Premiers of The Australian States - Background

Background

Each of the Australian states is governed under the Westminster system of parliamentary government. Each state has an elected legislature. Following a General Election, the State Governor appoints as Premier the Member of the lower house of the State legislature who can command a simple majority of votes on the floor of the house. The Governor is the head of Government, but in practice acts only on the advice of the Premier. The Premier must resign his or her commission and seals of office to the Governor if he or she loses the confidence of the Legislative Assembly, either because his or her party is defeated at a General Election or because he or she loses a vote of confidence in the house. (Premiers may also resign for other reasons, such as losing the confidence of their own party).

The Australian states were originally founded as British colonies, and executive power was held by a Governor (or sometimes a Lieutenant-Governor) appointed by the British Government (see Governors of the Australian states). From the 1820s the power of the Governors was gradually transferred to legislative bodies, at first appointed, later partly elected, and finally fully elected. Victoria gained full responsible parliamentary government in 1855, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania in 1856, Queensland in 1859 and Western Australia (owing to its much smaller population) in 1890.

Until the rise of the Australian Labor Party in the 1890s, the Australian colonies did not have formal party systems, although many colonial politicians called themselves Liberals or Conservatives. Ministries were usually formed on the basis of personal or factional loyalties, and rose and fell with great frequency as loyalties changed. Colonial politics were commonly regarded as parochial, corrupt and cynical, and in many cases they were. Victorian Premier James Munro, for example, fled the colony to escape his creditors in 1890, and Queensland Premier Sir Thomas McIlwraith was notoriously corrupt.

The rise of Labor forced the colonies to move towards a two-party system of Labor versus non-Labor, although state politics remained more personalised and less ideological than national politics for many years. The first minority Labor government was formed by Anderson Dawson in Queensland in 1899, and the first majority Labor government was led by James McGowen in New South Wales in 1910. Since about 1910 state politics have followed much the same party pattern as Australian national politics (see Politics of Australia).

Since 1952, every premier of every state has been a member of the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, or the National Party of Australia (until 1973, the Liberal Party was known as the Liberal and Country League in South Australia; the Country Liberal Party is the Northern Territory branch of the Liberal and National Parties; and the Liberal National Party has been the Queensland branch of the same two parties since 2008).

Although the legislative powers of the states are defined in the Constitution, the real power of the Australian Premiers has been declining steadily ever since Federation in 1901, as the power and responsibility of the national government has expanded at the expense of the states. The most important transfer of power came in 1943, when in the interests of national unity during World War II the states gave up their power to levy their own income taxes to the Commonwealth. Since then the states' finances have essentially been controlled by the Commonwealth.