Our federation: 1. Federation

1.1 What is a federation?

A federation is a system of government with two levels that share governing responsibility between a single national authority and several state (or regional) authorities. The national level of governance looks after national concerns such as currency, defence and taxation while the state level looks after state concerns such as the provision of health, road and education services.

Although Australia is one nation it has nine parliaments including the federal Parliament in Canberra and one in each of the six states and the two mainland territories. This is because Australia is a federation. It also means that there are nine executive governments operating from within those parliaments.

Other federations include Germany, Canada and the United States of America.

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1.2 How did the Australian Federation occur?

Federation is the name given to the union of the six self-governing colonies of Australia on 1 January 1901, to form one nation as a union of states under a central authority.

Before Federation each Australian colony had its own government and its own laws, with its own defence force, tariffs on imported goods in some cases, and postage stamps etc. This caused a lot of problems and people began to think about the benefits of forming one nation.

In the 1890s the colonies came together at special meetings called conventions to try to agree about how to form a new federal system of governance. Eventually they agreed on the rules of a federal system of governance that would run matters that concerned the whole country. The people of the colonies voted to accept this new constitution, which was then taken to the British Parliament and Queen Victoria signed the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1901. Section 9 of this Act is called ‘Constitution’. This section stated that on and after 1 January 1901, the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia would be united and known as the Commonwealth of Australia.

The colonies became states of Australia and a new federal Parliament of the Commonwealth (now also known as the Parliament of Australia) was formed. Western Australia was not a party to the initial agreement but joined soon after.