Why Is Australia A Constitutional Monarchy

Will Australia become a republic in the next twenty years? This is a difficult question to speculate on. The main area of law governing this issue is section 128 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (U.K). Other issues in this debate are regarding appointment, termination and the powers to be awarded to the proposed Head of State, and the impact the change will have on the States. Examining the history of Australian Legislative powers, and reasons why Australians would want to change, is also useful when speculating on this issue.

Australia’s current political system is a Constitutional Monarchy. A constitutional monarchy requires that a hereditary monarch is appointed as the head of state. The monarch in a constitutional monarchy has got a largely a figurative and official role than a practical one. In this current system, the responsibility to pass legislation is tasked only to the democratically elected parliament. In Australia’s case, the hereditary monarch Queen Elizabeth II is the Queen of Australia and the Head of the Commonwealth, of which Australia is a part of. The position held by Her Majesty, cannot be contested by an election like the Prime Ministers, however it is a birth right of those in her lineage. Due to the exclusivity of the position as the hereditary

As the Prime Minister of Australia, it is my duty to present my democratic nation with their elected desires. The current issue is concerning the movement of Australia’s governing system from a constitutional monarchy to a republic. I believe that Australia should become a republic, as our sunburnt country has overtime developed culturally and democratically since 1901 when we become the Commonwealth of Australia, and started living under the ruling of Queen Elizabeth the Second. We have created a place that is in no way similar to the British Empire. As Australians we respect and acknowledge the traditional owners of our land, the Aborigines. Over time, it seems as though we have taken this country out of their hands and handed it to the

Under the US Constitution our legislature is a bicameral containing a House of Representatives and a Senate. The Australian constitution has a parliamentary system, which is not bicameral, although their system has a house of representatives and a senate; these two houses have to share power with the Queen. The Prime Minister leads the legislature.

Australia has been federated for 114 years, yet we still don’t have our own head of state. Yes, we have a head of state in the form of a Governor General, but this person does not represent the views of the Australian people, but rather serves as the representative of the Queen. A Queen that will never be a true Australian.

Like the British, Australia is also a system of responsible government. The Government (the Prime Minister and cabinet) is responsible to parliament. This means that at any time, the parliament can remove the Government from office or force it to call an election. However, besides the known differences between both countries such as unlike Australia’s upper house, the UK’s upper house is not elected, in terms of being more democratic, Australian federal elections attracts more attention than British because of Australia’s use of Preferential

The Australian Constitution is a rich amalgam of various classical political principles. The concepts of the Rule of Law and the doctrine of the Separation of Powers evident in Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws are both salient examples of political theses that are central to Australian Constitutional Law. The structure of the Constitution itself and decisions of the High Court of Australia unequivocally validate the entrenchment of the doctrine separation of powers in the Commonwealth Constitution . In particular, the High Court has applied this with relative rigour with respect to the separation of judicial power. The separation of the judicial power is fundamentally critical to upholding the rule of law. The High Court in Wilson v Minister for Aboriginal Affairs noted that “the separation of the judicial function…advances two constitutional objectives: the guarantee of liberty and, to that end, the independence of Chapter III judges” . Kitto J in R v Davidson also identified that the judiciary should be subject to no other authority but the law itself . This is a critical aspect ensuring the concept of legal equality is upheld. Therefore, its role clearly extends to providing checks and balances on the exercise of power by the legislative and executive arms of government . This ensures the liberty of the law and limits the abuse of the judicial system. Judicial Power is defined as “the power which every sovereign must of necessity have to decide between its subjects

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).

Australia’s type of government is a constitutional monarchy whose head of state is Queen Elizabeth the second. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, it’s literary, visual and theatrical traditions began with the strong links to the broader traditions of English and Irish literature. Australia's economy is developed and one of the largest mixed market economies in the world.

Based on this classification, Evans argues that apart from its formal headship, all of Australia’s institutions exercising public power are ‘modern republican’. His comment suggests that in addition to following Montesquieu’s doctrine of separation of powers, which seeks to divide the power of the government into three separate institutions, the Australian system also distributes power through a system of checks and balances. However, unlike the American Constitution of 1787, which, as table 1 and figure 3 demonstrates, divides the judicial, the legislative, and the executive into three relatively separate institutions that are “confined to the exercise of its own function”, Australia’s system of “rule from above” has led to what a former Vice

The purpose of the Australian constitution is to provide a set of rules which must be followed by the federal, state and local governments. These laws are called supreme laws. The laws in the Constitution can only be changed by the country’s population having a referendum. A proposed change first has to be passed as a bill by the Federal parliament, then it is sent out to the Governor General for a writ to be distributed so that a referendum can then happen. Australia is a Constitutional Monarchy this means that the Queen of England is our head of state. Not all Australians agree with this though and would prefer that we become a Republic. This lead to a referendum on the 6th November 1999. Australian citizens that were eligible to vote went

Since the time of the first fleet until now, Australian law has been divided between two types of Australians, the settlers and the indigenous. Since the time of the first fleet, the settlers put into place English law to rule the land known as Australia and make laws on the rights of the people, the indigenous and the land. Since then, Australian law has come a long way in the development of a fairer constitution and enacting laws for the indigenous to close the gap between them and the settlers.

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

     Australia’s form of government has been described as a constitutional monarchy, in which the queen of England is the nominal head of state. In the federal government, power rests with the elected political party that holds the majority in the House of Representatives. The leader is the prime minister. The Senate consists of 76 members who are elected every six years. The House of Representatives has 147 members and they face elections every three years. Any laws that involve changes to the Constitution must be decided by a referendum in which the country’s citizens are called to vote on whether or not they want such changes to take place.

The head of state is the federal president; the post is purely ceremonial and rotates annually among the members of the Federal Council.