History
Prior to 1901, Australia was a collection of colonies answerable to the United Kingdom. The oldest among these, New South Wales, had been established in 1788. With Federation in 1901, a new entity, the Commonwealth of Australia, was created by an Act of the British Parliament. The system of government for the Commonwealth was a federation, with a federal, Commonwealth government being the national government. The former colonies were converted into States, sub-national sovereign entities whose governments retained plenary power within their own territories, except where power has been assigned to the Commonwealth by the Constitution. Some of the non-integral territories of the former colonies, such as the Northern Territory of South Australia, were handed over to the Commonwealth. The Constitution also provided for the power of the federal government to create further territories in future.
Read more about this topic: Australian Governments
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)