CEFA's Constitutional Forum
Featured Article
The High Court last week decided that former Family First Senator Bob Day had been ineligible of sitting in the Senate since at least February 2016. He has been disqualified under section 44v of the Constitution:
Section 44 Any person who:
We thank the people who provided feedback on our birth of the Constitution article last week. You have helped us immensely and your contributions will be incorporated.
We are starting to write content for the Australian Constitution Centre. The CCF last week on the rule of law introduced of one of our seven themes. In case you’re a new reader we’ll give you a quick outline.
Lately we’ve noticed the term ‘the rule of law’ being thrown around a lot. Most of the time the emphasis seems to be about ‘law and order’. It can be confusing as there are elements of law and order within the rule of law, under our Constitutional arrangements.
Wow! What a week for federalism in action. We even saw a bit of verbal argy bargy.
Most of us would think that our country is called ‘Australia’. Although, with our penchant for shortening words, these days you often hear us being called ‘Straya’. But if you flip open a copy of our Constitution you’ll notice that our official country name is the ‘Commonwealth of Australia’.
In the last few months we’ve seen the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) tweeting about the redistribution of electoral boundaries. It’s amazing to see the size of some the electorates.
Earlier this week the media reported that the discussion about moving to four-year fixed terms was back on the agenda.
We frequently receive feedback on social media lamenting that politicians are paid too much. CEFA staff are often asked many questions about our Constitution and system of government when attending social events and we always hear a whinge about pollies pay.
