT's senators from two to four-compared to the 12 that each state enjoys.

Accepting it is a tangible way to repair some of the historical damage done to the territory's chronic and continuing under-representation in our system of government. Tasmania, guaranteed five seats by the constitution regardless of its population, has 17 federal representatives for its 558,000 people compared to the ACT's five for 450,000 people and the NT's four for 230,000 people.

There is no defensible reason for this yawning gap in representation beyond pointing to Tasmania being an original state, unlike the territories. Territorians did vote against statehood, which would have given them three senators.

Nine fewer than other states, mind you. But is that a reason to punish them? On that principle, critics would revoke all the NT's political gains.

Another important reform proposal floated at last year's Australian Labor Party national conference in Brisbane, together with boosting the number of territory senators to six each, was to include the Northern Territory and ACT in the double majority for all referendums.

That's another simple change that would give territorians the same rights as other Australians. Territorians don't want special treatment. They just want fair representation.