The ALP was founded as a federal party prior to the first sitting of the Australian Parliament in 1901, but is descended from Labour parties founded in the various Australian colonies by the emerging labour movement in Australia, formally beginning in 1891.

Labor was the first party in Australia to win a majority in either house of the Australian Parliament, at the 1910 federal election.

It was reported in October 2011 that the Australian federal government had reached an agreement with all of the states on potential changes to their laws in the wake of amendments to the Act of Settlement.

The Australian Constitution, as was noted during the crisis of 1936, contains no power for the federal parliament to legislate with respect to the monarchy.

After a decade as president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, he entered parliament as a Labor MP at the 1980 federal election and became Prime Minister within three years, leading Labor to victory at four consecutive federal elections: 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990.

In federal Australian politics, the conservative Liberal, National, Country Liberal and Liberal National parties are united in a coalition, known simply as the Coalition.

The Constitution stipulated that Australia was a constitutional monarchy, where the Head of State is the British ( or, since 1942, Australian ) monarch, who is represented at the federal level by a Governor-General, and at the state level by six Governors, one for each state.

In an Australian context, the term " Commonwealth " ( capitalised ) thus refers to the federal government and " Commonwealth of Australia " is the official name of the country.

Sir Earle Christmas Grafton Page, GCMG, CH ( 8 August 188020 December 1961 ) was the 11th Prime Minister of Australia, and is to date the second-longest serving federal parliamentarian in Australian history, with 41 years, 361 days in Parliament .< ref >

The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia at federal / national level of the Australian monarch ( currently Queen Elizabeth II ).

In Commentaries on the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, Garran noted that, since the Australian executive is national in nature ( being dependent on the nationally elected House of Representatives, rather than the Senate ), " the Governor-General, as the official head of the Executive, does not in the smallest degree represent any federal element ; if he represents anything he is the image and embodiment of national unity and the outward and visible representation of the Imperial relationship of the Commonwealth.

The transfer of power from Menzies to Holt in February 1966 was smooth and unproblematic, and at the federal election later that year the electorate overwhelmingly endorsed Holt, giving the Holt-McEwen Coalition government a 41-seat majority, the largest in Australian history at the time.

They also won 56 % of the two party preferred vote, which is still the greatest winning margin at a federal election in Australian political history.

He also established the Australian Council for the Arts ( later the Australia Council ), which began the tradition of federal government support for Australian arts and artists, an initiative that was considerably expanded by Holt's successor John Gorton.

He served as the federal president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists in 1969 – 70, and also as the president for its Victoria branch from 1963 until his death in 1980.

The Defence Act of 1903 granted the Australian federal government the powers to conscript men of military age for home defense.

* The Australian federal electoral division of Menzies.

Nick Xenophon was elected on an independent No Pokies ticket in the South Australian Legislative Council at the 1997 South Australian state election on 2. 9 percent, and re-elected at the 2006 election on 20. 5 percent, before being elected to the Australian Senate at the 2007 federal election on 14. 8 percent.

Independent candidate Andrew Wilkie, an anti-pokies campaigner, was elected to the Australian House of Representatives seat of Denison at the 2010 federal election.

* March 13 – Australian federal election, 1993: The Australian Labor Party stays in power despite poor economic results.

Others are confined to vast reservations, and not only does the Australian government justifiably not wish them to be viewed as exhibits in a zoo, but on their reservations they are extremely fugitive, shunning camps, coming together only for corroborees at which their strange culture comes to its highest pitch -- which is very low indeed.

* Australian Securities and Investments Commission, an independent Australian government body that acts as Australia's corporate regulator

The ACT has internal self-government, but Australia's Constitution does not afford the territory government the full legislative independence provided to Australian states.

However, its decisions can be overruled by the Australian Governor-General ( effectively by the national government ) under section 35 of the Australian Capital Territory ( Self-Government ) Act 1988.

* 1904 – The Australian Labor Party becomes the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson.

As part of the introduction of mobile phone competition in Australia, the Australian government mandated GSM as the new standard for mobile networks, and required that Telstra close the AMPS network by 2000.

The Australian government attempted to increase the tax on these drinks to the same rate as spirits, volumetrically, in an effort to stop binge drinking.

This foundation includes the Clinton Foundation HIV and AIDS Initiative ( CHAI ), which strives to combat that disease, and has worked with the Australian government toward that end.

In November 2011 the Australian government announced that a protected area was planned in the Coral Sea.

* Town of Cambridge, a Western Australian local government area

Staunch Australian right-wingers, on the other hand, level it at those who support such things as government funding for the arts, free tertiary education, and the ABC – all causes which are described by critics as " middle-class welfare ".

NetAlert, the software made available free of charge by the Australian government, was allegedly cracked by a 16 year old student, Tom Wood, less than a week after its release in August 2007.

Also Australian government ecommerce website provides information on ecommerce in Australia.

The Australian government took a more measured position than its New Zealand counterpart over the controversial Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity Bill being debated in the Fijian Parliament.

The talks covered the controversial Unity bill, as well as the future of Fiji's preferential trade access to the Australian market, which the Fijian government regards as a priority.

The Australian government denied this and stated that it only advised the judges that once they took up office in Fiji they would be subject to an existing travel ban in place against Fijian officials.

In 2004 it was revealed that the Australian government was willing to offer a subsidy to Southern Pacific Petroleum on the condition that the oil company would take legal action against Greenpeace, which had campaigned against the Stuart Oil Shale Project.

The Queen chose not to intervene during the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, in which Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, on the basis that it was a matter " clearly placed within the jurisdiction of the Governor-General ".

After Scullin's defeat in 1931, non-Labor governments continued to recommend British people for appointment as Governor-General, but it was still a matter solely between the Australian government and the monarch.

In 1965, the Menzies conservative government appointed an Australian, Lord Casey, and the position has since been held only by Australians.

However, the post still ultimately represented the government of the United Kingdom until, after continually decreasing involvement by the British government, the passage in 1942 of the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 ( see Statute of Westminster ) and the Australia Act 1986, whereafter the governor became the direct, personal representative of the uniquely Australian sovereign.