Australian Constitution Essay

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.

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,

In the dissenting judgment made by Callinan J in the landmark New South Wales v Commonwealth (“Workchoices’ Case”), a strong criticism was mounted against constitutional interpretation methods employed in the judicial forum. Explicitly, this conjecture was focused at Isaacs J’s judgement in Amalgamated Society of Engineers v Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd (“Engineers’ Case”), where a textualism approach to constitutional interpretation was adopted. Callinan J expressed the Engineers’ Case as “less than satisfactory”, using “detached language” to discredit its literal methodology of interpreting the constitution.

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.

Your managing partner has handed you the Supreme Court of Queenslands’ decision in The Public Trustee of Queensland and Anor v Meyer and Ors [2010] QSC 291 and asked you to answer the following questions. You should assume you are answering questions for someone who has not read the case, so be sure to provide sufficient detail in your answers. You do not need to provide reference details for Part A of the assignment.

HOW DOES THE ADVERSARY LEGAL SYSTEM ENSURE RULE OF LAW, AND HOW DOES THIS DIFFER FROM MODERN MEDIA MISCONCEPTIONS?

In order to determine whether Y and Z are subject to the proposed law, the

Australia’s government system was constituted in 1901 when the British Parliament passed the national constitution of the commonwealth of Australia.

Australian’s Constitution is the founding political and legal document of our nation. It underpins the system of government and the federal laws by which our country is run. The Constitution was written over a century ago and was shaped by the values and beliefs of the time, the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people were not recognised at all. In fact the only mention of the Indigenous people was to exclude them. Most Australian people in society today would be shocked to know that the Constitution actually allows discrimination against the Indigenous people. Since Indigenous people are still not recognised in the Constitution there is growing support for the Constitution to be amended in order to recognise the Indigenous people of

The constitution holds the power of deciding how fair and just the society is for Australian citizens by stating what the parliament can do. “The Constitution was approved by a vote of the people in referendums” (Parliamentary Education Office) and so the Constitution can decide how fair and just the society can be. The parliament decides most major government decisions, but “the executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen” (Constitution Act, Chapter II). That makes Australia a constitutional monarchy, where a royal family in control, but a government still exists.

It was regarded by most people as Australia biggest moment. The federation of Australia was a great time for us as there was nothing that could taint this moment. Before Australia there was six separate colonies each with separate laws, defence, transport and economic situations; it was necessary for the colonies to federate as it would help them to break away from being a “Little Britain” but also for them to develop into their own identity. Before the colonies federated they each had their own economic and transport situations. These included their own taxes on imports and exports and different train lines.

The constitution of Australia creates a fair and just society by having a set of rules that all citizens must follow. The constitution achieves equality as everyone has to follow one set of rules which makes it fair for citizens. It is how Australia is governed and “took effect on 1[st] of January 1901” (Parliamentary Education Office, 2015) when it was made official. The constitution includes rights and responsibilities of the government and state rights that citizens and government must follow.

Tension between the principles of responsible government and federalism was anticipated by the framers of the constitution, predicting that the one of the two will eventually cancel the other one out. This tension surfaced in the majorities decision in Engineers and is explored using the historical evidence of the framers intentions, the ideas that influenced them, and Justice Gageler’s critique of the Engineers decision. Chordia and Lynch argue that the majorities decision in Engineers focused on responsible government, while completely ignoring the principles of Federalism. This is evident in the delivery of the majorities decision, declaring that the two fundamental features of the Australian

When looking at American and Australian federalism from afar, they look very similar, but if you look just a little bit closer you can see how differently these two systems operate. Some similarities that consist in their two systems are: they are federations, each have written constitutions that distinctly describe the roles of each branch of government, both have elections regularly where the people elect other people to represent them, the rules and responsibilities for the executive government in carrying out the daily running of the nation are similar, and much more. But there are many more differences in these two systems that similarities. Some of the main differences are that the US is a republic, while Australia is a constitutional monarchy, and the US head of state is the President while Australia’s is the Queen.

In New Zealand we have a constitution therefore ‘person A’ is incorrect as their argument is that we do not have one. They are incorrect because New Zealand has a constitution in the sense of ‘a body of rules determining or providing procedures for determining the organisation, personnel, powers and duties of the organs of government.’ The constitution is unwritten as there is no document generally known as ‘The Constitution’ but it is found in legal documents, decisions of the courts, and in practices. In this context it makes sense for ‘person A’ to believe that New Zealand does not have a constitution as there is not a physical document of all of our constitutional arrangements set out. If you do look at their point of view that way then they are not entirely incorrect, but when incorporating all of the proper information about New Zealand’s constitution it is hard to argue that they do not have one.