Timeline of the expansion of federal powers in Australia

Last updated May 25, 2024

Federalism was adopted, as a constitutional principle, in Australia on 1 January 1901. Relatively few changes have been made to the formal constitution since Australian federation occurred; in practice, however, the Commonwealth government has increasingly assumed a position of pre-eminence in many areas of governance through the acquisition and negotiation of additional powers and responsibilities directly with the Australian states and territories.


Year	Powers	Comments
1901	Transfer of Customs Powers, Military and Postal services and creation of a bicameral Parliament.	Australia's 6 colonies federated on 1 January 1901.
1903	First sitting of the High Court of Australia	Debate over the formation of the court delayed the Judiciary Act until 1903, when it was passed on 25 August and three justices appointed. The first sitting took place on 3 October 1903. On 12 October 1906, the size of the High Court was increased to five Justices, and an additional two in 1913.
1907	Takeover of the weather bureau and forecasts
1910	Imposition of a Commonwealth Land Tax	Land Tax Assessment Act 1910^[1]
1910	First Australian ambassador appointed	Sir George Reid was sent to London as Australia's first ambassador.
1911	Commonwealth control over the lighthouses
1911	Creation of the Federal Capital Territory	The territory is separated from New South Wales.
1911	Transfer of the Northern Territory from South Australia to the Commonwealth	Negotiations for the transfer commenced in 1901, leading to South Australia passing the Northern Territory Surrender Act 1908. Reciprocal legislation from the federal parliament, the Northern Territory (Administration) Act was defeated in 1909, and passed in 1910. The transfer took place on 1 January 1911.
1911	Compulsory electoral enrolment for all Australians
1912	First foreign loan raised	The Commonwealth raised a foreign loan of a million pounds to build Australia House in London.
1914	Levy on estate duties
1915	Federal Income Tax	Federal income tax was first introduced in 1915, as a wartime measure to help fund Australia's war effort in the First World War. Between 1915 and 1942, income taxes were levied by both State governments and the federal government.
1923	Australian Loan Council	The Loan Council is an Australian Commonwealth-State ministerial council that was formed in May 1923 to coordinates public sector borrowing and to avoid Australian governments competing against each other for capital funds.
1924	Compulsory voting introduced for the first time	First used in the 14 November 1925 elections. Participation rate increased from 60% in the previous election to 91%.
1927	Financial Agreement between the Commonwealth and the States	State government borrowing brought under federal government control.
1933	Commonwealth Grants Commission	The Commission recommends how the revenues raised from taxes should be distributed to the states and territories to achieve horizontal fiscal equalisation (HFE).
1942	Federal monopoly on the raising of Income Tax.	Achieved by providing financial grants to states (using the section 96 grants power), on the condition that they did not collect their own income taxes.
1964	Capital funding for schools introduced	The States Grants (Science Laboratories and Technical Training) Act 1964 was the first time the Commonwealth government directly funded schools.
1967	Power to make special laws for Aboriginal people	A constitutional amendment is carried giving the Commonwealth power to make special laws for Aborigines living in the States and to include indigenous peoples in the national census.
1968	Limitation placed upon appeals to the Privy Council.	Appeals to the Privy Council from other federal courts and territory supreme courts are abolished.
1969	Commencement of recurring funding for Catholic schools	States Grants (Independent Schools) Act 1969 introduced recurrent funding for students in Catholic schools. From 1973, these grants were fixed at a rate equivalent to 20 per cent of the cost of educating a child in a government school.
1971	Transfer of payroll taxes from Commonwealth to state governments.	The devolution of the power to levy payroll taxes from the Commonwealth to the states in 1971.
1974	States Grants (Urban Public Transport) Act	Introduction of Commonwealth funding for urban public transport in major Australian cities.
1986	The Australia Act officially confirms Australian independence from Britain.	Removal of Britain's power to legislate for any part of Australia and ends all appeals to the Privy Council.
1996	National Firearms Agreement	This gun control agreement between state governments was negotiated and implemented by the federal government. The federal government has leverage over state governments through its control over the importation of guns, whilst state governments regulate their use. The federal government funded the buyback of guns through a medicare levy.
1999	Introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST)
1999	Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999	Established a requirements to obtain approval from the Commonwealth Environmental Minister for actions likely to have a significant impact on matters of national environmental significance. This included flora, fauna, ecological communities and heritage.^[2]
2009	Creation of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority	Develops the national curriculum.
2013	National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013	Introduction of national scheme to support Australians with disability jointly governed and funded by the states and Commonwealth, with the exception of Western Australia, which retains state control over the NDIS within their jurisdiction.^[3]

Related Research Articles

The Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of the Parliament of England that set out certain basic civil rights and clarified who would be next to inherit the Crown. It remains a crucial statute in English constitutional law.

The Parliament of Australia is the legislative body of the federal level of government of Australia. It consists of three elements: the monarch, the Senate and the House of Representatives. It combines elements from the UK Parliament and the US Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Daglish</span> Australian politician (1866–1920)

Henry Daglish was an Australian politician who was the sixth premier of Western Australia and the first from the Labor Party, serving from 10 August 1904 to 25 August 1905. Daglish was born in Ballarat, Victoria, and studied at the University of Melbourne. In 1882, he worked as a mechanical engineer but soon switched to working in the Victorian public service. He first stood for election in 1896 but failed to win the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Melbourne South. He then moved to Subiaco, Western Australia, where he found work as a chief clerk in the Western Australian Police Department. In 1900, Daglish was elected to the Subiaco Municipal Council and in April the following year, he was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly as the member for the newly created seat of Subiaco, becoming one of six Labor members in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly. The party elected him as its whip, and he resigned from the Subiaco council on 1 May 1901. On 1 December 1902, Daglish was sworn in as mayor of Subiaco, having been elected the previous month.

A property tax is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is an Australian statutory agency and the principal revenue collection body for the Australian Government. The ATO has responsibility for administering the Australian federal taxation system, superannuation legislation, and other associated matters. Responsibility for the operations of the ATO are within the portfolio of the Treasurer of Australia and the Treasury.

The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of the Commonwealth of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The executive government consists of the prime minister and other ministers that currently have the support of a majority of members of the House of Representatives and in some contexts also includes the departments and other executive bodies that ministers oversee. The current executive government consists of Anthony Albanese and other Australian Labor Party ministers, in place since the 2022 federal election.

The second question of the 1967 Australian referendum of 27 May 1967, called by the Holt government, related to Indigenous Australians. Voters were asked whether to give the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make special laws for Indigenous Australians in states, and whether Indigenous Australians should be included in official population counts for constitutional purposes. The term "the Aboriginal Race" was used in the question.

In Australia, referendums are public votes held on important issues where the electorate may approve or reject a certain proposal. In contemporary usage, polls conducted on non-constitutional issues are known as plebiscites, with the term referendum being reserved solely for votes on constitutional changes, which is legally required to make a change to the Constitution of Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">People's Budget</span> 1910 British legislation to fund social welfare programmes by taxing the rich

The 1909/1910 People's Budget was a proposal of the Liberal government that introduced unprecedented taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's wealthy to fund new social welfare programmes. It passed the House of Commons in 1909 but was blocked by the House of Lords for a year and became law in April 1910.

Forty-shilling freeholders were those who had the parliamentary franchise to vote by virtue of possessing freehold property, or lands held directly of the king, of an annual rent of at least forty shillings, clear of all charges.

The politics of Australia operates under the written Australian Constitution, which sets out Australia as a constitutional monarchy, governed via a parliamentary democracy in the Westminster tradition. Australia is also a federation, where power is divided between the federal government and the states and territories. The monarch, currently King Charles III, is the head of state and is represented locally by the Governor-General of Australia, while the head of government is the Prime Minister of Australia, currently Anthony Albanese.

Birmingham was a parliamentary constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for the city of Birmingham, in what is now the West Midlands Metropolitan County, but at the time was Warwickshire.

The Convention Parliament of England followed the Long Parliament that had finally voted for its own dissolution on 16 March that year. Elected as a "free parliament", i.e. with no oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth or to the monarchy, it was predominantly Royalist in its membership. It assembled for the first time on 25 April 1660.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Constitution of Australia</span> Supreme law of Australia

The Constitution of Australia is the fundamental law that governs the political structure of Australia. It is a written constitution, that establishes the country as a federation under a constitutional monarchy governed with a parliamentary system. Its eight chapters sets down the structure and powers of the three constituent parts of the federal level of government: the Parliament, the executive government and the judicature.

Section 96 of the Constitution of Australia authorises the Australian (Commonwealth) Parliament to grant financial assistance to any state on the terms and conditions that it sees fit, subject to acceptance by the state(s) concerned. The expanded use of the power under section 96 has added to Australia's vertical fiscal imbalance and enabled the Commonwealth to have a significant influence over matters that would otherwise be constitutionally State responsibilities.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate is the government's most senior cabinet minister in the Australian Senate and the main government spokesperson in the Senate. His or her Opposition counterpart is the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate.

Thomas Bridson Cribb was a politician in Queensland, Australia. He was a Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly and the Queensland Legislative Council.

The Land Tax Act 1910(Cth) and the related Land Tax Assessment Act 1910(Cth) were Acts of the Parliament of Australia which imposed a progressive land tax on the unimproved value of land. They were enacted in November 1910 by the Fisher Labour Government intent on breaking up a number of very large holdings of underutilised, arable land that was secured during the colonial period.

Ali Curung is an Indigenous Australian community in the Barkly Region of the Northern Territory. The community is located 170 km (106 mi) south of Tennant Creek, and 378 km (235 mi) north of Alice Springs. At the 2021 census, the community had a population of 394.

References

↑ Land Tax Assessment Act 1910-1911 and index. Law Book Company of Australasia. 1912. p. 1. An Act relating to the Imposition, Assessment, and Collection of a Land Tax upon Unimproved Values. (Assented to 17th November, 1910).
↑ Power, Sophie (8 May 2019). "Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999: a quick guide". Parliament of Australia. Parliamentary Library. Archived from the original on 5 March 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023.
↑ Buckmaster, Luke (3 March 2017). "The National Disability Insurance Scheme: a quick guide". Parliament of Australia. Parliamentary Library.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Land Tax Assessment Act 1910-1911 and index. Law Book Company of Australasia. 1912. p. 1. An Act relating to the Imposition, Assessment, and Collection of a Land Tax upon Unimproved Values. (Assented to 17th November, 1910).

[2] Power, Sophie (8 May 2019). "Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999: a quick guide". Parliament of Australia. Parliamentary Library. Archived from the original on 5 March 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023.

[3] Buckmaster, Luke (3 March 2017). "The National Disability Insurance Scheme: a quick guide". Parliament of Australia. Parliamentary Library.

[1]

[2]

[3]