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The establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia is commonly taken as the date of Australia’s independence from the United Kingdom, but matters are more complicated than that. The Constitution provided the Commonwealth with all the powers associated with a sovereign state, including the power to engage in foreign affairs and to raise its own army. But the United Kingdom still retained the power to engage in foreign affairs on behalf of Australia, and to make laws for it. In the early years Australia continued to be represented by the United Kingdom as part of the British Empire at international conferences. The Constitution provided that the British monarch be represented in Australia by a Governor-General, who was originally appointed on the advice of the British, not the Australian, government, and was generally a British aristocrat. Finally, the Constitution provided that any law of the Australian Parliament could be disallowed within a year by the British monarch (acting on the advice of British ministers), though this power was never in fact exercised. In summary, the constitutional position of the Commonwealth as a whole in relation to the United Kingdom was, originally, the same as that of the individual colonies before Federation.

Final Independence

Final independence was achieved March 3rd, 1986 with the passing of the Australia Act 1986. Independence of Australia from the United Kingdom, rather than occurring as a single event in history, has, in legal terms, been a continuing process. Some of the significant milestones discussed above have been the following:

mid-1800s: acquisition of substantial internal self-government by the colonies
1901: establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia
1927: development of the “shared” monarchy
1931: passing of the Statute of Westminster
1986: passing of the Australia Act