POL10001 Australian Politics Assignment 3B Research essay Word/time limit: 2000 (+/- 10%) Weighting: 40% Due date: 5pm AEST Monday 07 June 2018 Assignment overview The purpose of this assignment is...

The political system in Australia
Introduction
The nation of Australia, officially came into existence in the year 1901, 1st of January. This was after it had been colonised by the United Kingdom from 1788, for more than a 100 years. From the British era itself, Australia consisted of 6 self-governing states, which was continued even after Australia became independent. By the 1890s, which was marking the end of the British era, the six colonies had joined hands and formed their own country, named Commonwealth of Australia. All the six colonies together voted for a federal system of government so the “federal of Australia” was born which is very close to federal system of the United States of America, but it also has a Westminster system of Parliament. Through the course of this essay, we will discuss the current political systems and models of this country which is also a continent, how the system has passed or failed to maintain a proper governing body and whether or not it will be able to sustain itself in the future times to come. It is basically a culmination of the content we have gone through along the duration of the course.
The theoretical model of Politics in Australia
Now this will be divided into 2 parts as Australia follows 2 different theories in its political system. One is definitely the federal system of government but the other is the Westminster system of parliament.
Federal System of Government- the Federal system of government or ‘federalism’ is a form of government where the powers of each state are vested into the central government and the individual state governments. It was originally started by the United States of America in their constitution in 1787 and one of its most differential factors is that equal power is vested to both the central or “federal” government and the governments of each state. It is essentially a mixed form of government. Apart from this, in most federations the power of foreign policies and the defence systems lies within the control of the central government. The same is the case with Australia. Some other leading countries following this form of government are Canada, United States of America, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland and India. It is essentially a mixed form of government. Also there are 2 forms of federalism- symmetrical and asymmetrical. Symmetrical is when the rules are the same for each individual state in the country, which is the case for Australia. But asymmetric is when some states are exempt from some rules while some states have different rules. India is one such example of asymmetric federalism. Now the reason why Australia did not necessarily go for the British form of government, and instead followed the American form may be cited to the fact that they had been ruled by their government for the past 122 years, and did not want to follow the same form of government. But they did actually take up their system of parliament, as was already prevalent in Australia before its freedom, which made the government easier to set itself up. Next we will discuss about the system of parliament in Australia.
Westminster System of Parliament- this system of parliament, as mentioned before was founded by the United Kingdom. It contrasts the parliamentary system followed by the United States. In many aspects, the parliament of Australia retains some features from both the parliaments of the United Kingdom and the United States. It is sometimes nicknamed as “The Washminster System” because of this. The country is different because it Senate or upper house is a fully elected one, vested with a lot of power. And although the lower house, the House of Representatives is also a formed government, it cannot function without the approval of the upper house. The head is always the...