In Australia, Federal and State Parliaments are able to delegate, or pass on the power to make laws in certain areas, to lesser authorities. The subsequent laws are known as delegated legislation, and are scrutinised and controlled in a number of ways. Although the delegation of legislation to subordinate authorities is often question in its effectiveness to control undemocratical ideals, in my opinion each individual piece of delegated legislation is scrutinised enough and the checks on them are sufficient.
The power to make law in certain areas is passed on to a number of different authorities nationwide. One of these subordinate groups is Local Governments. The Local Government Act 1989, also known as an enabling act, gives Local governments, such as the Bass Coast Shire Council, the power to pass laws in the areas delegated to them by State government. Although Local Laws are not checked by the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee, they are instead subject to other means of analysis and amendment. All Local Laws are subject to approval by the minister for local government. The minister's role is to decide whether the local law may be `ultra vires', or outside the local government's power, whether it overlaps previous legislation and whether it complies with the principles of justice and fairness. If the minister sees that the local law is unsuitable, he may, indirectly through the governor-in-council, have the law revoked. As the minister is himself elected by the people, the minister will be representing the people in his decisions, and ultimately enforcing democracy.
Local Laws are also subject to a Sunset clause. This means that each legislation becomes inoperable 10 years after it was first made. This ensures ...
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... committees, they are `gazetted', or published in the Government Gazette and distributed to every Member of Parliament. This final stage allows each Member of Parliament, no matter how disassociated with the topic, to raise an issue with the legislation even after it has become inoperable.
Overall, there are many checks placed upon Statutory Authorities to prevent them from legislating beyond their power. Each legislation is subject to approval by the relevant ministers, the governor or governor general-in-council, the general public or the Members of Parliament. On top of this, Delegated Legislation is also subject to a Sunset Clause, making it inoperable after 10 years. Although there are some disadvantages to parliaments delegating legislative power, the scrutiny placed upon these powers are more than sufficient to keep the Subordinate Authorities `intra vires'.
Law Foundation, L.F. 1997. A Bill of Rights for Australia - But do we need it? [Online]. [20th December 2016]. Available from:
Since the dawn of time for a society to work it needs to have a level of structure that applies to everyone and is understood by everyone. Australian legal system is broad and complex. It is the nature of the encompassing laws and regulations which reflect how people, organisations and governments behave on the many different levels of operation and these are created to make sure that everyone understands their rights and obligations. There are two sources of Law in Australia: Statute Law regulated by Parliament and comprise of legislations and acts; and Judge-made Law or Common Law where decisions made by judges are based on previous cases.
... a very strong separation between Executive and Legislature, and the Judiciary – Members of Parliament and Government ministers cannot sit in the Judiciary and interpret the law. There is not, however, such a strict separation between the Executive and the Legislature, as the Executive sits in Parliament as well.
The principle of the separation of powers is that, in order to prevent oppressive government, the three powers of government should be held by separate bodies—the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary—which can act as checks and balances on each other. (Locke, 1690) Australia’s system of separation of powers (SOP) is a hybrid of the UK Westminster system of government and the American federal and constitutional features of government. This system of government was chosen because they provide essential philosophical and theoretical bases for which separation is essential and although this system incorporates the best aspects of the UK and US systems, many crossovers have been incorporated as a result. Consequently this shows vulnerability in the Australian federal and state system exposing it to exploitation, and mistreatment.
Law reform is a crucial aspect of the Australian legal system due to its operation significantly contributing to the types of laws that are in effect at any time in society. The following report delineates the definition of law reform, the conditions that give rise to law reform, the agencies of law reform, the mechanisms of law reform, as well as the law reform process. It divulges these main aspects regarding law reform as a whole and incorporates a case study to further the salience of this particular feature to the functionality of the legal system.
Nowadays, the Australian legal system has three powers, which are legislative, executive and judicial. Legislative power is in charge of making the laws; subsequently those laws will be passed to the executive power to administer the laws it...
There are only a few things keeping the Legislative branch from getting out of control and that is its size and the implied powers that they have given to the other branches. Currently the United States congress is comprised of two houses, The Senate, and The House of Representatives. In which the senate is made up of one hundred people, fifty from each state. And the House of Representatives is made up of four hundred and sixty five publicly elected officials. With so many conflicting ideologies, because of geography and other factors, it is hard to please enough people to sway into deci...
The Legislative Branch, or Congress, " creates, abolishes, and changes [the] federal laws which govern the nation." (World Book 138). This branch is divided into two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives and is run by the Vice President. The two houses collaborate to decide what laws will be passed and how to word them. This branch can "check" the power of the other two branches. T...
The Rule of Law refers to the principle that law should govern a nation instead of being governed by the decisions of individual governments. The complexity of Parliamentary Bills make the legislative process more time consuming, harder to comprehend and as a result it makes it harder to reach to a final decision. In this respect Parliamentary scrutiny can be said to undermine the rule of
The legislative Branch is a powerful part of our governmental system. One of the strengths of it is that it has powers that no other branch has. The legislative branch, including both the House of Representatives and the Senate, is given extensive powers by the Constitution. The legislative branch is the only branch that can create laws or change existing laws. In addition to creating and changing laws, the legislative branch has an array of powers such as: the power to declare war, confirm or reject many Presidential appointments, impeach a federal official, to include the president or a justice of the Supreme Court, create annual federal budgets and direct how federal monies are spent, and extensive investigative powers. Essentially, one of the legislatives branches’ greater powers to creating and changing laws do not yield there; additionally, if the President vetoes a bill, they may override his veto by passing a bill again in each chamber as long as the chambers can get at least a two-third voting in favor of the bill. An example would if the President wants to create a program and/or a system, he will have to go through Congress for approval of the
Historically the prerogative was exercised by the monarchy, the majority of powers are now used by ministers, and very few remained the personal preserve of the sovereign. The extent to which the judiciary and the legislature are able to regulate the exercise of prerogative powers by the executive has increased. However, there are still some who are concerned by the lack of control that can be exerted by the other constitutional bodies.
One of the features of the Australian constitution is that is it structured in a way that theoretically reflects the rule of law. This is reflected through the ‘separation of powers’ doctrine, which is assumed to be a fair structure of government. Its principles suggest that power does not lie with one branch of government, but is spread out amongst three (legislative, executive and judicial).
Australia’s government laws are responsible for the protection of the Australia’s Indigenous heritage places. All states and territories have laws that protect various types of Indigenous heritage.
have no power to declare laws passed by the Parliament invalid. In contrast to the UK, the legislature is
or Parent Act is what is used to specify the person or group with the