This chapter examines the executive power of the Commonwealth. The provisions of the Constitution concerning the structure of the Federal Executive Government and the exercise of federal executive power do not fully describe how the Federal Executive Government operates in practice. Those provisions need to be understood in light of the conventions of responsible government governing the actual operation of the Federal Executive Government and the exercise of its powers. The Federal Executive Government cannot be treated as if it is an ordinary legal person with capacity to act as it pleases subject only to the general law. The Federal Executive Government can only exercise powers which it lawfully possesses. Federal executive power includes powers derived from the Royal Prerogative, powers derived from Australia’s status as a nation, and powers conferred on the Federal Executive Government by statute.

The British constitution’s global historical resonance is in no small part due to the extent and might of the British Empire, which touched the lives of more of humanity than any other in history. The imperial factor compelled the wide international importance of the British constitution and its history, which would otherwise be disproportionate to the clouded hills of an archipelago in the north Atlantic. In fact, Britain’s constitution, history, law and politics were analysed by all manner of people abroad in far greater numbers than those at ‘home’. Different lessons were learned. Gandhi, for example, who was admitted to London’s Inner Temple in 1888, in his early political career, looked back at Queen Victoria’s 1858 proclamation as ‘the Magna Charta of the Indians’1 and, till the end of his life, retained a certain ‘romantic veneration’ towards the British constitution and what it might do for India.2 On the other hand, his close follower Subhas Chandra Bose, who had also spent time in Britain as a student, in his 1938 presidential address to the Indian National Congress, warned, as in Ireland and Palestine, that ‘British ingenuity’ would ‘ruthlessly’ find a ‘constitutional device’, which he foretold would lead to the partitioning of India, ‘thereby neutralising the transference of power to the Indian people’.3 These two divergent reactions give some sense of the diversity of ideas the British constitution and history generated even among two familiar colleagues in the same country, both wanting freedom.

Colonial self-government was a brief but significant phase in Australia’s history. This chapter explores how, why, and when various classes of settlers came to seek self-government and traces the shifts in British government approaches to colonial governance. When Britain eventually granted self-government to most Australian colonies in the 1850s and Western Australia in 1890, the six Australian colonies implemented it very differently. With some colonies more democratic and progressive than others, self-government had varying consequences for the class and gender relations within the settler communities that were rapidly expanding and consolidating in the second half of the nineteenth century.

We also focus on the implications of colonial self-government for Aboriginal people, who throughout its operation experienced continuing dispossession, loss of self-determination, and population decline. We consider the long history of Aboriginal assertions of rights against a political system that systematically failed to recognise their sovereignty, give them a parliamentary voice, or acknowledge the fact and consequences of their violent dispossession.

This chapter describes the Anglicization of British North America in colonies that stretched from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. In addition to exploring the range of colonial experiences relating to British immigration and its impact on Indigenous peoples, this chapter examines political developments that led to movements for liberal reforms, including granting more power to elected colonial assemblies. Upper and Lower Canada spawned rebellions led by William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis-Joseph Papineau against authoritarian colonial regimes in 1837-38, prompting a report by Lord Durham in 1839 that recommended union of the two Canadas and granting a limited form of colonial autonomy known as “responsible government.” Great Britain legislated the union of the Canadas in 1840 and, after shabby political manoeuvring everywhere, conceded responsible government to Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada in 1848. In an era of free trade and the Chartist movement, this was an easy solution to political unrest in white settler societies. In response, Conservatives in Montreal burned down the legislative buildings and a few merchants signed a manifesto advocating annexation to the United States, but, overall, Canada’s revolutionary age was a mild affair compared to developments in Europe in 1848-9.