Judicial Department of the Common The judicial power of the Common wealth is vested in a High Court consisting of a chief justice and not less than two other justices. The High Court has appellate and original jurisdiction. It has jurisdiction to hear appeals from all other Federal courts, or courts exercising Federal jurisdiction, and from the Supreme Courts of states in the exercise of jurisdiction conferred by state laws. The High Court must be regarded as a Federal Court of Appeal, and a National Court of Appeal, and as such it holds a wider jurisdictional area tlian its great exemplar, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, which cannot enter tain appeals from state courts in cases not in volving Federal issues. The act confers a new right of appeal from the Supreme Courts. of states in state law cases, but it does not abolish the existing right of appeal in those cases to the Privy Council. The latter right still re mains. The High Court, though a general Court of Appeal for Australia, is not the sole or exclusive, but a concurrent Court of Ap peal in state law cases. Parties to cases de cided by the Supreme Courts of state on mat ters of state law have, therefore, an alternative right of appeal, either to the Privy Council direct or to the High Court.
The judgments of the High Court are de clared by the Constitution to be final and con clusive. This negatives the right of litigants in the High Court to appeal to the Privy Coun cil as a matter of right. The appeal as a matter of right has been taken away, but the Constitu tion has left unimpaired any right the King may be pleased to exercise by virtue of his preroga tive to grant special leave of appeal from the High Court to His Majesty in Council. To this reservation of the prerogative to grant leave' there is, however, a most important ex ception. No appeal can be permitted to the King in Council from a decision of the High Courts upon any question as to the limits inter se of the constitutional powers of the Common wealth and those of any state, or states, or as to the limits inter se of the constitutional powers of any two or more states unless the High Court shall certify that question is one which ought to be determined by His Majesty in Council. The High Court has original juris diction to decide all matters arising under any treaty, all matters affecting Consuls, all mat ters in which the Commonwealth is a party, all matters between states or between residents of different states in any matters arising under the Constitution or involving its interpretation.
For several courts of the states have been vested with Federal jurisdiction to deal with matters arising under the Constitution, or in volving its interpretation, and in matters of any laws made by the Federal jurisdiction. In sec tion 101 of the Commonwealth Constitution provision is made for the appointment of an interstate commission. In. December 1912 the Fisher government passed the Interstate Com mission Act and in August 1913 the Cook gov ernment appointed three commissioners to carry out the provisions of the act. The first duty entrusted to them was that they should investi gate and report as soon as practicable upon the following matters: (a) Any industries now in urgent need of tariff assistance; (h) anom alies in the existing Tariff Acts which are either technical in character or are due to, or arise from, the incidence of taxation ; (c) the lessening where consistent with the general policy of the Tariff Acts of the cost of the ordinary necessities of life, without injury to the workers engaged in any useful industry.
Finance and During the first 10 years after the establishment of the Common wealth, the Federal government had only a limited use of the revenue derived from cus toms and excise duties. It could only use for Federal purposes one-fourth of the total of the net sum so collected. The remaining three-fourths had to be paid to the several states according to the following method of distribu tion, viz., each'state was credited with the whole of the revenue collected in it and each state was debited: (a) with departmental expenditure actually incurred in such state; and (b) with a proportion on a population basis of the other expenditure of the Commonwealth. The Com
monwealth paid to each state monthly the balance in favor of each state. Upon the im position of uniform customs duties in October 1901, trade, commerce and intercourse, between the states, whether by land or by sea became absolutely free.
Relations of States to the Commonwealth and the relations of the Aus tralian states to the Commonwealth and to the Crown were authoritively expounded by the Secretary of State, Mr. Chamberlain, in the despatch dated 15, April 1903, directed to the lieutenant-governor of South Australia in reference to the case of the Dutch ship V owlet The owners of this ship complained to the British Government that the state gov ernment of South Australia had declined to arrest the crew of the ship while she was in South Australian' waters. The Secretary of States brought the complaint under the notice of the governor-general of Australia. The Federal government forwarded the papers to the state government desiring them to furnish a report on the case. The state government re fused to report to the Federal Government on the ground that the latter had no jurisdiction in the matter. The constitutional issues raised by the action of the South Australian govern ment were dealt with at length in Mr. Chamber lain's despatch. uSo far as other communities in the empire or foreign nations are concerned, the people of Australia form one political com munity for which the government of the Com monwealth alone can speak, and for everything affecting external states or communities which takes place within its boundaries, that govern ment is responsible. The distribution of powers between Federal and state authorities is a matter of purely internal concern of which no external country or community can take cognizance. It is to the Commonwealth and to the Commonwealth alone that, through the Im perial government, they must look for remedy or relief for any action affecting them done within the bounds of the Commonwealth, whether it is the act of a private individual, of a state official, or of a state government. The Commonwealth is, through His Majesty's government, just as responsible for any action of South Australia affecting an external com munity as the United States of America are for the action of Louisiana or any other State of the Union. The Crown undoubtedly remains part of the Constitution of the state of South Australia, and in matters affecting it in that capacity, the proper channel of communication is between the Secretary of State and the state governor. But in • matters affecting the Crown in its capacity as the central authority of the empire, the Secretary of State can, since the people of Australia have become one political community, look only to the governor-general as the representative of the Crown in that com munity. The view of your ministers would, if adopted, reduce the Commonwealth to the posi tion of a Federal league, not a federation, and appears to me to be entirely opposed not only to the spirit but to the letter of the act? Administration and Legislation.—The first Federal government was formed by Mr. (afterward Sir) Edmund Burton. The princi pal measures passed by the 1st Parliament were as follows: A uniform Tariff Act, an act to restrict immigration by the imposition of an educational test for the purpose of excluding colored races and to exclude laborers coming to Australia under contract of service; an act to abolish Kanaka labor in connection with sugar growing, and to encourage the use of white labor by granting a bonus of L2 per ton on sugar so produced; an act establishing a uniform suffrage for both the Senate and the House of Representatives; a naval agreement with the Admiralty under which the Common wealth undertook to pay #200,000 per year for 10 years toward the maintenance of a naval force on the Australian station; an act to organize the High Court, of which Sir Samuel Griffith was appointed chief justice, Sir Ed mund Barton and R. E. O'Connor, justices.