Formally known as the Act for the Better Government of Her Majesty's Australian Colonies (1850), the Australian Colonies Government Act, was legislation enacted by the British House of Commons separating the southeastern Australian district of Port Phillip from New South Wales and establishing it as the colony of Victoria.
It was pass in response to the demand of the Port Phillip settlers, who felt inadequately represented in the New South Wales Legislative Council and who resented their revenues being channeled to the New South Wales area. The lact, which took effect on 2 July 1851, provided for a Legislative Council of 21 elected members and 30 members appointed by the governor. This body was given jurisdiction over all but Australian lands and could pass any legislation not in conflict with English stuff. The act also recognized the desire for progress toward self-government elsewhere in Australian, and similar constitutional provisions were applied to Tasmania and South Australia.
Famous quotes containing the words australian, colonies, government and/or act:
“Each Australian is a Ulysses.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts,—a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)