The United Sates of America and Australia
have been friends and allies for many years, and the ties born of shared
hardships in war and shared cultural history are strong indeed.
An interesting but perhaps not well
known fact is that are some features of the two systems of government which are
surprisingly similar. I am not referring to the democratic nature of our two
systems, which is none-the-less true and something in which we both peoples can
take pride.
I have in mind the structure of our
elective legislatures, and in particular the influence that one (the U.S.)
had on the other (Australia).
Both our nations had their origin
as British colonies, or more correctly, groups of British colonies. In each
case the groups of colonies came together to form a new nation based on a
federal union of those colonies into a group of states making up one
independent country. The United States
was formed toward the end of the eighteenth century after the American
Revolution. Australia
was formed at the end of the nineteenth century by a more peaceful federation
movement. By then the British had learned that we pesky colonials are best not
messed with.
A major influence on Australian
thinking during the federation debates in the late nineteenth century was the
obvious success of the American Federal
Republic. Many Australians at the
time saw the American model as the one to follow. More conservative thinking
prevailed, and the final structure of our parliamentary system of government
largely copied that of the British parliament in Westminster.
Australia does,
however, have a House of Representatives and a Senate as the houses of its
parliament. The Senate was originally planned as a states house, and has a
fixed number of Senators elected from each state. The Senate, elected as a
States House, was modeled on the American example. The role of the Australian
Senate as a states house was taken so seriously that for the first sittings of
the Australian Parliament, the Senators from Western Australia
ignored their party allegiances and sat as a group representing their state.
Today, the party allegiances do tend to prevail.
Some commentators in Australia
have described the Australian system as the ‘Washminster’ system, so clearly can
the influences of both The United States and Great
Britain be seen.
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