This provision has been fully activated on forty-four occasions; on eight
such occasions the proposed change has succeeded with the voters. There
have been several occasions when proposed changes have been supported
by a majority of voters but without securing majorities in a majority of the
states. (The section 128 procedure relates to what can be described as
entrenched provisions of the Constitution; there are many unentrenched
provisions where the parliament itself is authorized to make a change, sig-
nalled by such words as,‘until the Parliament of the Commonwealth other-
wise provides...’.)
The Australian Constitution does not tell the full story of the law governing
the government of Australia, and certainly not the full story of how Australia
is governed; it provides the essential framework. There are a host of other laws,
which include electoral legislation and legislation concerning ministers of
state and other office-holders, which are also relevant.
The UK famously does not have a written constitution and has never had
one, even when there have been major changes in government such as
abolition of the monarchy in 1649; its restoration little more than a decade
later; and the so-called revolution of 1688–9. There are, however, many laws
concerning the monarchy, executive government, the parliament, and elec-
tions. These laws form part of the ordinary law and may be altered by normal
legislative process. In addition, the British also have resort to conventions to a
much more conspicuous degree than is to be found in either Australia or
Canada.
Canada was constituted by the British North America Act 1867 (30– 31
Victoria, ch. 3); it is now referred to as the Constitution Act. Its text was
prepared by the leaders of the provinces of Canada (Upper Canada and
Lower Canada), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, workingfirst in Canada
and later in London. Though, according to the preamble, the union was to be
federal, the constitution was expressly to be‘similar in Principle to that of the
United Kingdom’. Its provinces are formally subordinate to the Dominion
government. For this reason, they have lieutenant governors who have been
appointed by the Governor General of Canada on the advice of the prime
minister (see Section 14.2).
The Commonwealth of Australia was much more directly a creation of the
self-governing Australian colonies. Although the imperial power had an inter-
est in a supra-colonial body, whereas Canada effectively assumed a range of
imperial functions in British North America when the Dominion was created
in 1867, the Commonwealth, by contrast, was not created to stand in for the
imperial power. There is no undertaking in the Constitution of Australia for it
to be‘similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom’, and any desire of this
type would probably have been resisted; it was certainly resisted by the Senate
in its earliest days when it refused a proposed standing order that, in the event
J. R. Nethercote