Government Structure

How the nation is governed-the shape of power, who holds it, and the checks that constrain it-within the ordered-liberty frame and Bill of Rights supremacy described in Foundational Values.

Key Takeaways

Australia today is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy with Westminster-style fusion of executive and legislature; the new model is a federal republic with strict separation of powers.
The 1901 Constitution is hard to amend and lacks a comprehensive bill of rights; the proposal is a plainly written supreme constitution with an entrenched Bill of Rights and a defined (still demanding) referendum process.
Parliament would stay bicameral but the executive could no longer sit in either house; the Senate would gain real confirmation power over senior appointments.
States, territories, and local government are reframed around subsidiarity and explicit constitutional protection for local government against unilateral abolition by states.
Judicial review, fixed-term or good-behaviour judges with Senate confirmation, and non-delegation of core legislative power aim to make checks on power structural rather than conventional.
The permanent administrative state-agencies, commissions, and departments that outlast any elected government-would be brought under genuine democratic control through at-will senior appointments, mandatory agency reauthorisation, narrow mandates, transparency, and a constitutional principle that no institution may claim authority independent of the elected branches that created it.

Current Australia

New Australia

🏛️ System of Government

Australia is a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy: the Crown is head of state, while the Prime Minister and Cabinet exercise executive power subject to controlling the House of Representatives.

Form of government: Federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy.
Head of state: The British monarch (currently King Charles III), represented federally by the Governor-General and in each state by Governors.
Executive power: Exercised by the Prime Minister and Cabinet, who must command a majority in the House of Representatives.

🏛️ System of Government

A federal constitutional republic with sovereignty in the people: a directly elected President is head of state and head of government within strict constitutional limits, appoints a Cabinet, and no executive may sit in the legislature-a genuine separation of powers.

Sovereignty: Resides explicitly in the people.
Head of state and government: A directly elected President with powers strictly limited by the constitution.
Cabinet: Appointed by the President to execute laws.
Legislature: No member of the executive branch may sit in parliament-separating law-making from the executive in a way the Westminster model does not.

Why this is better

Democratic mandate: Under the monarchy, Australia's head of state is a hereditary foreign monarch with no democratic mandate from Australians.
Governor-General: Reserve powers operate with little transparency or direct accountability.
Republic: Vests legitimacy directly in the people; an elected President accountable to voters, constrained by a written constitution rather than convention, addresses the fusion of powers inherent in the Westminster model.

Implementation

🗳️ Referendum

Levels 🏛️ Federal

Affects

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (Chapters I-III)
Australia Act 1986
Governor-General's reserve powers and Letters Patent

Constitutional referendum to replace the monarchy with an elected presidency and restructure executive power; repeal or amendment of the Australia Act 1986. Presupposes adoption of the new written constitution (see The Constitution section below), which provides the constitutional framework within which the republic is established.

📜 The Constitution

The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK) founded the federation on 1 January 1901; amendments need a double majority referendum, and only 8 of 45 proposals have passed in over 120 years.

Founding statute: Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK), establishing the federation on 1 January 1901.
Amendment rule: Referendum requiring a "double majority"-a national majority of voters and a majority in at least four of the six states.
Difficulty: In over 120 years, only 8 of 45 proposed amendments have passed-among the hardest constitutions in the world to change.

📜 The Constitution

A new, modern, plainly written constitution is the supreme law of the land: every statute, regulation, and executive act must conform or be void, with an entrenched Bill of Rights, a defined referendum threshold, and plain-language drafting.

Supremacy: Supreme law of the land-every statute, regulation, and executive action must conform or be void.
Bill of Rights: Explicit and entrenched, binding all levels of government.
Amendments: National referendum requiring a two-thirds majority of voters and approval by at least five of the six states.
Accessibility: Plain-language drafting so citizens can understand the foundational rules of society.

Why this is better

1901 text: A remarkable achievement for its time, but archaic language, no comprehensive bill of rights, and heavy reliance on implied freedoms the High Court has sometimes declined to recognise.
Frozen constitution: The near-impossible amendment threshold (only 8 of 45 proposals have succeeded) has left it frozen in a colonial era.
Reform direction: A readable constitution with an entrenched Bill of Rights gives clear, judicially enforceable protections instead of relying on parliamentary self-restraint.

In context

Peer

AU referendum pass rate 8 of 45 (~18%)

Switzerland holds ~10 federal referenda per year and passes roughly half; the US has ratified 27 constitutional amendments since 1788. AU's double-majority hurdle sits at the extreme end of amendment difficulty.

reviewed 2026-04-19
Precedent

Germany's Basic Law

Written in 1949 as plain-language supreme law with an entrenched bill of rights (Grundrechte) judicially enforceable against all levels of government. Amended many times by supermajority without collapsing into instability — the closest live model for what this section proposes.

reviewed 2026-04-19
Reframe

Years since last successful federal referendum ~49 (1977)

The most recent constitutional amendment by referendum was the 1977 retirement-age and casual-vacancy package. Every referendum since has failed; the operative rigidity of s 128 sits less in the text than in the political culture that has accreted around the double-majority requirement.

reviewed 2026-04-19

Implementation

🗳️ Referendum

Levels 🏛️ Federal 🏢 State

Affects

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (entire instrument)
Australia Act 1986
Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942

Adoption of a new written constitution via referendum or constitutional convention; the existing 1901 Act would be superseded in its entirety. Each state constitution then requires conforming amendments - enacted by state parliaments and, where required by state constitutional procedure, by state referendum - to bring state-level instruments into line with the new federal framework. The constitutional text must embody the objective founding principles established under Foundational Values, which supply the philosophical framework the new instrument codifies.

Requires Foundational Values

🏦 Federal Parliament

Bicameral federal parliament: the House of Representatives (151 members, preferential voting, majority forms government) and the Senate (76 senators, proportional representation) as a house of review.

House of Representatives: 151 members elected from single-member electorates using preferential (instant-runoff) voting; the party or coalition with a majority forms government.
Senate: 76 senators (12 per state, 2 per territory) elected by proportional representation (single transferable vote); acts as a house of review.

🏦 Federal Parliament

Still bicameral, but separated from the executive: House originates revenue and appropriations; Senate has equal state representation and confirms senior judicial and executive appointments; no executive may hold a seat in either chamber.

House of Representatives: Members from single-member districts, preferential voting; originates all revenue and appropriation bills.
Senate: Equal representation per state (12 senators each, regardless of population) to protect smaller states; confirms senior judicial and executive appointments.
Executive exclusion: No member of the executive branch may hold a seat in either chamber.

Why this is better

Westminster fusion: The Prime Minister and Cabinet sit inside Parliament; strong party discipline means the executive effectively controls the legislature, turning backbenchers into rubber stamps.
Reform: Barring executive officials from legislative seats forces each branch to negotiate with the other.
Senate: Gains real confirmation power over appointments rather than deferring to the Prime Minister.

Implementation

🗳️ Referendum

Levels 🏛️ Federal

Affects

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, ss 1-60 (The Parliament)
Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918

Constitutional referendum to restructure parliamentary powers, bar executive members from holding seats, and entrench Senate confirmation of senior appointments. These structural changes are enacted as part of the new constitution (see The Constitution section); they cannot be adopted piecemeal under the existing 1901 instrument.

Requires Government Structure › 📜 The Constitution

🏘️ State & Local Government

Six states and two self-governing territories each have their own constitution, parliament, and courts; local councils sit under state law (planning, roads, waste); no federal constitutional recognition of local government.

States and territories: Six states and two self-governing territories, each with its own constitution, parliament, and court system.
Local government: Operates under state legislation on matters such as planning, roads, and waste.
Federal gap: No constitutional recognition of local government at the federal level.

🏘️ State & Local Government

The constitution embeds subsidiarity (states keep powers not delegated to the federation), requires state constitutions to conform to the federal Bill of Rights, and gives local government explicit constitutional recognition and protected autonomy over local affairs.

Subsidiarity: States retain all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government.
State constitutions: Must conform to the federal Bill of Rights while retaining sovereignty within their sphere.
Local government: Explicit constitutional recognition and protected autonomy over local affairs.
Fiscal independence: States receive a constitutionally guaranteed share of consumption-tax revenue and may levy a capped land-value tax as own-source revenue, ensuring subsidiarity is backed by financial autonomy-see Economics & Taxation for the full fiscal federalism framework.

Why this is better

Centralisation: Over decades, power has shifted from states to Canberra via tied grants, GST revenue distribution, and expansive judicial readings of corporations and external affairs powers.
Local vulnerability: Local government has zero constitutional protection and can be abolished or overridden by state parliaments at will.
Reform: Subsidiarity and constitutional recognition of local government help prevent further centralisation and keep governance close to the people affected.

Implementation

🗳️ Referendum

Levels 🏛️ Federal 🏢 State 🏘️ Local

Affects

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900, ss 106-120 (The States)
State constitutions (all six states)
Local Government Acts (state legislation in each jurisdiction)

Constitutional referendum to embed subsidiarity, require state constitutions to conform to the federal Bill of Rights, and grant local government explicit constitutional recognition and protected autonomy. Requires the new constitution (see The Constitution) and the entrenched Bill of Rights (see Individual Rights) to be in place first, since state conformity provisions reference that Bill of Rights as the binding standard.

⚖️ Separation of Powers

The Constitution assigns roles to legislature, executive (Governor-General on ministerial advice), and judiciary, but Westminster practice fuses executive and legislature, weakening separation compared to presidential systems.

Three branches on paper: Legislative (Parliament), executive (Governor-General acting on ministerial advice), judicial (High Court and federal courts).
Westminster reality: The executive is drawn from and dependent on the legislature-the fusion of powers-which weakens separation relative to presidential systems.

⚖️ Separation of Powers

A strict separation of powers on a republican model: legislature makes law without delegating core authority; President and Cabinet enforce law independently; courts interpret with long terms or good behaviour, Senate confirmation, and explicit judicial review-with checks and balances so no branch dominates.

Legislative (Congress/Parliament): Makes law; cannot delegate its core legislative authority to the executive.
Executive (President and Cabinet): Enforces law; elected or appointed independently of the legislature; limited to executing laws-cannot issue decrees with the force of legislation.
Judicial (Supreme Court and inferior courts): Interprets the Constitution and laws; judges long fixed terms (or good behaviour) with Senate confirmation; explicit power of judicial review.
Balance: Robust checks and balances so no single branch dominates.

Why this is better

Fusion problem: Westminster fusion lets the executive-drawn from and accountable chiefly to the parliamentary majority-dominate both law-making and law-enforcement; party discipline further weakens legislative independence.
Strict separation: Forces negotiation between independent branches, subjects all government action to genuine judicial review, and builds structural accountability the current model undermines.

Implementation

🗳️ Referendum

Levels 🏛️ Federal

Affects

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (Chapters I-III)
Westminster conventions on ministerial responsibility

Constitutional referendum to establish strict separation of powers on a republican model with explicit judicial review, non-delegation of core legislative authority, and independent branches. Enacted within the new constitutional framework (see The Constitution); separation of powers is a structural prerequisite for the administrative-state reforms, delegated-legislation limits, and judicial-review provisions that follow.

🏢 The Administrative State

A permanent public service of over 150,000 federal employees, plus dozens of independent agencies and commissions, exercises vast regulatory, investigative, and quasi-judicial power-while ministers cycle through portfolios every few years and lack the institutional memory, staffing, or legal tools to direct the machine they nominally control.

Scale and permanence: The Australian Public Service (APS) and its state equivalents employ hundreds of thousands of permanent officials whose tenure far outlasts any elected government; institutional culture, standard operating procedures, and inter-agency networks persist across electoral cycles.
Independent bodies: Agencies like the eSafety Commissioner, the Fair Work Commission, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the ACCC, APRA, ASIC, the TGA, and numerous statutory authorities combine rule-making, enforcement, and adjudication-quasi-legislative, executive, and judicial functions-within single bodies that sit outside the traditional three branches.
Information asymmetry: Departments control the briefing papers, data, and institutional knowledge on which ministers depend; a minister who arrives with a reform mandate must rely on the very officials whose programs may be targeted for change.
Career protections: Public-service employment law and conventions make it extraordinarily difficult to dismiss, reassign, or restructure around senior officials who resist policy direction-even when that direction carries a democratic mandate.
Mandate drift: Bodies created for narrow purposes expand their scope over time (e.g. the eSafety Commissioner's reach into general content moderation, or the AHRC's shift from complaint handling to political advocacy) with little formal parliamentary reauthorisation.
Self-identification with democracy: Institutions that accumulate enough power, expertise, and self-regard can come to treat their own survival and authority as synonymous with "the system"-so that an elected leader who challenges them is framed as threatening democracy rather than exercising it.

🏢 The Administrative State

The elected executive has genuine constitutional authority to direct, reorganise, and reduce the bureaucracy; senior officials serve at the pleasure of the President; every agency exercising significant public power requires periodic parliamentary reauthorisation; and no institution of government may claim authority independent of the elected branches that created it.

Executive authority over the public service: The President and Cabinet have clear constitutional authority to direct departments, set priorities, reorganise agencies, and dismiss senior officials who refuse lawful direction-because the people's mandate flows through elected leaders, not through permanent officeholders.
At-will senior appointments: Department secretaries, agency heads, and senior executive equivalents serve at the pleasure of the elected executive, subject to Senate confirmation for the most significant roles; career protections apply to the working-level public service, not to the leadership layer that sets institutional direction.
Agency reauthorisation: Every statutory authority, commission, and independent agency must be reauthorised by Parliament at fixed intervals (no longer than ten years); an agency whose authorisation lapses loses its legal powers and funding until Parliament acts-forcing regular democratic scrutiny of whether each body still serves the public interest.
Narrow and defined mandates: Agencies may exercise only the powers expressly granted by their enabling statute; any expansion of scope requires new primary legislation, not internal reinterpretation or mission creep.
No autonomous authority: A constitutional principle: no institution of government may claim authority that is immune from, or co-equal with, the elected branches that created it. Administrative power is always delegated, always conditional, and always revocable by the people's representatives.
Transparency: All significant administrative decisions, policy guidance, and inter-agency directives must be documented with reasons and made available to Parliament and the public; no "government within government" operating behind classification or procedural opacity.
Integrity and incentive alignment: The structural controls above are complemented by a comprehensive integrity regime covering post-office cooling-off periods, financial disclosure, lobbying transparency, a constitutionally entrenched anti-corruption commission, term limits, and incentives to attract genuine public servants-see Public Integrity for the full framework.

Why this is better

Democracy's quiet competitor: The most immediate threat to self-government in mature democracies is not invasion or revolution but the slow transfer of real power from elected representatives to permanent institutions that outlast, outwait, and outmanoeuvre any government that tries to change direction.
Self-serving framing: When institutions accumulate enough power they begin to treat their own authority as the thing democracy protects-so that an elected outsider who challenges them is cast as a threat to "norms" or "the rule of law" rather than as the democratic will of the people. This inversion-where the institution claims democratic legitimacy over the actual democratic mandate-is precisely what constitutional self-government exists to prevent.
Structural, not personal: The problem is not that public servants are bad people; it is that institutions without structural accountability inevitably prioritise their own survival, funding, and authority. The same logic that demands checks on elected power demands checks on permanent institutional power.
Existing remedies, applied consistently: Sunset clauses, non-delegation, separation of powers, transparency, and executive authority over the bureaucracy are not new ideas-they are the same principles the rest of this manifesto applies to every other concentration of power. The administrative state is simply the concentration most often exempted from scrutiny because it presents itself as neutral expertise rather than as a power centre with interests of its own.

Implementation

📜 Legislation

Levels 🏛️ Federal 🏢 State

Affects

Public Service Act 1999
Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013
Enabling statutes for independent agencies (e.g. ASIC Act, APRA Act, Competition and Consumer Act 2010)
Legislation Act 2003 (delegated legislation framework)

Primarily legislative reform: amending the Commonwealth Public Service Act 1999 and agency enabling statutes to establish at-will senior appointments, mandatory reauthorisation, and narrow mandates; state parliaments pass parallel amendments to their own public-sector and public-administration Acts so state agencies sit under the same principles. The constitutional no-autonomous-authority principle itself is handled by the separation-of-powers section (see Separation of Powers above), which is already listed as a prerequisite; this section therefore proceeds primarily by ordinary legislation once that structural foundation is in place.

Requires Government Structure › ⚖️ Separation of Powers

Sources

Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act - Federal Register of Legislation · accessed 2026-04-12
Parliament of Australia - Infosheet 20: The Australian system of government · accessed 2026-04-12
Parliament of Australia - Senate Powers · accessed 2026-04-12
High Court of Australia - Role of the High Court · accessed 2026-04-12
Australian Local Government Association - About local government · accessed 2026-04-12