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Bi-partisan Appointment Republican Model
{{Use Australian English, date=May 2018 The Bi-partisan appointment republican model is a proposal for Australian constitutional reform. If approved at referendum, the model would have established Australia as a republic with a Head of State appointed by the Australian Federal Parliament. The model was put to the people at the November 1999 republican referendum and was defeated by 54.4% of voters. Model details Under the model, nominations for the Head of State or President could have been made by any Australian citizen or group of citizens. These would have been received by a nominations committee established by Parliament. The committee would provide a report to the Prime Minister on the most suitable candidates for the position. The Prime Minister would select a candidate after securing support from the Leader of the Opposition. This ''bi-partisan'' part of the procedure gives the model its name. The formal appointment of the Head of State would have been made in a joint sitt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Constitutional Law
Australian constitutional law is the area of the law of Australia relating to the interpretation and application of the Constitution of Australia. Several major doctrines of Australian constitutional law have developed. Background Constitutional law in the Commonwealth of Australia consists mostly of that body of doctrine which interprets the Commonwealth Constitution. The Constitution itself is embodied in clause 9 of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1900 after its text had been negotiated in Australian Constitutional Conventions in the 1890s and approved by the voters in each of the Australian colonies. The British government did, however, insist on one change to the text, to allow a greater range of appeals to the Privy Council in London. It came into force on 1 January 1901, at which time the Commonwealth of Australia came into being. The Constitution created a framework of government some of whose main features ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
States And Territories Of Australia
The states and territories are federated administrative divisions in Australia, ruled by regional governments that constitute the second level of governance between the federal government and local governments. States are self-governing polities with incomplete sovereignty (having ceded some sovereign rights to federation) and have their own constitutions, legislatures, departments, and certain civil authorities (e.g. judiciary and law enforcement) that administer and deliver most public policies and programs. Territories can be autonomous and administer local policies and programs much like the states in practice, but are still constitutionally and financially subordinate to the federal government and thus have no true sovereignty. The Federation of Australia constitutionally consists of six federated states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia) and ten federal territories,Section 2B, Acts Interpretation Act 1901 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abstention
Abstention is a term in election procedure for when a participant in a vote either does not go to vote (on election day) or, in parliamentary procedure, is present during the vote, but does not cast a ballot. Abstention must be contrasted with "blank vote", in which a voter casts a ballot willfully made invalid by marking it wrongly or by not marking anything at all. A "blank (or white) voter" has voted, although their vote may be considered a spoilt vote, depending on each legislation, while an abstaining voter has not voted. Both forms (abstention and blank vote) may or may not, depending on the circumstances, be considered to be a protest vote (also known as a "blank vote" or "white vote"). An abstention may be used to indicate the voting individual's ambivalence about the measure, or mild disapproval that does not rise to the level of active opposition. Abstention can also be used when someone has a certain position about an issue, but since the popular sentiment supports ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Majority
A majority, also called a simple majority or absolute majority to distinguish it from related terms, is more than half of the total.Dictionary definitions of ''majority'' aMerriam-Webster Oxford English Dictionary an Cambridge English Dictionary It is a |
Australian Constitutional Convention 1998
The 1998 Australian Constitutional Convention was a Constitutional Convention which gathered at Old Parliament House, Canberra from 2 to 13 February 1998. It was called by the Howard Government to discuss whether Australia should become a republic. The convention concluded with "in principle support" for an Australian republic (with a dissenting minority voting for a continuation of the Australian constitutional monarchy) and proposed a model involving appointment of the head of state by Parliament.Vizard, Steve, ''Two Weeks in Lilliput: Bear Baiting and Backbiting At the Constitutional Convention'' (Penguin, 1998, ) The model was put to a referendum in November 1999 and rejected by the Australian electorate. Background Australia remains a constitutional monarchy under the Australian Constitution adopted in 1901, with the duties of the head of state performed by a Governor-General selected by the Australian Prime Minister. Australian republicanism has persisted since colo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Howard
John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the second-longest in history, behind only Sir Robert Menzies, who served for eighteen non-consecutive years. Howard was born in Sydney and studied law at the University of Sydney. He was a commercial lawyer before entering parliament. A former federal president of the Young Liberals, he first stood for office at the 1968 New South Wales state election, but lost narrowly. At the 1974 federal election, Howard was elected as a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Bennelong. He was promoted to cabinet in 1977, and later in the year replaced Phillip Lynch as treasurer of Australia, remaining in that position until the defeat of Malcolm Fraser's government at the 1983 election. In 1985, Howard was elected leader of the Liberal P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating (born 18 January 1944) is an Australian former politician and unionist who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He previously served as treasurer of Australia in the Hawke government from 1983 to 1991 and as deputy prime minister of Australia from 1990 to 1991. Keating was born in Sydney and left school at the age of 14. He joined the Labor Party at the same age, serving a term as State President of Young Labor and working as a research assistant for a trade union. He was elected to the Australian House of Representatives at the age of 25, winning the division of Blaxland at the 1969 election. Keating briefly served as Minister for Northern Australia from October to November 1975, in the final weeks of the Whitlam government. After the Dismissal removed Labor from power, he held senior portfolios in the Shadow Cabinets of Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden. Durin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malcolm Turnbull
Malcolm Bligh Turnbull (born 24 October 1954) is an Australian former politician and businessman who served as the 29th prime minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. Turnbull graduated from the University of Sydney as a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Laws, before attending Brasenose College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Bachelor of Civil Law degree. For more than two decades, he worked as a journalist, lawyer, merchant banker, and venture capitalist. He served as Chair of the Australian Republican Movement from 1993 to 2000, and was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful "Yes" campaign in the 1999 republic referendum. He was first elected to the Australian House of Representatives as a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Wentworth in New South Wales at the 2004 election, and was Minister for the Environment and Water in the Howard government from January 2007 until December 2007. After ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Republic Advisory Committee
The Republic Advisory Committee was a committee established by the then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating in April 1993 to examine the constitutional and legal issues that would arise were Australia to become a republic. The committee's mandate was to "prepare an options paper describing 'the minimum constitutional changes necessary to achieve a viable Federal Republic of Australia, maintaining the effect of our current conventions and principles of government'." The committee was asked to consider issues such as * a name for a new elected head of state; * the method of selection for the head of state; * what powers he or she should possess; * the constitutional amendments and legal changes required to replace the Queen of Australia and Her Representative, the Governor-General of Australia by an elected head of state. Republic Advisory Committee membership The Republic Advisory Committee submitted two Volumes (Volume I - The Options and Volume II - the Appendices) to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Australian Republican Movement
The Australian Republic Movement (ARM) is a non-party-partisan organisation campaigning for Australia to become a republic. ARM and its supporters have promoted various models of a republic including parliamentary republic and it is, again, reviewing its preferred model. As of 2017, ARM operated staffed campaign offices in Sydney and Canberra, and has branches active in all states and territories. Australia’s current head of state Australia has a common head of state with all the other Commonwealth realm nations. Australia’s constitution provided that, in 1901, the then monarch of the United Kingdom also became the monarch of Australia. The nations and their governments are independent with only a personal union in the person of the monarch. The Australian monarch is generally understood to be the head of state, although regal functions are ordinarily performed by an appointed governor-general and state governors. Chairs History Foundation The ARM was founded on 7 July ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Absolute Majority
A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fundamental rights of a minority, but they can also hamper efforts to respond to problems and encourage corrupt compromises in the times action is taken. Changes to constitutions, especially those with entrenched clauses, commonly require supermajority support in a legislature. Parliamentary procedure requires that any action of a deliberative assembly that may alter the rights of a minority have a supermajority requirement, such as a two-thirds vote. Related concepts regarding alternatives to the majority vote requirement include a majority of the entire membership and a majority of the fixed membership. A supermajority can also be specified based on the entire membership ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Winterton
George Graham Winterton (15 December 1946 – 6 November 2008) was an Australian academic specialising in Australian constitutional law. Winterton taught for 28 years at the University of New South Wales before taking up an appointment of Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney in 2004. Winterton served as a member of the Executive Government Advisory Committee of the Constitutional Commission from 1985 to 1987. Early life Winterton was born in Hong Kong on 15 December 1946. His parents, Rita and Walter, had married in Hong Kong after fleeing Austria shortly after the 1938 Nazi invasion. His father practised medicine in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong and, in May 1947, he and his family sailed to London on the ''MV Lorenz''. Walter having gained an English medical qualification, the Wintertons left Britain in 1948, arriving in Australia in November where Walter became a general practitioner in Western Australia, first at Pingelly, then Mount Hawthorn (North Pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
