I was thinking which should be the very first video for this channel. After some consideration I decided to talk about the differences between the Australian Constitution and the Australian Constitution Act. Hello everyone, my name is Renato Costa and this is Aussie Law. I know this can be quite confusing for someone who is listening to it for the first time, but the Australian Constitution is not the same thing as the Act, the Statute, that enacted it. In the United States of America, for example, For example, the Act is the Constitution.
There is an actual piece of paper that was enacted and is the Constitution of the United States. We see that same phenomenon happening in most of the countries with a written Constitution. So why am I causing so much trouble and confusion with this idea of the Australian Constitution? What is distinctive about it? Well let's get back in time.
Australia as you probably know was a penal colony. It belonged to the British Empire. That means that when Australia was to become a new country and have its own constitution it needed to separate, to secede from the British Empire. the metropolis, the imperial power that ruled over it. This could have been done through a revolution or a coup of some sort, like it happened in the United States, or it could have happened more diplomatically, in a sort of continuity of what that society, the Australian society, was already experiencing.
Some constitutional scholars call that a revolutionary moment or even a constitutional moment. And this, the latter option to to secede diplomatically was the road taken by Australia. Just a caveat there, I'm not saying that there was no blood and tears in the process of Australia separating from the British Empire. What I am saying is that there's no actual revolt or revolutionary event that caused Australia to secede. So when the framers of the Australian constitution got to the final draft of what was to become the constitution, they went to England to talk to the crown and asked for the crown asked the British Parliament to enact their constitution.
The constitution was drafted by Australians, according to their own interests and for the common good of the Australian people. But the act that promulgated, enacted the constitution, that act came from the British Parliament. That is why it is better to refer to the Australian Constitution instead of the Australian Constitution Act. The Commonwealth of Australian Constitution Act.
Act 1900 is actually an act made by the British Parliament and that contains the Australian Constitution in Section 9. So the Act was passed by the UK Parliament on the 5th of July of 1900 and it received royal assent four days later and it came into force on the 1st of January 1901. Australia celebrated Constitution Day, because in the 9th of July of each year. There are two more things that I wanted to say before I end this video. before our very first video is over. First, being the law-making body of the empire, the British Parliament was legally entitled to make laws for Australia. There is a whole history and a long process that led to the epitome of the Australian legal history, which is the enactment of the Constitution.
But for years, the British Parliament was sort of losing its powers to legislate for the colonies. There is yet another thing that I want to talk about. There are consequences. There are constitutional provisions which are not included in the Act, but they are still constitutional. Some principles and conventions are not expressed in the written constitution that we call the Australian Constitution, but we will take a look at this in other videos as well.
So for now, all I want you to know is this. There is a document called the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. This document was passed by the British Parliament in 1900 and it took effect in January 1901. And it is in this document, more precisely in its section 9, that most of the Australian Constitution is contained. I hope you liked this brief introduction to the Australian Constitution. If you haven't done so, please leave a like and subscribe to our channel.
And I'll see you next time. Ciao!