I’ve decided to transfer this thread from another place to this place because I sincerely believe that without a well-informed shooting fraternity the chances of us making any headway are zero.
The purpose is to give interested shooters a fundamental understanding of how Australia’s political system works. The idea is to keep matters as straightforward as possible. There’s no prior knowledge required and things will be presented in easy steps that should only take a few minutes to read each time.
Feel free to raise questions.
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Australia started as a series of independent colonies. Each colony had its own particular interests and by the time anyone got around to seriously talking about forming a new country (the late 1800’s) each colony had its own elected parliamentarians and basically functioned as a little 'proto-state' answerable only to the British Crown.
Towards the end of the 1800’s a few outspoken individuals started saying that all the colonies shared a common economic interest (at the time it was wool, wheat etc.) and a common heritage (I'm not sure the Aborigines would have agreed with that) and that they’d all be better off if they joined together under a ‘Commonwealth’ with an overarching Federal government.
At the time the only model for a new country they could think of was based on the British ‘Westminster’ system where the whole place would be divided up into sections (electorates) with roughly the same number of people in each section – each electorate voting for one person to represent them.
It didn’t take the smaller colonies long to work out that most of the people lived in New South Wales and Victoria. So if they went with a purely Westminster system most of the voting power would end up being in Sydney and Melbourne and the folks there were likely to vote for things in their best interests, which meant the little (population wise) colonies might end up getting shafted.
The answer was to look for a system that would give the smaller colonies an equal say without throwing the whole Westminster idea out the window. The best compromise they could come up with was the United States’ senatorial arrangement. So they began thinking about a House of Representatives based on a series of electorates with roughly equal numbers of voters (the Westminster system) and another chamber with (almost) equal powers where all the colonies could have an identical say – a Senate.
To be continued . . . .
The purpose is to give interested shooters a fundamental understanding of how Australia’s political system works. The idea is to keep matters as straightforward as possible. There’s no prior knowledge required and things will be presented in easy steps that should only take a few minutes to read each time.
Feel free to raise questions.
______________________________
Australia started as a series of independent colonies. Each colony had its own particular interests and by the time anyone got around to seriously talking about forming a new country (the late 1800’s) each colony had its own elected parliamentarians and basically functioned as a little 'proto-state' answerable only to the British Crown.
Towards the end of the 1800’s a few outspoken individuals started saying that all the colonies shared a common economic interest (at the time it was wool, wheat etc.) and a common heritage (I'm not sure the Aborigines would have agreed with that) and that they’d all be better off if they joined together under a ‘Commonwealth’ with an overarching Federal government.
At the time the only model for a new country they could think of was based on the British ‘Westminster’ system where the whole place would be divided up into sections (electorates) with roughly the same number of people in each section – each electorate voting for one person to represent them.
It didn’t take the smaller colonies long to work out that most of the people lived in New South Wales and Victoria. So if they went with a purely Westminster system most of the voting power would end up being in Sydney and Melbourne and the folks there were likely to vote for things in their best interests, which meant the little (population wise) colonies might end up getting shafted.
The answer was to look for a system that would give the smaller colonies an equal say without throwing the whole Westminster idea out the window. The best compromise they could come up with was the United States’ senatorial arrangement. So they began thinking about a House of Representatives based on a series of electorates with roughly equal numbers of voters (the Westminster system) and another chamber with (almost) equal powers where all the colonies could have an identical say – a Senate.
To be continued . . . .
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