Federalism in Australia

Federalism in Australia was formally adopted on 1 January 1901 when the six self-governing Australian colonies federated as the Commonwealth of Australia. To this day Australia remains a federation of those six "original States" under the Commonwealth Constitution. Australia is the fifth oldest federation in the world after the United States (1789), Switzerland (1848), Canada (1867) and the German Empire (1871) and the only one of those to have remained entirely unchanged in its composition. In formal constitutional terms, little has been altered since Australians made that decision over a century ago; in practice, however, the way Australian federalism functions has changed enormously over the intervening years. The most significant respect in which it has changed is in the degree to which the Commonwealth government has assumed a position of dominance.

Instigated by Henry Parkes' Tenterfield Oration of the 24 October 1889, the Australian colonies conducted a series of constitutional conventions through the 1890s. These culminated in a draft Constitution that was put to popular vote in the individual colonies and eventually approved by the electors after a final round of changes met the higher threshold of support required in New South Wales. It was then passed into law by the Imperial Parliament in Britain as the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, finalising the process of the Federation of Australia.

The rather desultory way in which federation proceeded reflected the absence of compelling urgency. The colonies saw some advantage in removing tariff barriers to inter-colonial trade and commerce, having a greater strategic presence, and getting access to investment capital at lower rates; individually, though, none of these represented a driving force. Taken together with the emergence for the first time of a distinct sense of Australian national identity, however, they were collectively sufficient. This lack of urgency was also reflected in their desire to create a minimally-centralised union.

In its design, Australia's federal system was modelled closely on the American. This included: enumeration of the powers of parliament (s. 51) and not those of the States, with the States being assigned a broad 'residual' power instead (s. 108); a 'supremacy' clause (s. 109); strong bicameralism, with a Senate in which the States are equally represented notwithstanding great disparities in population (s. 7); the division of senators into different cohorts on alternating electoral cycles (s. 13); the establishment of a supreme court empowered to declare actions of either level of government unconstitutional, the High Court of Australia (s. 71); and a complex two-step amending procedure (s. 128).

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