and insert‘Anything’was not by any means a jest; the‘external affairs’power
can now be activated by invoking any international instrument to which
Australia is a signatory, whatever its subject matter and even if its application
is exclusively domestic.
6.2Fédéralisme sans Doctrines
Political science, like the law, eventually succumbed to the siren call of the
Mother Country. The yardstick in the study of Australian government and
politics became Westminster; though Walter Bagehot’sThe English Constitu-
tion(1867) periodicallyfigured in reading lists,The Federalist Papershardly
appeared at all.
Two important texts of the post-Second World War period were overtly cast
in a British mould; both authors had studied in Britain, one at Oxford, the
other at the London School of Economics. L. F. Crisp’sThe Parliamentary
Government of the Commonwealth of Australia(1949) (Australian National Gov-
ernmentafter 1965) and Gordon Greenwood’sThe Future of Federalism(1946)
both favoured a unitary state and, in Crisp’s case, a unicameral parliament.
Crisp’s book was exceedingly influential, over the years seeing off most likely
rivals; even now, three decades after Crisp’s death, it cannot be said to have
been replaced. It is indicative of its approach that it contained nothing about
the workings of federalism or Commonwealth–state relations; this was more
defensible under the original title than that adopted in 1965, a major reason
for which was to respond to complaints about the length of thefirst title by
library cataloguers.
Greenwood’s book might have had a greater influence had there been more
interest in federal doctrine and practice, notwithstanding the fact that its basic
argument was centralist; as it was, there was little such interest. A second
edition was published in 1976 by which time, for three decades, Greenwood’s
scholarly interest had beenfirmly focused on‘Australia in world affairs’,as
evinced by his long editorship of books of that name.
A large and insightful volume,The Government of the Australian States, edited
by S. R. Davis and published in 1960, could not really be said to have made the
mainstream of political science in Australia, although it did make reading lists
for specialist essays. At present the state best served in parliamentary, govern-
mental, and political matters is New South Wales (NSW), as a consequence of
sesquicentenary initiatives and some splendid publishing by Federation Press.
But this is too recent to compete with an enormous concentration on the
Commonwealth (which itself seems to be in decline, having lost ground to
suchfields as environmental politics).
J. R. Nethercote