System of government and education

The constitution of Australia may be described as a mixture of the constitutional forms of the United Kingdom and the United States. Like the United Kingdom, it is a monarchy, and the British king is the king or queen of Australia. As in the United Kingdom, also, the governments of the Commonwealth of Australia and of the Australian states are chosen from the majority party in their parliaments. Like the United States however, Australia is a federation and the duties of the federal government and division of powers between the Commonwealth and the states are laid down in a written constitution. The constitution can be altered only by a referendum that gains the consent of majority of all the electors and a majority in at least of the six states, as well as majorities in both federal houses. Disputes arising out of the constitution are decided by the High Court of Australia.

Although the monarch of Britain is also the monarch of Australia, the country is essentially independent. The functions of the present queen have been regarded as almost entirely formal and decorative and, except when she is in Australia, are exercised by a governor-general who resides in Canberra by the state governors. Although the governor-general and the governors are formally appointed by the monarch, they are invariably recommended by the Australian governments, and in recent years there has been a growing tendency to choose Australians. By convention, the prime minister is the nation`s chief executive as in Britain.

The constitution defines the form and duties of the federal government in some detail. The most important of these are defence, foreign policy, immigration, customs and excise, and the post office. Those powers not given to federal government in the constitution are left to the states: they are responsible for justice, education, health, and internal transport. Canberra is an exception to this, however. It is unique in Australia in that it is governed not by a City Council, but a 17-member Legislative Assembly that performs all the functions normally done by both state governments and local governments. The Assembly governs the entire ACT, however, since virtually the entire ACT`s population is based in Canberra, the terms “ACT Government” and “Canberra Government” are largely interchangeable.

Australia is a true parliamentary democracy. Both the federal upper house and the lower house are directly elected by universal adult suffrage, with a minimum voting age of 18. All state lower houses are similarly elected. Voting in both federal and state elections is compulsory.

The governments of the States and Territories manage all aspects of education except for the university sector. The Federal government is responsible for the total funding of higher education and provides supplementary funding to the States. Basic literacy rates are high, and school attendance is compulsory throughout Australia between the ages of 6 and 15 years. Most children begin primary school at about 5 years of age. More than half of the secondary school students remain until the end of year 12 and more than two-thirds remain until the end of year 11. Almost three-quarters of Australian children attend free government schools. The rest attend fee-paying non-government schools monitored by government authorities. Most of the private sector institutions are government-assisted Roman Catholic schools and ethic schools such as the Ukrainian schools. Secondary-school curricula tend to focus on compulsory cores of traditional subjects coupled with a generous list of options or electives. Foreign languages have not been well represented, despite the continuous rhetoric about multiculturalism and several ethnic groups have felt obliged to organize independent programs, although, in the late 980-s the federal government began promoting the teaching of Asian languages, especially Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese. Other areas to be favoured are applied science and technology and computer literacy. Higher education is provided in self-governing universities and colleges of higher education. Some 650000 students were enrolled in higher-education institutions in 1998 with 147130 international students coming to the country.

The original state-sponsored system guaranteed and even spread of universities, and it is still unusual for undergraduates to attend universities outside their home states. Most of the older public universities were founded in the colonial era and all were established before World War I. The complete list of Universities today is: Australian National University, Canberra, University of Adelaide, South Australia, University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of New South Wales, University of Queensland. These universities are known as the Group of Eight and are considered to be the most prestigious and research-intensive Australian universities. It is somewhat equivalent to the American Ivy League. All members of the group bar UNSW are “sandstone universities”, and all of their primary campuses are based within an Australian regional capital city.