American And Australian Federalism : Similarities Between The Us And Australia 's Federalist System

First of all, there are some similarities between the Australian government and the American government. They both have a congress, although they call it parliament in the Australian government. Both have a federal government; this means that they have state and federal governments. They have senators that represents the states. They have a house that is elected by the people. In both countries, legislation has to be passed through both houses. They both have a court that interprets the constitution and handles final appeals (Supreme Court in U.S. and High Court in Australia). Also, they both have written constitutions that describes the powers of government. However, they both have differences.

In the Unites States of America Federalism is the basic structure of the American government; it is the distribution and balance of powers between the National government and the States government. In order to obtain a compromise between those who wanted stronger state government and those who preferred a stronger national government the founding fathers arranged and settled for a federal system rather than the alternatives of a unitary or confederal system. While both National and State governments each have specific powers and authority, they also share certain powers and must be able to cooperate effectively with each other.

The United States is currently governed under a federalist constitution and has a deep rooted history of setting up its constitution to accommodate transparency, checks and balance and prevent tyranny. The federalist system of government is divided into the co-dependent central and state government. federalism in the united states give states the power to create their own laws, constitutions, and government structures. As stated in the U.S. Constitution (U.S.), enormous reservoirs of political power are thus derived from the people who reside in the states themselves. (champagne 2017)

Essay: Federation of Australia By Tristan Scheirs

Defence
A very important reason why Australia decided to become a nation (having a federal government) was because of an inadequate defence force. Each of the six colonies in Australia had their own military force. But when it came to patrolling the extensive Australian coastline, they had to rely on the British navy to fulfil that task. Due to there being a number of countries such as Germany, France, and Russia who had colonised parts of the Pacific, there was a growing fear that one of them could have attacked Australia. There was a report released by British Major - General Sir J Bevan Edwards in 1889, states the individual colonies of Australia did not have enough soldiers,

To introduce, Australia was country solely owned and run by Britian until 1901, the year of Australian federation, from 6 separate self-governing colonies to one, on the 26th day of January 1901. ’While Federation was not perfect, it was a system (of both laws and beliefs) that enabled Australia to flourish.’ The question itself represents the states coming together as one uniting nation. The laws, the beliefs, the privileges and the embellishment of the phrase gives you a sense of welcoming into the history of Australian federation.

On the first of January 1901 Australia became a federation when the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act came into force. Since this time, Australia has been a federated country, consisting of a Commonwealth Parliament and six State Parliaments these being Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia. The Division of law-making power has changed considerably since 1901.

Where there are problems, they are often with the way the Australian federal system operates, rather than with federalism itself. Rather than criticising our federal system, we should be working to make better use of its advantages
in order to improve our prosperity. In particular, the reform of the allocation of powers and responsibilities between the Commonwealth and the States, and reform of fiscal federalism, are desperately needed. (Twomey and Withers, 2007)

The United States and Australian constitutions have their share of similarities and differences. While they both have the same aim and goals, they are still two different countries with their own views, constitutions, and types of of government, and of course different approaches. As I go deeper into this I will explain how the constitutions are so similar yet so different.

Federation in Australia was a big Debate at the time in the 1890’s some states wanted it to happen and some didn’t. They were also 6 different colonies being the same as they are today except for the ACT, South Australia, Northern Territory (as it was a part of South Australia) and Tasmania as they had not legislated for single-member electorates.

Federalism is when states or provinces share power with a national government. The United States government functions by applying the principles of federalism. The doctrinal cycle of federalism is when the state gain power for a while and then the power is disbursed to the national government for a while. The power is given back and forth between the states and the national government creating a cycle of federalism. The ideology of the Supreme Court is an important factor for determining what level of Congress will hold the power. A liberal Supreme Court is more likely to let the national government hold more power, while a conservative court is more likely to let the states hold more power. There are three types of federalism which are cooperative, dual, and new. The ideology of the Supreme Court affects what type of federalism that the country will live under.

A monarchy is a person, mostly meaning king, who ruled the whole country in absolute power as the founders were from; however the founders didn't want the king to rule for having too much power. A king can command everyone as everyone must obey, can control everyone lives whenever he want, and can also punish everyone without a reason. If he is a good king which is good, but for a bad is a dangerous as many of lives may be lost which is an unfair problem. As the founders won the revolution, they created a federalist government with check and balance. A federalist government system is divided into two governments which are the fifty state governments and the federal government both control the country. Each government divide into three branches

The United States sets specific powers to state governments and U.S. governments. This is due to federalism. The exact definition of federalism is “a process by which two or more governments share power over the same geographic area.”(Usgovinfo.about.com).

Federalism is different from the other styles of government as unitary government; which has got just one commanding unit of the government, and Confederation government which has parts that are autonomous. Democratic rules are the central building block of the federal government system.

The legal definition of federalism per Merriam Webster is the “distribution of power in a federation between the central authority and the constituent units (as states) involving especially the allocation of significant lawmaking powers to those constituent units” (Merriam-Webster, 2003). This, in simpler terms, means that it is a form of government in which there is a breaking down of powers between two different levels of government that have equal status. The purpose of this paper is to define and compare the three different types of federalism.

Australia’s government design was taken from the British Westminster system after those who originally colonized Australia. A functional, western style democracy, there are a number of minor political parties operating in Australia but the country’s federal politics is an essential 2-party system at present, much like the United States (Our Country, 2015).