Commonwealth Of Massachusetts Voluntary Administration: Fill & Download for Free

My current biggest problem buying a gun is that my name is Duncan (no middle initial) Ferguson, my father's name is Duncan Campbell Ferguson, his father's name is Duncan (no middle initial) Ferguson and so on it goes back to the early 1400's.Because of this I can't pass an NICS background check. There are two Duncan Fergusons in waldoboro Maine you see, one is a 25 year old homesteader who has never had a brush wiith the law…ever (thats me), the other is a 55 year old crack dealer who has been in and out of prison his whole life (my father). The second problem is that on paper at least these two individuals share an address. Meaning he has all his bills and bounty hunters show up here.Same name, same address, hell I'd be confused there has to be some kind of procedure for this right…like anything good or easy in America the answer is “there used to be”.back in the day you had a thing called the VAF or voluntary appellant file for people like me who had an understandable and foreseeable mix up, but not anymore. The FBI was ordered to stop processing them by the Obama administration because of… reasons. How do I proceed with my prepper armory now?Well I bought a lot as private sales, I got a .357, a 12ga 870, a 20ga single shot with an interchangeable .44 mag barrel an AR this way. Then not long ago after two full years of browsing Uncle Henry's and armslist daily I found my ultimate unicorn a LEFTY Ruger gunsite scout .308. Now with these Floyd riots (may the asshat that killed him rot in hell btw) everybody and their grandma is buying guns. The used pistol supply has almost completely dried up.So going from here I think I'm going to buy 80% frames for the three automatic pistols on my list (a .45 1911, a glock 9mm, and a .380 concealed carry piece) and probably a black powder .44 single action with a conversation cylinder, that'll complete the pistols side of my collection but there's one last longer that continues to elude me: a .22lr/.410 over under such as a savage model 24.There's a guy up in Monmouth who has one for sale “background check required”.For a .22 really?Now I could hire a lawyer to clear my name but I don't have near that kind of money and pro bono lawyers around here are all anti gun liberal SJW's.What happens if I can't resolve the problem? Then I'll be improperly prepared for the impending collapse of western civilization of course!If I could wave a magic wand how would I solve it:Magically convince the gun grabbers to accept the NRA's BIDS background check system.If that fails wave the wand and convince the world of the uselessness of gun control at all.If all else fails wave the wand and separate the great state of Maine permanently from the sinking ship that is the United States of America and the communal dung heap known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

This is a very hard question to answer because none of the terms are properly defined in any static way. The terms are ambivalent in the sense that economists tend to blur the lines to match their abstract mathematical wanderings.If socialist statist progressives can call themselves “democratic” or “liberal” whist the very definition of those words would exclude their appropriation a-priori, it follows that re-defining them to mean what they originally meant, is at best an act of desperation, the semantic battle having already been lost.Chomsky made a seventy year career of linguistic deconstruction, and while his ilk succeeded at turning the latin grammar based English language, into an American Idiom based on idiomatic expressions, more pathos than ethos or logos, he failed to make the purposed end result stick. No clear mile markers emerged from sordid miasmic foggy bottom (K-Street where the swamp creatures dwell).When semantic de-construction is the modus operandi, its more Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution, than some radically enhanced statist form of top down illiberal command economy. I leave the issue of whether said command economy is privately organized, or State organized. It matters little, and the result in either case is predictable.The remaining issues do not necessarily revolve around a definition of corporatism. That is simply a legalistic term describing a stock based ownership structure. What is detrimental to fractional ownership is the justification to seek, through political campaign contributions, either a legislative mandated purchase, or worse, a statist-bureaucratic regulatory mandated purchase.Roman Jurisprudence and English Common Law are both predicated on “Everything is permitted unless specifically banned”. Napoleon’s Code Civil of 1803 establishes the opposite, namely “Everything is forbidden unless normatively permitted and administratively regulated”. Bismarck added his Prussian flourishes, Kaiser first and foremost, the Administrative State, and a socially mandated educational system with the primary purpose of military indoctrination, and the secondary purpose of making model factory workers.Let it be clear, the law begins where morality ends, for the law should only concern itself with criminal activity. When you set up the notion that everything is forbidden, unless permitted, you are de jure (as opposed to de facto) saying that everybody is a criminal a priori.The later is of course the foundation for the American Progressive Movement.Corporatism seeks through crony capitalism a mandatory purchase, at a mandated monopoly price often lower than free market, with regulatory lock in based on a defendable moat of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets. This lock in is then translated into an academic consensus, which in turn demands that the spigot of research grants only get allocated to the dominant paradigm.The final con on the consumer, is achieved by virtue of the corporatists’s ownership of the means of communication, namely the masters of social programming, the entertainment and news conglomerates. A broadband cable subscription, is a last mile monopoly mandating a pre-packaged mandatory purchase of the programming content of the organizations perpetuating the dominant paradigm.Where the paradigm is in clear conflict with the reasoned beliefs of the viewers, corporate ownership of the editorial function is no longer sufficient, and further enhancements and inducements are consequently necessary.Max Plank famously said that “Science progresses one funeral at a time…” For example, the consensus around the notion that “fat is bad” has been comprehensively debunked for at least twenty to thirty years. And yet its the dominant scientific medical paradigm even though its currently very well understood that sugar is the true culprit behind most preventable diseases. Nonetheless, CNN gets $1 (*12) for every cable subscriber, regardless of viewership, because its a mandatory purchase, and to make up the difference between its profit expectations and its realized audience, it advertises.25% of its add revenue comes from sugary food products, 25% from medical insurance companies, and 50% from pharmaceutical companies. Those are the aforementioned inducements necessary to keep up the dominant paradigm.So I will answer the question obliquely and state, as a matter of opinion, that the central issue is not the form by which the firm registers its trademark and its stock holding capitalization table, but rather the roundabout way by which a regime of mandatory purchases is maintained.I have a bad habit of removing on any vintage car I own, the catalytic converters, and replacing them with straight pipes. The notion that catalyzing with platinum one noxious gas into another noxious gas is obviously based on a mandated consensus opinion. Diesel fine particles scare me far more, Truth in Engineering being a notable commercial tag line. Nonetheless it only adds $1000 dollars to the purchase price of a car, and perhaps it was justified to mandate the purchase. When you are forced to instal a combustion engine to drive an electric engine, the costs become stratospheric. When the next mandated solution is a battery that costs more than the average downpayment on a house in South Carolina, then the whole notion of subservience to the mandated paradigm collapses into a forced at gunpoint purchase. “Buy or walk…”, is not free enterprise capitalism.If a local municipality, county, state or federal agency expropriates your land, compensation must be provided. They are of course entitled by law to use their powers of imminent domain. It comes in very useful when building highways to enforce the dominant transportation paradigm of the automobile (as opposed to commuter trains like in London, Paris or New York). But you can always vote them out.Regardless, its a compensated mandatory purchase. When instead the administrative state mandates through regulatory overreach what you must purchase, its an uncompensated theft of property, with the loss specifically bourn by the individual citizen, with long term damage to the commonwealth.I can trade using the same gold coin for centuries, millennia even. With fractional paper money, every transaction is an individual debit against a credit on somebody else’s balance sheet. Its frictionless, but the transactional fees exponentiate with every transaction. A 0.005 transactional fee married to a 3% interest fee multiplied by the reserve requirement’s permissible leverage = 0.035 * 9 = 0.315 * 4 = 1.26I forgot the merchant fees, but the distinction between bank and merchant is getting blurry as of late.That corporations only turn their cash four times per year, says allot about the inefficiency of large scale organizations.Before Quantitative Easing, at least the depositor got something for their money. Post QE that’s a big nothing, banks do not pay depositors anything for their money. Or as Dire Straits put it “Money for nothing and the chicks for free…”To further compound the asymmetric nature of the conflict between corporatists and citizens, real estate, if the nominal inflation rate is to be believed, appreciates by 2.25% per year. Which is exactly (assessed rates notwithstanding) what the local county taxes the property owner. Add the mandatory mortgage imposed insurance requirement, and government provided flood insurance, and one can see how well this arithmetically works out.Which leaves us with the general question of taxation, an extreme form of theft imposed via the Sovereign’s Monopoly over the use of Force:Property Ownership is taxed at 100%.Cash commands 0% deposit.A factory owner (for shits and giggles lets say they are stupid enough to set themselves up in NY or CA (-guilty as charged)), all in, Federal, State, County and City at 60% (minus loopholes as negotiated).Capital Gains 15%.Thus the pie has been stacked for the last thirty years.I will purposefully misquote Karl Popper, and argue that any scientifically valid theory must contain the seeds of its own dissolution. If the argument is not self liquidating, and is incapable of being debunked on the basis of its own internal logic, its most probably ideology as opposed to science. I will limit myself to reasoned argument instead.If you put 10% down on a property, ignoring taxation, capital gains and the nominal bull feathered covered inflation rate, and the property doubles in value in ten years, it follows that you have made a 10X return on your capital.Home ownership is inflation leverage.That is the buy-in to corporate submission. Nobody is putting a gun to the home owner’s head, its purely voluntary servitude.The issue of taxation is of course multi dimensional, when you do R&D in one tax jurisdiction, supply chain in another, manufacturing in a third, and market product in a fourth, invoice out of a fifth and settle and reconcile the eliminations through treasury functions in a sixth.There are six degrees of separation between the Internal Revenue Service and the Transnational Corporation.A State has only one obligation to discharge, namely to lawfully exercise its monopoly on the use of force. To do so, it needs to raise the funds necessary to maintain such a monopoly.When a State is no longer able to raise taxes in sufficient amounts, it is forced to borrow money from the true sovereign, namely the bank. In the US, there is only one Federally granted Charter of Corporation, namely the Federal Reserve Banking Corporation.The economics and legality of the Corporatist model was perfected in Italy in the 1920’s. They of course married that to a particular form of Statism based on its own historical norms, and within the context of a universalist church.The US Constitution specifically disallows that form of economic organization, or at the very least, makes no allowance for it. Its curious how the most advanced capitalist economy in the world, and certainly the one with the most brilliant, sophisticated, liberal Constitution, leaves corporate organization to individual States.The original Thirteen States, from the Commonwealth of Virginia to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, were all originally Corporate Charters issued by the Crown (the City, not the Monarch). That is how a colony is organized.Which is of course why Canada still has on its coin the face of the Monarch which is allowed to wear the Crown.The US took a different path, but that path ceased in 1913, and promptly Manifest Destiny was dropped in favor for Empire.In the quest for some unifying theory of economic free enterprise, one will certainly fall into line with the theories put forward by the Von Mises skool of economics.At least for a while, or until such time as one choses to dig even deeper though the original literature. I found this little gem just recently:“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” (Liberalism, [1927] p51).Mises on Fascism, Democracy, and Other Questions | Ralph RaicoThat of course sets up the whole sordid mess we are currently being subject to, as a contest between Mussolini and Gramsci.Antonio Gramsci: The Greatest Political Strategist in History | Daniel AjamianThat of course would be a very sad state of affairs, for a Nation built on the rock bed of Constitutionally positively affirmed limits, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and free enterprise.The above Hegelian dialectic of two violently opposed forces in conflict finding common ground, the solution the establishment would have us buy into, after a slobbering of Kantian woke idealism, is clearly at odds with the Grand American Tradition of favoring the Commonwealth as the expression of moral self interest on the part of the individual making a market for his goods.It contradicts American notions of enterprise based on British free enterprise, and British Parliamentary Representative Governance under a Popular Mandate, with the pragmatic accommodation of a House of Lords and the City of London, representing respectively land lords and money lords.It is of course neither curious or coincidental that the Mises Institute meets yearly for its annual celebration of free enterprise at the Jackyll Island Club Resort, a renown facility where the blood runs blue, and where famously the Fed was created ex nihilo.Latest commencement speech:Coronacrisis and Leviathan | Peter G. KleinWhich then leaves us where Hobbes feared we would end up, namely as “…a nation of moral imbeciles pursuing our limited self interest” (Leviathan).Corruptissima republica, plurimae leges. Tacitus [the more corrupt the republic the more laws it has].Lest I be accused of hypocrisy I must add that “…in a House of Tolerance, there are neither innocents nor virgins”. Nonetheless, “… quod licet iovi, not licet bovi…” [What is permitted to Jove is not permitted to cattle…]Bovines spook easily, never stand before a stampede when its in full force.When innovation is seen as a feeding trough for transnational corporatism, innovation ceases.In which case we are left with mandatory purchases in an environment where the target customer is exponentially stripped of his/her capacity to generate the wealth necessary to justify the purchase in the first place. Henceforth the law of diminishing returns kicks in, for every purchase is the direct result of the economic productivity of the consumer himself. Production is the source of all demand."A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value." Say’s Law (Traité d'économie politique, 1803).Universal Basic Income is the powers that be sawing off the branch on which they sit. Mandatory purchases, normatively imposed or through regulatory overreach, do not make up the difference.I trust that answers the question of corporatism, crony capitalism, and regulatory capture.Thanks for the ask, always a pleasure.

Yes, Australia is sovereign and independent, but first we have to agree on the date of Australia’s Independence - which surprisingly is much-argued. Although most Quora answers say January 1, 1901, in fact, March 3, 1986, is the date of Australia’s independence.The word “independence” of a state today generally means what the U.S. Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, says at its conclusion:“[T]hese united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states … and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.”On March 2, 1986, in Australia, the human being who is Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and also Queen Elizabeth the Second of Australia, signed a proclamation specifying that an Australian Act passed by the United Kingdom Parliament and adopted by her as Queen of the United Kingdom, and a substantially identical Australian Act passed by the Australian Commonwealth Parliament and adopted by her as Queen of Australia, would both go into effect at the same global instant of time on March 3, 1986.Both Parliaments, both sets of ministers, and both Queens, intended that these simultaneous Acts would accomplish the complete independence of Australia effective March 3, 1986. And I say, though some Australian judges and scholars still argue, that what both Parliaments, both ministries, and both Queens intended to do, they accomplished in doing. It worked.To those who still argue (and there are some) that 1986 was not quite enough, I say: just how much absolutely precise legal wording perfection do you expect politicians in elected legislatures to achieve? The Double-Queen went to Australia and signed In Person. Before the cameras. The Double-Queen gave a “photo op.” The moment mattered the way the Double-Queen and both Parliaments and both sets of Minsters thought it did. The people saw it. It is enough.Whatever ambiguities their pens left, their bodies and the cameras that caught them cured. Does Elizabeth Windsor really have to sit for cameras, both in London and in Canberra, yet again, to fix a “the” or a “not”?In 2018, Oxford University Press issued “The Oxford Handbook of The Australian Constitution,” a compendium of essays by different experts on different related topics.Part I, “Foundations,” includes Chapter 4, titled “Independence,” by University of Sydney Professor Anne Twomey, whose University webpage reports her “research passions include the Crown, the relationship between Australia and the UK” and who is “a well known expert in the field of constitutional law,” “published widely in the field,” and “is a practicing constitutional lawyer” who has worked for the High Court of Australia as a senior research officer.At page 116 of the “The Oxford Handbook of The Australian Constitution,” under the subheading “Dating Independence,” Professor Twomey writes:“If one is trying to ascertain a date upon which Australia obtained independence, then it is at least arguable that by 11 December 1931, the date the Statute of Westminster came into effect … independence was achieved …. If, however, independence is assessed by the actual breaking off of residual links of dependence, rather than merely having the capacity to do so, then the relevant date is arguably 3 March 1986, when the Australia Acts 1986 came into effect, or perhaps even later, when Australia breaks its links with the Crown and becomes a republic.”I reject not only the argument that Australia cannot be independent unless it is a republic (innumerable monarchies have been independent countries), but also the argument that Australia cannot be independent unless the person who wears its Crown wears no other Crown.In recognizing March 3, 1986 as Australia’s date of independence, I accept that having one individual, Elizabeth Windsor, as Queen of multiple nations, is not a violation of independence – provided that as regards each country, the law requires that she merely implement the advice of the ministers elected by that country, even if that advice is directly contrary to advice given to her by ministers of another independent country of which she is also its Queen; even if, indeed, this extends to her, as Queen of one country, declaring war on herself, as Queen of a different country.When two or more countries have one person who wears the separate Crown of each country, it is of course very unlikely as a practical matter that either country will be able to declare war on any of the others.It may be possible in theory for one human being to declare war on himself or herself – a theory that is at the center of today’s British Commonwealth. But as a practical matter it will not be done.Thus, for a country to accept that one’s own individual who wears that country’s Crown can also wear the Crowns of other countries, is in effect to join a league of mutual anti-war participation, that, as against each other, no one of them can declare war against any other of them.Having a shared Crown is, in substance, like being a member of a multi-national organization, in which each member is pledged very effectively not to make war on each other – because the very governmental mechanism for declaring war is unable to make a declaration of war, one member country upon another. The system simply cannot produce, it is disabled from generating, the necessary “documents-of-government” to declare war, one member against another member.Why is it disabled? Because though one person may theoretically declare war against herself or himself, no living human being ever will actually do so. Instead, the person will violate the rule of obedience to ministerial instructions from both countries, and refuse to declare war on behalf of either of them.Indeed, the block happens even earlier in the war-making process: in this system, the Shared Queen will not even order an attack of any kind of the forces of one of her Crowns against the subjects and armed forces of any of her other Crowns.It is not merely an anti-declaration-of-war system, it is an anti-violence system. If her ministers of one Crown advise her to use the forces of that Crown to attack the subjects of one of her other Crowns, she will violate the rule of obedience to ministers, and refuse to order the attack. Because to do so would be the same as taking a knife to her own wrist, cutting herself.Rather a clever way of making an “anti-war-against-each-other league,” actually – it is accomplished not by a diplomatic pledge that is easy to tear-up and ignore, but instead is accomplished by the fundamental structuring of government itself. America accomplishes the same thing via the Union of States – which in 1860-1865 some states tried to deny, by advocating the doctrine of “secession,” – who lost rather severely by doing so.I note, that from the founding of the American colonies, this is the system that the colonies actually had, vis-à-vis, first, the Parliament of England and the separate Parliament of Scotland and their ministers, and second, after their union in 1707, against the Parliament of Great Britain and its ministers. It was only when George III ascended the throne that the Crown first declared itself British only. When George III on his accession in 1760 said “Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Britain,” he forgot that he was also an American – or more precisely, he was of each American colony, separately.American leader John Adams of Massachusetts actually put this into words, in a published document.In early 1775, John Adams in Massachusetts got into a “debate of published essays” over precisely this point. In accordance with the custom of the times, both his adversary and he used pseudonyms: Adams adopted “Novanglus,” meaning “New Englander.” In his seventh “Novanglus” essay, published March 6, 1775, Adams expressly advocated for the constitutional position that Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have today. Adams maintained that this status is what the American colonies had always had, until Parliament’s power-seeking effort began in 1765.John Adams expressed his loyalty to King George III in exactly the terms that Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders today express their loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II, while simultaneously insisting that the Parliament of Great Britain had no lawmaking power over any of them:“If it follows from thence, that he appears king of Massachusetts, king of Rhode-Island, king of Connecticut, &c. this is no absurdity at all. He will appear in that light, and does appear so, whether parliament has authority over us or not. He is king of Ireland, I suppose, although parliament is allowed to have authority there. As to giving him those titles, I have no objection at all: I wish he would be graciously pleased to assume them.”Prior to and throughout calendar 1775, the Americans called the forces assembling and opposing them not “the British” but “the ministerial” army. And they were correct in this. It took through the first half of 1776 finally to convince the Americans that no amount of persuasion would bring King George III to recognize that he had a duty to them to be their direct and personal king of each colony – as each prior king and queen had been.It was King George III’s attitude of 1760 that Elizabeth Windsor at last foreswore and abandoned, effective March 3, 1986, 226 years after George III made his profound mistake of identifying the Crown with only Britain.I also accept that membership in a voluntary multinational organization, be it the Commonwealth, the United Nations, or other, is no infringement of independence, because no such organization legally has (though it may try in practice) law-making power over its members – merely persuasive influence. I reject the argument that multinational organizations are a shadowy super-government.But along with this, I also deny that admission to membership in multinational organizations is a sign of independence. The histories of the United Nations, and before that, the League of Nations, are replete with examples of great powers negotiating for the admission of some of their subordinate component states as members; when the British Empire did this, the Soviet Union insisted on doing so as well.Other Australian sources of authority are more conclusive than is Professor Twomey that March 3, 1986, is Australia’s independence date.Three Justices of the High Court of Australia on December 9, 2003, emphatically said that the date of independence is 3 March 1986, in the case Shaw v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [MIMA], available in full on the High Court’s website; citation 218 C.L.R. 28. The majority of four in the case implied that they agreed, but that they found it unnecessary to decide the question in order to decide the case. The case concerned whether a UK citizen could be considered an “alien” to Australia. The seven justices offered different opinions, as follows:Chief Justice Gleeson and Justices Gummow and Hayne, separately joined by Justice Heydon, to make a majority of four out of seven, mostly avoided the question, but did imply that they agreed with March 3, 1986:“[paragraphs 24-25] To ask when Australia actually achieved complete constitutional independence or other questions phrased in similar terms is to assume a simple answer to a complex issue, rather than to attend to the particular matter arising under the Constitution or involving its interpretation which has arisen for decision. … At times when elements of the UK government still participated or had the power to participate in Australian legislative, executive and judicial affairs, in particular until 1986 in the affairs of the States, it was difficult to classify the UK as a ‘foreign power’ …”Justice McHugh said: “[paragraphs 51-52] the evolutionary process by which the term ‘subject of the Queen’ in s. 117 of the Constitution became ‘subject of the Queen of Australia’ was not completed until 3 March 1986. Until that date, therefore, Australians, born or naturalised, and British citizens permanently residing in Australia owed their allegiance to the ‘Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’. Until that date, they were subjects of the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland for the purpose of s. 117 of the Constitution, and were entitled to the protection of that section. When the evolutionary process ended, British citizens then permanently residing in Australia became subjects of the Queen of Australia by the same evolutionary process that had transformed the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland into the Queen of Australia. … It follows that the applicant, who arrived in Australia in 1974 and was permanently living in Australia on 3 March 1986, is a subject of the Queen of Australia. He is not an alien …”Justice Kirby said: “[paragraph 109, 111, 112, 114, 126] It is appropriate for me to adopt the identical conclusion of McHugh J and Callinan J that the enactment of the Australia Acts in 1986 represented an important constitutional moment.Thereafter, the special residual status for non-citizen British subjects born in the United Kingdom or elsewhere was anomalous and inappropriate, both as a matter of statute and constitutional law. … I therefore concur in finding the applicable date for the termination of the status of non-citizen British subjects as being 3 March 1986. The process that had begun in the change in Australian nationality at an unspecified time after federation should be taken to have concluded on 3 March 1986. Persons arriving as immigrants in Australia as ‘subjects of the Queen’ on and before that date were not ‘aliens’. They cannot be deported as such under laws made pursuant to the ‘aliens’ head of constitutional power. Ultimately, only this Court can say when such a moment of constitutional change arrived. … [T]he real legal principle at issue in this case is not the supposed alienage of the applicant but the suggested alienage (and therefore vulnerability to deportation) of thousands of members of the Australian community who arrived on a basis similar to the applicant before 3 March 1986. For them, as for him, the Constitution stands guardian. … It follows that the applicant, having arrived in Australia as a migrant and permanent entrant and as a subject of the Queen before 3 March 1986 and who became a member of the Australian community with the requisite allegiance, is not an ‘alien’.”Justice Callinan said: “[paragraphs 169, 171, 174, 177, 178] While a precise date at which Australia actually achieved complete constitutional independence may not, in strict legal, or indeed historical theory, be able to be determined, it is highly desirable that a point in time by which it had occurred be nominated. … The Australian people have since 1900 proceeded regularly, indeed scrupulously and overtly legally, in collaboration with the Parliament of the United Kingdom along the path to full and independent nationhood. … In my view, 1973 is not the appropriate date. The change to the Sovereign’s style and title in Australia in 1973 rang no bell for British born subjects of the Queen who had settled in Australia: that, suddenly, notoriously and decisively they were now aliens. The applicant’s status in this country should not be made a casualty of an unrecorded, unnoticed, unheralded, and undefined, in chronological terms, evolutionary denotational change in constitutional meaning. … In my opinion, the correct date for the change in status of a subject of the Queen in Australia can be no earlier than the coming into force of the Australia Acts: 3 March 1986. … It was this overt legislative act, mirroring simultaneous legislation in the United Kingdom, that gave voice to the completion of Australia’s evolutionary independence. It was a formal declaration that the Commonwealth of Australia and the Australian states were completely constitutionally independent of the United Kingdom. Nothing can serve so well to give legitimacy to a nation and its constitutional integrity as a rare and complete consensus of governments of the kind that the enactment of the Australia Acts represents.”January 1, 1901 – the date most often offered on Quora, but never backed by any scholar, it being merely the effective date of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution – is wrong.But: How could something so obviously wrong be so widely said to be right?Because the Australian government itself says it.Go to australia.gov.au, to the page titled “Federation,” and you will see this:“Australia became an independent nation on 1 January 1901 when the British Parliament passed legislation allowing the six Australian colonies to govern in their own right as part of the Commonwealth of Australia.”This official Australian government statement is so demonstrably false as to be an embarrassment to the government for having made it. No Australian judge or scholar, certainly not Professor Twomey, supports it. A unanimous Australian High Court in 2003 rejected it; three justices strongly say March 3, 1986, while four justices imply March 3, 1986.But yet: another prominent Australian government website repeats it: the National Museum of Australia, under “defining moments,” “Federation.” This site, adorned with a black and white engraving of a famous painting of the event, the future King George V before a vast crowd in a vast hall on May 9, 1901, repeats the Australian government language verbatim:“Australia became an independent nation on 1 January 1901, when the British Parliament passed legislation enabling the six Australian colonies to collectively govern in their own right as the Commonwealth of Australia.”Then, I discovered, to my relief, a different official Australian government website, of the Parliamentary Education Office, which, by contrast to the others, speaks accurately about the 1901 Constitution – precisely because the PEO leaves out the word “independent:”“Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901 when six British colonies – New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania – united to form the Commonwealth of Australia. This process is known as federation.”The Australian Parliamentary Education Office knows what it is talking about. The “PEO” goes on to say this about the 1901 events:“Before 1901 Australia did not exist as a nation. It was a collection of six British colonies which were partly self-governing, but under the law-making power of the British Parliament. The colonies were almost like six separate countries; for example, each had its own government and laws, its own defence force, issued its own stamps and collected tariffs (taxes) on goods that crossed its borders. The colonies had even built railways using different gauges, which complicated the transport of goods across the continent. …“The Commonwealth of Australia was declared on 1 January 1901 at a ceremony held in Centennial Park in Sydney. During the ceremony, the first Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun, was sworn in and Australia's first Prime Minister, Edmund Barton, and federal ministers took the oath of office.“Australians welcomed nationhood. Up to 500,000 people lined the route of the federation parade that travelled from the Domain to Centennial Park, and about 100,000 spectators witnessed the ceremony that followed. … The first federal elections for the new Parliament, which consisted of 36 senators and 75 members of the House of Representatives, were held on 29 and 30 March 1901. … The first Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia was opened at noon on 9 May 1901 by the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V). The lavish ceremony, which was attended by over 12 000 guests, took place in the Exhibition Building, Melbourne. … In Melbourne the opening of Parliament was marked by two weeks of celebrations.“The enthusiasm with which Australians greeted federation and the first federal Parliament demonstrated the nation was eager to unite as ‘one people’.”The Australians who drafted the 1901 Australian Commonwealth Constitution, and the United Kingdom House of Commons and House of Lords who granted that Constitution, did not want “independence” as defined above – and they did not get it, or give it.They sought only a one-government-over Australia Commonwealth to coordinate six previously-uncoordinated colonies – but they wanted that Commonwealth to be dependent, below the Parliament of the United Kingdom, as the six colonies had been before and as the six colonies (now called states) remained after uniting in the Commonwealth.The Australians who drafted and asked for the 1901 Commonwealth Constitution, and the British Parliamentary and Ministerial leaders in London who granted it, did not want independence for Australia, did not seek independence for Australia, and did not believe that the Commonwealth Constitution achieved “independence” for Australia in the way people generally understand the word today: as meaning that no one, other that the people of the country itself, have the ultimate power to decide (a) what are the laws and what are not the laws in the country, (b) who are the individuals who hold offices of government power in the country, and (c) what powers those individuals wield.We have the works of scholars and judges, as I have quoted above, to support this conclusion. But we need not rely just on them, as if we were parrots trained by PhDs the noises we have to squawk, and the ideas we have to believe.Using our amazing internet, and the efforts of every English-speaking government to post a vast amount of material on statutes and lawmaking, along with the Internet Archive, and google books, and numerous other sites that post original source-documents, it is possible to find all relevant original documents, and possible to read so many (if one has the time and diligence), that it is unnecessary to rely on the filtered productions of contemporary secondary sources (trade books) that are all written to sell product to an existing audience with its own pre-conceived desires that something be true.One broad subject that I have looked at is the very gradual process by which the Parliament of Great Britain (which arose from the union of England and Scotland in 1707 and lasted until the union of Ireland into it in 1800) and then the Parliament of the United Kingdom (1800 to today) receded from its dominating claim of all lawmaking power in all British dominions, first asserted in 1765 with the Stamp Act and then codified in 1766 with the Declaratory Act.To understand the political reality of Australia it is necessary to examine the political reality of its elder brother, Canada.From the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, a key concern in London was to keep the allegiance of mainland Canada – which the British in those days called the Province of Quebec. The London leaders knew that if the resident Canadians became dissatisfied with too-oppressive rule by Parliament in London, the Canadians could always go-over to America and be welcomed in.In 1780 we find a concrete example of this. In 1779, in Quebec Province, it was apparent to ministers in Britain that there were significant administrative problems in the organization of the judicial courts as set-up in the 1774 “Quebec Act.” At the urging of appointed Quebec Chief Justice Peter Livius, who was then visiting London, on July 16, 1779, King George the Third “in Council” (meaning by his ministers, not Parliament) directed the Royal Governor of Quebec, Haldimand, to implement changes in the court system established in the 1774 Quebec Act. Governor Haldimand referred this to his appointed Council in Quebec, to get the advice of the Council, which knew the local situation.On March 7, 1780, in Quebec, during the Revolutionary War, Governor Haldimand’s Council advised against this or any change to the 1774 Quebec Act, stating:“[I]n the present critical state of the British Empire in America, innovations in the Province might be improper – And it is with regret we find ourselves obliged … to mention to Your Excellency [the Governor] the bad effects which the reports, circulated every summer, of changes to be made in the mode of administering the affairs of this Province have upon his Service. They disquiet the minds of the people and furnish plausible pretences to the emissaries of the revolted colonies and other enemies of the state, to insinuate that nothing is permanent under a British Government; and the Quebec Act … was the effect of an interested policy, and would be repealed, as soon as the ends for which it was made were effected.”The effort to reform the Quebec courts came to a halt – because disaffection in the people of Quebec Province could so easily lead to revolt in Quebec and alliance with the Americans right next door.Then some months later in 1780, the ministers in London came up with another idea: to impose new Parliamentary taxes in Quebec, not allowed under the 1774 Quebec Act – the same idea that had triggered the war in the other colonies.On October 25, 1780, the Governor of Quebec, Haldimand, wrote to the then-Minister for Colonies, Lord Germain in London, advising against any efforts to impose taxes in Canada not allowed under the 1774 Quebec Act, and against any changes in the Quebec Act:“I coincide with the majority of the legislative Council in considering the Canadians as people of the country, and think that in making laws and regulations for the administration of these laws, regard is to be paid to the sentiments and manner of thinking of 60,000 rather than of 2,000 …. [T]his is not the time for innovationsand it cannot be sufficiently inculcated [meaning: accepted and understood] on the part of Government [the ministers in London] that the Quebec Act is a sacred Charter, granted by the King in parliament to the Canadians as a security for their religion, laws and property.”To hear this said by a minister-chosen appointed Canadian Royal Governor to a British Minister in 1780 about an Act adopted in 1774 – that it is “a sacred Charter, granted by the King … as a security for their religion, laws and property” – when the very same thing was denied in 1773 – 1776 by every minister-chosen appointed American Royal Governor and denied by the very Parliament that in 1774 enacted this Act, regarding every “sacred Charter” issued to the Americans by earlier kings, is quite frustrating for an American to read.These 1780 observations by the Royal Governor in Quebec, Haldimand, show that if the Canadians ever became so unhappy that they declared independence, the Americans would rush military aid to them, and British rule would not have the slightest chance of keeping a single British soldier anywhere on the continent of North America – even if the Canadians decided to be independent and not join the United States.The fact that Canada was adjacent to the United States thus was a profoundly ameliorating influence upon Parliament, in how to treat the Canadians. The ameliorating effect has been long-lasting – indeed, it is what led to the constitutional changes in Canada in 1982 that finally gave real independence to Canada.And as Australia and New Zealand grew in population, they being also primarily colonists from Britain as was Canada, what ever way Parliament treated Canada, Parliament had to treat Australia and New Zealand the same.Residents of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have never understood why the Americans found British rule so oppressive. But I liken the situation to one in which a father has had two wives, and two families, one after the other.To the children of the first family, the father was domineering and commanding – so much so that the children of the first family rebelled. Then the father remarried, and had a second set of children.From the rebellion of the “first family” children, now the father had partly learned his lesson, and to these children of the “second family” he was more kindly and supportive.But unfortunately, while being more kindly and supportive to the “second family” children, the father regularly told his “second family” children that he had also been as kind and supportive to his “first family” children as he now was to them, but that his “first family” children had been selfish and unreasonable. The father praised his “second family” children as being closer to his heart than his “first family” children – who had wronged him.And the children of the “second family” responded by claiming that their father was being even more kind and caring to them than he actually was. Why?Because as is so often the case, the children of the “second family” feel jealously and sibling rivalry with the children of the “first family.” They like to feel that their father treats them better because they are better children. The better their father treats them, the better they themselves must appear to be, in the eyes of the outside world. Being a well-treated child is enhancing to the child’s own image in the rest of the world: an honored child is honored by others, while an abused child may be looked down on by others.Evidently the children of the “second family” want to tell the world that they were better treated by their father than in fact they were – because it is too damaging to their own sense of self-worth, and to their public reputations, to admit to how the father really treated them.Also, by reinforcing the father’s claim to be kindly and caring, the children of the “second family” bring discredit upon the children of the “first family” and increase the likelihood that the father will continue to prefer them, the “second family” children, over the “first family” children – a favoritism that the father might switch, if the “first family” children grow to become much more rich and powerful than the “second family” children, and thus, become more able to aid the father in future difficulties.In the 1800s, the ministers and the Parliament of the United Kingdom – openly calling itself the Imperial Parliament – devised a way of treating the children of the “second family” better. I researched in detail the principles of what Britain developed in the late 1800s and called “responsible government” in the Dominions – and there was much legitimate devolution of local-self government involved in it.But it was not independence.In 1928 University of Edinburgh Professor of Constitutional Law Arthur Berriedale Keith published a revised 1928 second edition (in two volumes) of his 1912 three-volume treatise “Responsible Government in the Dominions.” Professor Keith is honored today as the namesake of an annual “Keith Forum on Commonwealth Constitutionalism” and of an annual “Keith Lecture in Commonwealth Constitutionalism” established by the University of Edinburgh in 2018, headed today by Edinburgh Professor Stephen Tierney.Professor Keith first published his treatise 13 years after the January 1, 1901 establishment of the Australian Commonwealth – the date that most people today assert is the date of “independence” of Australia – and revised his treatise 27 years after the Australian Commonwealth.What Professor Keith says in 1928, 27 years after the Australian Commonwealth started, entirely demolishes the claim of independence for Australia 27 years earlier in 1901. We find it in full in the original on the internet archive, available for free to anyone with an internet connection, in Volume II, beginning at page 1145 (the page numbering is sequential through the two volumes of the 1928 edition), under the heading “THE UNITY OF THE EMPIRE:”“[T]he Dominions [meaning: Canada, Australia, etc.] are still largely in the position of dependencies. It is perfectly true that the Governors of the Dominions are selected only after consultation with the Dominion Governments …. [But t]here is no sign that the Imperial Government would be prepared to concede the right to any Dominion to appoint by popular or Parliamentary election the head of the State, and such a position of affairs is manifestly incompatible with autonomy of any kind.“Equally incompatible with autonomy is the fact that no Dominion has any vital power of constitutional change. … It is true that on the surface the people of the [Australian] Commonwealth have a wide power of constitutional change, but that is confined, it seems certain, within the framework of a federal Constitution, and any wider change would not be legitimate. …“Their dependency is revealed not merely by this general subordination of the Constitutions to the Imperial Parliament, whence they derive their legal authority, but also in minor but very important ways. The power of disallowing Dominion laws [note: this refers both to the power of the appointed governor-general to refuse “assent” to laws adopted by both houses of the Commonwealth, and to the power of the London Privy Council to revoke an assent given by the governor-general] is largely obsolete, but for very simple reasons. The Imperial Government has surrendered to full Dominion control great areas of activity …. But the Imperial Government has never relaxed control in any matter vital to the Empire. It does not disallow Acts, because Bills which are fatal to Imperial interests never become law [meaning: the bills are derailed in the legislative process in the Dominion legislature, such that the bill fails to get a vote of both houses].“[The Imperial Government] has secured the restriction within narrow limits of the exercise of merchant shipping legislation even by the great Dominions, and, as late as 1925, after all [Australia’s] efforts to keep within [Australia’s commonwealth] powers, the [Australian] Commonwealth Government found sections of [its] Navigation Act pronounced ultra vires as repugnant to the Imperial Merchant Shipping Act [of] 1894. …“Not a single Dominion has passed a Bill regarding international matters to which any Imperial Government could possibly take exception, save Newfoundland, and her legislation in 1907 was promptly overridden by an Imperial Order in Council under an Imperial Act.“The immigration legislation of the Dominions has been carefully recast to meet Imperial objections ….“[A]ll Dominions have [been] placed on record that, if they pass any legislation affecting the security of stocks which have been admitted to trustee rank under the Colonial Stocks Act, 1900, these Acts will properly be disallowed. …“Still more obvious is the paramount power of Imperial legislation, solemnly reasserted in the Irish Constitution Act of 1922, as an effective rebuke to the vain boast of the [Irish] Constitution that all powers in Ireland are derived from the people, whereas not a single power could be derived from any other source than the legal authority given by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. …”We pause here in our review of Professor Keith’s 1928 treatise to note the fundamental difference in the source of government power, between “derived from the people” and “derived from … the Parliament of the United Kingdom.” The Parliament of the United Kingdom in turn derived – and still derives – its power from the King or Queen who issues writs of election for Members to the House of Commons, and who creates the Peers in the House of Lords, and convenes the Parliament, conceptually as an advisory body to the Crown for enacting and changing the laws.In America, beginning in the “resistance” period that began with the Stamp Act in 1765, that converted into the “revolution” period on July 4, 1776, the three colonies that operated throughout under their charter colonial governments (Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts) removed the name of the king as the source of power, and installed the people as the source of power. In the remaining colonies, the people erected temporary quasi-governments, also invoking the power of the people.After the Declaration of Independence, the Americans converted the temporary quasi-governments into free and independent governments – again invoking the power of the people to form their own governments.The Declaration of Independence states that all governments “deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The federal constitution begins “We the people of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”This American principle – which rejects the power of kings to form governments – is precisely what Professor Keith in 1928, at page 1148, described as a “vain boast” when the people of Ireland in 1922 attempted to invoke it, when they lived in a land where King George V claimed to rule.The foundational source of power to adopt a constitution determines the evidence and words that courts must use to interpret and apply that constitution.Regarding constitutions adopted by invoking “the people,” the courts must look to the words and actions of the people of that time – specifically, the individuals who drafted it and who adopted, or ratified, it.But where a constitution is adopted by invoking the King – through the King’s advisors – it is the conduct and words of the King’s ministers and advisors (by “advisors” I mean the two Houses, Commons and Lords) that courts must rely on.This produces a very odd result regarding the 1901 Commonwealth Constitution of Australia. Australians drafted the constitution; Australians in each of the six states approved it in popular referendums.And yet all of them acted not to exercise their own “people’s right” of government. They all knew, and all desired, that their work would have no effect, that it would all be for naught, unless the Parliament of the United Kingdom approved it.And thus, to interpret (or construe, which is slightly different) the terms of the 1901 Australian Constitution, courts could not rely on what any of these Australians did or said. Instead, the courts would look to the words and actions of the Imperial Parliament alone. We see the High Court of Australia say this very clearly in 1920, as we can read in the original on the High Court’s excellent website, High Court Digital Collection, in decision “No. 2” in Merchant Service Guild of Australasia [sic] v. Commonwealth Steamship Owners’ Association, at page 454 of 28 C.L.R.The High Court in 1920 at page 453 lists several likely deleterious economic and political consequences of construing (interpreting) the Australian Constitution in a particular way that one party desires, and then says that the court cannot pay any attention to arguments about consequences:“[T]he true answer is that the powers conferred by the Constitution are not to be construed by us as limited by these considerations. We, as a Court, have to obey the intention of the British Parliament ….”The fact that not merely legally, but accurate conceptually, that it is the intentions of the British Parliament of 1900, and not of the people of Australia in 1990, that controls interpretation of today’s Australian Commonwealth Constitution, is a legitimate conceptual problem with my assertion that the world ought to accept March 3, 1986, as the date of Australia’s independence. If a people’s own fundamental government constitution is not properly interpreted by examination of that people itself, but instead depends on the intentions of foreigners, how can that people claim to be independent?Professor Twomey spots this in her chapter in the 2018 “The Oxford handbook of the Australian Constitution.” At pages 117-118, Professor Twomey says:“Even at the time of the 1999 republic referendum, the proposed changes did not include the re-enactment of the Constitution as an act of the sovereignty of the Australian people. … When the republic issue arises again, serious consideration will need to be given to the re-enactment of the Constitution by the Australian people. This would match the rhetoric of the High Court …. It would also be an indisputable marker of complete Australian independence.”My opinion is that the Australian people could dispense with “the republic issue” and do a re-enactment of the Constitution while keeping the Queen – and not just a solely Australian Queen, but the “shared Queen” who holds multiple Crowns. But frankly I cannot imagine that the Australian people will really see any reason to rouse themselves to the effort of what is, basically, a concern of lawyers and scholars. The Australian people of 2019 know that they are independent. They don’t feel any need for a ritual gesture of Constitution re-enactment to confirm it.And there may be quite many of today’s Australians who like the idea that their Constitution is interpreted according to the vision of British administrators and ministers from long ago, who were pretty much dispassionate about internal Australian conflicts and interests, and who were smart, competent people – people who genuinely liked being competent administrators, even though the press of their day gave them no fame.How many Australians today want to entrust the definition of their fundamental freedoms to the professors, television journalists, and popular movement leaders of today? Perhaps, not so very many. Probably not so very many.To return to our quotes from Professor Keith from his 1928 Volume II, beginning at page 1145, under the heading “THE UNITY OF THE EMPIRE:”“[A]ny Imperial Act which by its express terms of necessary intendment applies to the Dominions binds all their people, their Governments, and their Courts ….“[A]nother side of this activity is the unquestioned supremacy and binding force of all the old Imperial Acts which refer to the Empire as a whole. …“Yet another sign of dependency is the inability of the Dominions to legislate with extraterritorial effect save under express Imperial legislation. …“A further and decisive mark of dependency is the appeal to the Privy Council [in London]. Nothing is more absurd than to pretend that this appeal is maintained voluntarily by the desire of the Dominions. …“[D]espite the apparatus of Imperial War Cabinets and Conferences, and admission of the Dominions into the League of Nations, there remains no real equality of the Dominions in matters of foreign policy. The issues of war and peace rest decisively with the Imperial Government; no Dominion can declare war, none can make peace; no Dominion can even make a commercial treaty except with the sanction of the Imperial Government, and subject to ratification with the same sanction. The alleged concession of the treaty right to the Dominions in 1923, and even 1926, is a mere chimera.“No Dominion can accredit a minister; it must be done for the Dominion by the Imperial Government. …“[N]o Dominion relies on herself for defence; Canada makes no effort whatever, and Australia and New Zealand merely seek to co-operate with the Imperial navy in case of danger ….“The unity of the Empire, therefore, expresses itself in one form in the fact that the Dominions – and in far higher degree India – are dependencies, a fact which interminable rhetoric will not remove.“The advantages of the condition of dependency are doubtless very great. … Imperial protection has secured a power of development free from all foreign intervention, the importance of which can hardly be overestimated. Nothing but this consideration would have preserved Australia and New Zealand from becoming the legitimate object of aspiration for Japan ….“The Crown unquestionably serves in the most effective way as the symbol and expression of Imperial unity. The fact that – outside of the Irish Free State – the government is regularly carried on in the name of the Crown … familiarizes the people of the Empire with the sense of their membership of a single organization.”Professor Keith says in the 1928 edition, Volume I of the same treatise, at page 309 (bolding added):“The authority of Dominion Parliaments is, of course, like that of every Parliament, subject to the limitation in fact of its power to enforce; but in law it is restricted by the following considerations: (1) those resting on the fact that these Parliaments are the Legislatures of dependencies, not of fully sovereign states; (2) those resting on the territorial limitation of Dominion legislation; (3) those arising from repugnancy to Imperial legislation, and (4) those affecting constitutional change, which ultimately fall largely under head (1) or (3).”The foregoing is a change in style rather than substance from what Professor Keith had said in the 1912 edition, Volume I, at page 361 (bolding added):“Although within their own sphere plenary, there are imposed on the legislative powers of the Dominion Parliaments certain restrictions which may be classed under four heads: (1) those arising from the essential character of a Parliament of a dependency as not sovereign in the full sense; (2) the territorial limits of their authority; (3) the rule of non-repugnancy to Imperial law, and (4) the limitations as to constitutional change.”Thus Professor Keith in 1912 and in 1928.In 1925, esteemed Australian lawyer Dr. Donald Kerr (who died in Jan. 1928) published “The Law of the Australian Constitution A Treatise on the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act,” also available in full in the original on the internet archive. At page 58 Dr. Kerr wrote:“[T]he Commonwealth Parliament cannot give its laws extra-territorial operation, and an attempt to do so will be treated as invalid by the Commonwealth Judicature itself. … Herein lies an important distinction between the position of legislation of a Colonial Legislature, such as the Commonwealth Legislature, and that of a completely sovereign Legislature, such as the Imperial Parliament. The latter is limited merely by capacity to enforce its decrees.”In this, Dr. Kerr followed the 1913 ruling of the High Court of Australia in yet another of many cases titled Merchant Service Guild of Australasia v. Commonwealth Steamship Owners’ Association (sailors versus owners generated many disputes over the years), beginning at page 664 of 16 C.L.R., also available online in full on the High Court’s website. The High Court had a custom of individual justices writing their own separate decisions (rather than the modern custom of drafting a “majority” decision) and thus we turn to the separate opinion of justices Rich and Gavan Duffy, at page 703:“In English law it is not a universally true proposition that subordinate legislatures have no extra-territorial jurisdiction. The Imperial Parliament may itself assume the right to bind British subjects, or even foreigners, whether within or without the territorial limits of Great Britain, with respect to acts done in any part of the world; and may in whole or in part confer the same right on any subordinate legislature. … The true rule with respect to subordinate legislatures is that they will not be held to possess any extra-territorial jurisdiction unless it is conferred on them expressly or by necessary implication.”Regarding taxation, Dr. Kerr in 1925 writes in “The Law of the Australian Constitution” at page 61:“The general power of taxation vested in a Colonial legislature is limited to the Colony. Any extra-territorial taxation must depend upon some special authority from the Imperial Parliament.”In 1931, on December 11, came the United Kingdom Statute of Westminster. The Statute of Westminster offered far more self-government to the Dominions than had existed before, though not amounting to complete sovereignty; there remained some areas on which the Parliament of the United Kingdom could legislate with superseding effect upon the Dominion Parliaments.Section 1 of the Statute of Westminster was merely definitions of words used.Section 2 voided operation of the “Colonial Laws Validity Act” of 1865; Section 2 also voided the “repugnancy” doctrine (Keith mentions this above).Professor Twomey and other scholars assert that in Australia, this would apply to the laws adopted by the Commonwealth government only, but not to the laws adopted by the still-existing six states of Australia, to the extent that the six states had kept powers and not allocated those powers to the Commonwealth government. I will not take Quora readers into the complexities of that argument, until we are forced to address it, at the end of this answer.The fact that the 1931 Statute of Westminster, in section 2, voided the “Colonial Laws Validity Act” is extremely important.Ever since June 25, 1865, the Parliament of the United Kingdom had on its statute-books a global analog to the 1766 “Declaratory Act” in which the Parliament of Great Britain had asserted its right to all lawmaking in America. This 1865 act was called the “Colonial Laws Validity Act,” and can be found online on google books at page 1106 of the 1878 “The Statutes: Revised Edition, Vol. XIV. 25 & 26 Victoria to 28 & 29 Victoria. A.D. 1862-1865.” That Act said in Section 2:“Any colonial law which is or shall be in any respect repugnant to the Provisions of any Act of Parliament, extending to the Colony to which such law may relate, or repugnant to any Order or Regulation made under Authority of such Act of Parliament, or having in the Colony the Force and Effect of such Act, shall be read subject to such Act, Order or Regulation, and shall, to the Extent of such Repugnancy, but not otherwise, be and remain absolutely void and inoperative.”On July 24, 1902, less than two years after adoption of the Australian Commonwealth Constitution, in London, the House of Lords, Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, issued a decision in In re The Queen v. Marais (also called Regina or Reg. v. Marais), found at pages 51 to 56 in the “The Law Reports,” “Appeal Cases,” 1902 Part I (on google books in full). The case arose in Natal, South Africa, an appeal of the criminal conviction on December 18, 1900, of a person for aiding the Boer rebellion in early 1900. The state of the law examined thus was the law as of the year 1900 – the same year as Parliament was considering the Australian Commonwealth Constitution Bill. In Marais, the Privy Council stated at page 54 that the Colonial Laws Validity Act is:“[T]o preserve the right of the Imperial legislature to legislate even for the Colony, although a local legislature has been given [“given” meaning established], and to make it impossible, when an Imperial statute has been passed expressly for the purpose of governing that Colony, for the Colonial legislature in that sense to enact anything repugnant to an express law applied to that Colony by the Imperial Legislature itself …. This statute reconciles the two principles of giving local legislation, but, nevertheless, leaving still open to the Imperial Legislature by express legislative provision the power to do something in the colony.”I should note that this kind of power in America is what the Parliament of Great Britain first tried to implement in 1765 (the Stamp Act) and is what the Americans denounced as the innovation it really was, and refused to accept, and went over into independence if necessary, to defeat it.Section 2 of the Statute of Westminster made a very great step in the direction of independence, by abandoning that power. However, as we will see, Parliament made abandonment of the power automatic only as to Canada, Ireland, and South Africa. Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland would have to choose whether to accept the freedom offered to them.Section 3 authorized extraterritorial legislation. We have seen above Professor Keith’s discussion of this limitation upon the Australian Commonwealth, and the ruling of judges Gavan Duffy and Rich in the 1913 Merchant Service Guild case. Section 3 was thus a significant expansion of the powers of the Dominion governments.Section 4 provided that United Kingdom Parliamentary legislation enacted subsequent to December 1931, that the UK Parliament wanted to apply in the Dominions, nevertheless would not become part of the law of a Dominion unless that Dominion “requested, and consented” to it. No longer would the Dominions be subject to Parliament enacting laws applicable in the Dominion without the Dominion having a “veto” over it.Here again, in the Statute of Westminster the UK Parliament surrendered a key claim of power that, when first asserted in 1765, provoked so much opposition in America that eventually the resistance converted to revolution and the Declaration of Independence.Sections 5 and 6 voided parts of two shipping regulation laws.Section 7 presented technical matters regarding Canada.Sections 8 and 9 ensured that the Australian Commonwealth Constitution amendment provisions were unaffected, and that the pre-existing powers of the six Australian states vis-à-vis the Commonwealth were unaffected.The Statute of Westminster applied automatically to Canada (and to the Irish Free State and to South Africa).However: Section 10 provided that if Australia (and New Zealand and Newfoundland) wished to obtain these enhanced freedoms and powers – sections 2 through 6 – their Parliaments had to act to adopt them.Well, guess what?Australia ignored the powers and freedoms offered free for the taking by the Statute of Westminster, and did not take them, for more than a decade.The Parliament of the United Kingdom adopted the 1931 Statute of Westminster primarily to keep Canada happy. Australia was, once again, the incidental beneficiary of British liberalization efforts motivated to keep Canada happy – except that Australia did not want them. Nor did New Zealand.This became slightly embarrassing to Australia in 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated the throne. The preamble of the Statute of Westminster had stated as a mere “whereas,” as a statement of fact describing the existing law, but not as a law in the statute itself, that “it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.”What to do now, in the unexpected circumstance of an abdication? How could all the Dominions and the United Kingdom legally adopt the same successor as king? The United Kingdom declared Prince Albert, to be known as King George VI, as king; but because Australia had not adopted any part of the Statute of Westminster, Australia, unlike Canada, had no power under section 4 of the Act to “request, and consent” to this. The UK Stanley Baldwin government contacted Australia – presumably the Australian Prime Minister, who with the Australian cabinet, presumably, indicated consent. Canada, on the other hand, adopted clear legislation. Thus, the “whereas” clause to “His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936” read:“And whereas, following upon the communication to His Dominions of His Majesty’s said declaration and desire [to abdicate], the Dominion of Canada pursuant to the provisions of section four of the Statute of Westminster 1931 has requested and consented to the enactment of this Act, and the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa have assented thereto …”As a result of this embarrassment, beginning in 1937 there were half-hearted efforts in the Australian Commonwealth Parliament to adopt the Statute of Westminster, but every effort died an early death. Nobody in Australia cared enough about claiming the freedoms and powers offered in the Statute of Westminster.War with Germany broke out in September 1939, and still Australia did not take the freedoms and powers of the Statute of Westminster.After this came war with Japan on December 8, 1941 (Australian time), and on December 10, 1941, the sinking by the Japanese of two capital British warships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, thereby weakening the credibility of the United Kingdom as protector of Australia. Still Australia did not take the freedoms and powers of the Statute of Westminster.Then came the Japanese capture of Singapore on February 15, 1942, at which some 15,000 Australian soldiers were captured. The Australian troop commander, Major General Gordon Bennett of the 8th Division, escaped rather than surrender, arriving in Australia on March 2, and criticized the British leadership.Then on March 12, 1942, aboard an Australian warship, under an Australian navy commander, two Australian “stokers” (coal-handlers for coal-fired boilers) murdered a third stoker by 14 stab wounds. British naval law mandated on conviction (conviction was prompt, the victim lived long enough to name his murderers) death to the two murderers. Due to Australia not having adopted the Statute of Westminster, the British naval law applied to the Australian warship, without the Australian Commonwealth having any role in the matter. However, King George VI used his clemency power to make the sentence life imprisonment.The prospect of its own citizens being executed by the law of the United Kingdom, not the law of Australia, finally prompted Australians to realize the importance of claiming the freedoms and powers offered more than a decade earlier – but then steadily ignored. The Commonwealth of Australia finally adopted the freedoms and powers of the Statute of Westminster on October 9, 1942. To obtain jurisdiction over the murder case, and to address other issues having arisen since the outbreak of war with Germany, Australia chose (as the Westminster Statute allowed it so) a backdated effective date, to September 3, 1939.But the Statute of Westminster allowed Australia to choose an even earlier backdate, all the way back to December 11, 1931. The Australians of October 1942 deliberately chose not to backdate so far. The Australians once again chose to remain under the greater powers of the Imperial Parliament, and under the greater limitations on their self-government, and leave automatically effective upon them all laws of the United Kingdom Parliament that it had made to operate upon them through 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, and through two-thirds of 1939.New Zealand waited even longer to adopt the Statute of Westminster: until November 25, 1947.And yet, however, the Statute of Westminster, even if adopted, still did not offer complete independence.In the late 2000s, along with much of the research I have presented above, I studied the change in the official name of the Queen in the different dominions, upon the accession of Elizabeth in early February 1952; the relevant UK Act is in early 1953. Of England she was the Second – but in the Dominions, which Britain had not held during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, this Elizabeth was the First. In order to reconcile the numbering-system, her official name in the Dominions is “Queen Elizabeth the Second.” In the United Kingdom, she is “Queen Elizabeth II.” I studied the various changes to the title adopted in different countries in the early 1970s.I researched the UK Parliamentary constitutional enactments in the 1980s that actually did give independence (to be discussed below). To be effective, the system had to be, that the Dominion Parliament acted first, and then the UK Parliament adopted what the Dominion Parliament had adopted.When the people of a Dominion, such as Australia, refuse to just “seize” independence “without permission,” it is the UK Parliamentary adoption that counts. Here are the key “independence-effective” UK dates for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand:Canada (UK Royal Assent March 29, 1982; effective April 17, 1982);Australia (UK Royal Assent February 17, 1986; effective March 3, 1986); andNew Zealand (NZ law only on December 13, 1986, but apparently no UK legislation until July 28, 1988).In May 2019, on Quora, I was discussing the list of nations that General MacArthur authorized to sign the Surrender of Japan in September 1945. I noted that while it was fair to include Australia as a signing-power, it had been unfair of MacArthur to exclude the Philippines while including Australia, because in December 1941, and in September 1945, neither was an independent nation, and there had been a lot more fighting in the Philippines than there had been in Australia.A Quora respondent from Australia promptly accused me not merely of having offered inaccurate information, but also of poor-quality research, because, he said, everyone knew that Australia obviously had been an independent nation since 1901. Which, I must say, upon investigation, and to my great surprise, turns out to be a common statement on Quora.In 1941, the Philippines, like Australia, also was a “Commonwealth” but subordinate to another power. It had been since 1935, when the U.S. Philippines Independence Act was adopted. It was a transitional administration, intended to last ten years, in preparation for full independence. It had a constitution adopted by the Philippine people, an elected President, a two-House legislature (as of 1940, before that, one House), a court system, etc.The title of the U.S. Act was:“An Act to Provide for the Complete Independence of the Philippine Islands, to Provide for the Adoption of a Constitution and a Form of Government for the Philippine Islands, and for Other Purposes.”Section 6 was headed: “Relations with the United States Pending Complete Independence.”Section 7 was headed: “Until the final and complete withdrawal of American sovereignty over the Philippine Islands …”Section 10 was headed: “Recognition of Philippine Independence and Withdrawal of American Sovereignty.” This section established:“On the 4th day of July immediately following the expiration of a period of ten years from the date of the inauguration of the new government under the constitution provided for in this Act, the President of the United States shall by proclamation withdraw and surrender all right of possession, supervision, jurisdiction, control or sovereignty then existing and exercised by the United States … and, on behalf of the United States, shall recognize the independence of the Philippine Islands as a separate and self-governing nation ….”The Philippine Commonwealth “date of inauguration” was November 15, 1935. The July 4 ten years after that would be July 4, 1946.There was no war between the United States and the Philippines in the 1920s or the 1930s that led up to this clear U.S. act granting independence. The U.S. Act was an entirely sincere and voluntary action by the United States, not some extracted release obtained by native force.You will not find any such clear words granting independence in any act of the United Kingdom Parliament, anywhere, anytime, except, perhaps, you find one that was extracted by the released peoples by their own acts of violence and war. Nor do I think anyone can find such an act adopted by the governments of France or of Spain, unless compelled to do so by a colonial war.The Japanese invasion on December 8, 1941, disrupted this, but all the time America fought – including invading the Philippines to expel the Japanese – the U.S. intent was to deliver the promised independence – which, as it happens, was not delayed at all from the original schedule. The Philippines obtained full independence on July 4, 1946 – as scheduled, not delayed by the war.The Americans invaded the Philippines at Leyte Island on October 17, 1944, not to recover a colony but to deliver on independence. When MacArthur strode ashore, he was wearing his hat of his office of Field Marshall of the Philippine Commonwealth Army – not a U.S. general’s hat – as he did throughout the war.I said in my May, 2019 Quora comment, that if one non-independent nation, Australia, was invited to sign, as a victor-power, the Surrender of Japan, certainly the Philippines ought also to have been invited to sign, as a victor-power, the Surrender of Japan. The Philippines was much more independent than Australia was – and the Philippines was on-course to full independence less than a year after the date of the surrender – which Australia certainly was not.Because the audience for this answer is not merely the casual Quora reader, but the Australian government itself, I am going to include in this answer additional material necessary to establish the point, even though it is more than Quora readers typically devote time to.First, I will provide a proof that every person understands, that the 1901 event was nothing at all like independence.Power to Declare War.I hope every reader agrees that the most key feature of an independent people is that they alone decide whether they are at war. If a people is independent, no other people has the power to “put them to war.”Yet that is exactly what happened to Australians 13 years after the 1901 events, in 1914.In April 1914, in the United States, there was a Congressional vote to support President Wilson to take unspecified military action in Mexico (which he did by temporarily occupying Veracruz in order to intercept a German ship full of illegal arms bought by the dictator, Huerta, in violation of U.S. law); and in 1917, a vote in America to declare war and enter World War I. One of my four great-grandfathers, U.S. Congressman Thomas Upton Sisson I, from Mississippi, was in the House, and voted on both of these.But in Great Britain, and in Australia, there was no “declaration of war” vote in the UK House of Commons, or in the Australian House of Representatives, either for World War I or for World War II.We may take a “capsule look” at how Great Britain entered World War I, which happened just a few months after Wilson’s actions in 1914, and which gives us the contemporary context for judging American actions as compared to British.Just four months after President Wilson in April 1914 sought a voted declaration from Congress merely for a temporary action in Mexico, in August 1914, Germany decided it had to attack France – specifically, to attack through Belgium. On August 2, 1914 Germany demanded that Belgium permit Germany to send its army through to attack France. At 7 A.M. August 3 (Belgian time), Belgium refused permission.The British House of Commons was in session that day, August 3, 1914, dealing with mundane non-war related business. Shortly before 4 P.M. the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, rose to inform the House of events in Europe. The speech and debate are on Hansard, at STATEMENT BY SIR EDWARD GREY.. The Prime Minister, Asquith, leader of the majority Liberal Party, was in the chamber, but he did not give the speech.In a long speech full of cites to ancient precedents and practices, Foreign Secretary Grey said Britain had to defend Belgium.The King-Emperor, George V, had pledged to protect Belgium from such an invasion – or rather, King-Emperor George V via his ministers chose to acknowledge pledges made by treaties in 1831 (by King William IV) and 1839 (by Queen Victoria), 75 years earlier, under very different political circumstances, at a time when the lands comprising 1914 Germany were fragmented into 39 separate principalities, dukedoms, and kingdoms, a loose “German Confederation,” when Germany per se did not even exist, and when none of the Germanic princes, acting alone, had enough power to defeat the others powers if that German prince decided to attack Belgium.And at no point on August 3, 1914, was there any requirement for a vote, or even a call for a vote, authorizing Britain to declare war.In Britain, as in Germany, the legislature had no right to hold a vote on whether to declare war. The most it could do would be, after the declaration of war, later on, when the government asked for money to fight the war, was to refuse to vote the money to fight it – which is a very disadvantageous position from which to express opposition to a war. It leaves the legislator looking like someone who would let young men go to fight without adequate weapons, food, clothing, etc.Only three people spoke after Grey on August 3 (I omit mention of a couple of questions): Bonar Law (leader of the Opposition, the Conservatives, who said the Opposition would support whatever the King’s Prime Minister did), John Redmond (leader of the Irish Home Rule Party, who said the Irish people would support the British people), and Ramsey MacDonald, leader of the Labour Party. Here is some of what MacDonald said – it deserves to be remembered:“MACDONALD: … The right hon. Gentleman [Grey], to a House which in a great majority is with him, has delivered a speech the echoes of which will go down in history. The speech has been impressive, but however much we may resist the conclusion to which he has come, we have not been able to resist the moving character of his appeal.“I think he is wrong. … [I]f the right hon. Gentleman [Grey] had come here to-day and told us that our country is in danger … we would be with him and behind him. ... We will offer him ourselves if the country is in danger. But he has not persuaded me that it is. …“If the right hon. Gentleman could come to us and tell us that a small European nationality like Belgium is in danger, and could assure us he is going to confine the conflict to that question, then we would support him. What is the use of talking about coming to the aid of Belgium, when, as a matter of fact, you are engaging in a whole European War which is not going to leave the map of Europe in the position it is in now. …“If France is really in danger, if, as the result of this, we are going to have the power, civilisation, and genius of France removed from European history, then let him so say. …“[T]his country ought to have remained neutral, because in the deepest parts of our hearts we believe that that was right and that that alone was consistent with the honour of the country ….”So MacDonald ended. The House suspended the war debate until 7 P.M., which is at GERMANY AND BELGIUM.. At no point was there any call for a vote on a declaration of war. Debate was again suspended at 8:15, and then reconvened at about 8:30 P.M.; at last the House adjourned – WAR IN EUROPE. (Hansard, 3 August 1914)without any vote being taken to approve a declaration of war. Lots and lots of talk, much personal expression of opinions – but no actual vote.The next day, early on August 4, Germany invaded Belgium. At 2 P.M. (British time) August 4, British Prime Minister Asquith (via Foreign Secretary Grey) – without seeking a “permission” vote in the House of Commons – sent an ultimatum to Germany: confirm by midnight today German time (August 4, 11 P.M. British time) that Germany will remove all troops from Belgium.Asquith then, later on August 4, came into the House to tell it what he had done: VIOLATION OF BELGIAN NEUTRALITY.. At about 6 P.M., Asquith’s statement was read to the House of Lords: THE EUROPEAN CRISIS.. No vote on a declaration of war was held in either House, and both Houses adjourned for the day.Through August 4, no reply to the ultimatum came from the Germans. Historian A.J.P. Taylor tells us at pages 2-3 of his 1965 book (reissued in 2001) English History 1914-1915:“Formally speaking, the war came as though King George V still possessed undiminished the prerogatives of Henry VIII. At 10:30 p.m. on 4 August 1914 the king held a privy council at Buckingham Palace, which was attended only by one minister [Lord Beauchamp] and two court officials. This council sanctioned the proclamation of a state of war with Germany from 11 p.m. That was all. The cabinet played no part once it had resolved to defend the neutrality of Belgium. It did not consider the ultimatum to Germany, which Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, sent only after consulting the prime minister, Asquith, and perhaps not even him. Nor did the cabinet authorize a declaration of war. The parliament of the United Kingdom, though informed of events, did not give formal approval to the government’s acts until it voted a credit of £100 million, without a division [meaning: agreeing to fund the war so overwhelmingly popular that no recorded per-member vote was needed] on 6 August.”Twenty minutes after Big Ben chimed 11 P.M., on August 4, Prime Minister Asquith issued a telegram to all Royal Navy ships and personnel to commence war against Germany.Canadian readers should note that this decision also committed the Canadian people to war, without any vote. We find this in the on-line “The Canadian Encyclopedia” in the entry on the First World War:“On 4 August 1914 Britain’s ultimatum to Germany to withdraw from Belgium expired. The British Empire, including Canada, was at war, allied with Serbia, Russia, and France against the German and Austro-Hungarian empires. …”The official pronouncement of war is found not in any vote by any elected Canadian representatives, nor even in an act of any Canadian executive elected official, nor even any Canadian appointed official, but in a note in the August 8, 1914, issue of the official Canada Gazette, Vol. XLVIII (volume 48) No. 6, on its fourth page, top (page 466), A Nation's Chronicle: The Canada Gazette. It is, in full:“DESPATCHES“Ottawa, 4th August, 1914“His Royal Highness the Governor General received a telegraphic despatch from the Secretary of State for the Colonies [in London] at 8.45 this evening, announcing that war has broken out with Germany.”The 8 million people of Canada and Newfoundland did not choose to go to war in 1914; they were told they were at war – told by a British cabinet official in London. The 99.1 million people of the United States at that same moment were free of such compulsion – not only free from compulsion by an overseas King’s Minister, but even from their own elected President. Of the 107.1 million people in North America, 7½ percent were under London compulsion. That 7½ percent had no vote in whether they would go to war.The 4 million Australians found out that they were at war when a similar telegram from London was received in Australia on August 5, 1914, at 12:30 P.M. – more than 13 years after the Commonwealth Constitution had gone into effect. You can read the news on-line (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/...) just as the Australians did, in the Adelaide Advertiser, Thursday August 6, 1914, page 8. Both houses of the federal legislature had just dissolved and an election campaign was just beginning. The federal Australian Prime Minister was Joseph Cook; the federal Australian “External” (not Foreign) Minister was Patrick Glynn. The Australians had no vote on the declaration that they were at war. Here is the newspaper report:“WAR WITH GERMANY“Official Statements“Mr. Glynn (Minister of External Affairs) received a telegram from the Prime Minister (Mr. Joseph Cook) at about 1 o’clock on Wednesday afternoon stating that official information had been received that war has broken out with Germany. Mr. Cook also stated: – ‘Australia is now at war.’”The one million New Zealanders found out that they were at war when the Royal Governor, Arthur Foljambe, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, read the announcement at 3:00 P.M. August 5 from the steps of the Old Parliament Building in Wellington. You can read it in the August 6, 1914 issue of The Thames Star, page 5, on-line at http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz...):“SCENES AT WELLINGTON“GOVERNOR’S MESSAGE TO PEOPLE“…“The crowd lustily cheered the Governor, who … [read] the following message from the King: ‘I desire to express to my people of the overseas Dominions … that in this time of trial, my Empire will stand united, calm, and resolute, trusting in God.’ …“[A] feeling of intense expectancy came over the vast assembly, as His Excellency proceeded to read yet another document which proved to be a cable from the Secretary of State for the Colonies [in London]:“ ‘War has broken out with Germany.’ ” (Signed) Harcourt. …“[New Zealand Prime Minister Massey said] ‘I trust that we are all of one way of thinking. That … we are confident that we shall come through successfully. … [W]e will do our duty on the present occasion in a whole-hearted manner. … [K]eep cool, stand fast, and do your duty to New Zealand and the Empire.’ ”The New Zealand Parliament, elected in 1911, was at that moment in session; the Prime Minister was William Massey. But there was no vote in the New Zealand Parliament to declare war on Germany. There was no decision by the New Zealand Prime Minister to declare war, or to ask the King to approve a declaration of war on recommendation of His Majesty’s ministers in New Zealand. There was no “New Zealand Declaration of War” (despite a misleading assertion that the Wellington event was that, on http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/...).The 1 million people of New Zealand did not choose to go to war, they were told they were at war – told by Lewis Vernon Harcourt in London. And their own Prime Minister, upon hearing the news, did not call for a vote; he told his people to “do your duty to New Zealand and the Empire.”In August 1914 the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland (all Ireland; Northern Ireland was not separate) was 46 million. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand combined were 13 million. Thus, not even counting South Africa, India, and the other colonies and possessions of the British Empire, Prime Minister Asquith’s set of Ministers put 59 million people to war without any vote in 1914. There were no voted “declarations of war” by elected representatives of any of these 59 million people.A.J.P. Taylor tells us at page 3 of his book English History 1914-1915:“The governments and parliaments of the Dominions were not consulted. The Canadian parliament alone subsequently expressed its approval. Apart from this, each governor general issued the royal proclamation on his own authority, as did the viceroy of India. The white populations of the Empire rallied eagerly to the mother country. Some 50 million Africans and 250 million Indians were involved, without consultation, in a war of which they understood nothing against an enemy who was also unknown to them. Use of the prerogative went further. … Military areas were closed to aliens; trade with the enemy was forbidden; merchant ships were requisitioned (some 250 at once, and later over a thousand) for the transport of the armed forces.”All this happened in August 1914 – more than 13 years after Australia supposedly became “independent” on January 1, 1901. Obviously, in August 1914, Australia was not an “independent” nation, if its people and their elected government had no power to decide for themselves whether or not they were to participate in a war (a) on the other side of the world, (b) over treaties made in 1831 and 1839, before Australia was hardly settled British colony (the first colonization act was in 1834, the South Australia Act), and (c) declared solely by ministers of the United Kingdom, without a vote of any Parliament in the United Kingdom or in any Dominion.Ramsey MacDonald in the UK Parliament had given reasons why Britain itself ought not go into war; such arguments could have had great force if given in Australia – but there was no power in the Australian government to do anything about it.The same thing happened to Australia in 1939. Here are the words of Australian Prime Minister Gordon Menzies on September 3, 1939, by radio to the Australian people:“Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially, that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement.”This is not a decision to declare war. It is acceptance of the power of London to decide whether Australia is at war.The New Zealand Government history website, New Zealand History, says this:“Alongside Britain and Australia, New Zealand was one of the first countries to become involved in the global conflict precipitated by Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. In contrast to its entry into the First World War, New Zealand acted in its own right by formally declaring war on Germany (unlike Australia, which held that the King’s declaration, as in 1914, automatically extended to all his Dominions).”While it is questionable whether New Zealand really deserves to claim that in 1939 it made its own decision to act “in its own right,” it is accurate as regards Australia.Dr. Ian Hamill, in 1977 on the staff of the Ministry of Defence in London, published in Australian Outlook Journal of International Affairs a paper titled “An Expeditionary Force Mentality? The Despatch of Australian Troops to the Middle East, 1939-1940,” which he opened thus:“When the United Kingdom went to war with Germany on 3 September 1939, the Australian government felt itself bound by that decision.”Nothing in the Australian constitution of 1901 authorized the Prime Minister the power to make a decision on behalf of the people or of the Commonwealth of Australia government of war.Prime Minister Menzies’ announcement published in the Commonwealth Gazette of Sept. 3, read:“Outbreak of War: It is hereby notified for general information that war has broken out between Great Britain and Germany.”Menzies’ statement did not mention Australia.The official Proclamation that Australia itself was at war with Germany, published in the September 3 Gazette immediately under the Prime Minister’s announcement, came from the Commonwealth Governor-General, Baron Gowrie. He cited an Australian “Defence Act” that defines “time of war” in Australia to be the period between a proclamation that war “exists” and a later proclamation that the said war “no longer exists,” and he then provided the “start-period” Proclamation:“Proclamation By His Excellency the Governor-General in and over the Commonwealth of Australia … I, Alexander Gore Arkwright, Baron Gowrie, the Governor-General aforesaid, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council, do hereby proclaim the existence of war.”Baron Gowrie, though British-born, had a long history in Australia, first as Governor of the State (Colony) of South Australia, 1928-1934, then as Governor of the State (Colony) of New South Wales, 1935-1936, before becoming Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia.Though the Australian Commonwealth Governor-General was formally chosen by the King, the Australian Prime Minister, by custom, had veto-power over the choice of a Governor-General, so Baron Gowrie was in substance an Australian-selected person.The Federal Executive Council, mentioned as having advised Baron Gowrie to make the proclamation of war, was under the Australian Commonwealth Constitution chosen at the discretion of the Governor-General. However, by custom again, this Council always consisted of Australian cabinet ministers.Thus it can be argued that the Australian people, with war declared by a Governor-General chosen by an Australian elected leader, who took advice from Australian elected ministers, did in fact make their own declaration of war on September 3, 1939.But this argument relies entirely not on the law, but on discretionary custom in applying the law.The law did not mandate that an Australian elected official choose the Governor-General. The law did not mandate that the Federal Executive Council be comprised solely of elected Australian ministers. And as noted above, the leniency of custom here derived primarily from the fact that Britain had to keep the Canadians happy, because the Canadians always had the option of abandoning the Crown, due to the certain and overwhelming aid they would get from their close and powerful neighbor the United States. The Australians were the incidental beneficiaries of a custom made to keep the allegiance of the Canadians to the Crown.And the problem with relying on custom is that when the documents – the law – say one thing, and custom another, a break in custom is the law – and future breaks in custom can only be stopped by changing the documents – by changing the law. People who rely on custom are not independent – they are merely fortunate in their master.The written law in Australia in 1939 was the same as the written law in Massachusetts in 1774: a governor chosen by the London ministers to the king, and a council chosen by the governor. In 1774, in Massachusetts, the London ministers ignored the people in choosing the governor, and the governor ignored the people in choosing the council. In 1939, the Australian people were protected by a custom in applying the law – but in law the people of Australia in 1939 were as dependent upon the London ministers as were the people of Massachusetts in 1774.And the custom existed in 1939 solely because the London ministers of 1774 and after had, by looking at America, seen what happens if they do not apply the custom: demands for independence leading to armed revolution.It would be such breaks in custom in the mid-1970s that would lead to the effort to change the law, in the mid-1980s, to get real and complete independence effective March 3, 1986.And if, in fact, Australia was at war in September 1939 by thoughtful decision of its own ministers (comprising the Federal Executive Council), advising a Governor-General chosen by Australians (through their Prime Minister), why is it that neither the Australian Prime Minister Menzies, nor any Australian elected official, ever said that Australia was at war by virtue of the Governor-General having taken advice from Australian ministers?They all said that Australia was at war because London told them it was.If Australia was independent of the United Kingdom’s ministers on September 3, 1939, Australia’s own elected officials didn’t know it. They didn’t feel it.And if a country’s own elected officials don’t feel that their country is independent, then, that country is not independent.On September 3, 1939, neither the Australian House nor Senate were in session; they had adjourned on June 16, 1939. The soonest that Prime Minister Menzies could call the House back into session was September 6, 1939 – at which, as we can read on the excellent Historic Hansard for Australia, there was great unanimity for war.Prime Minister Menzies easily could have waited until the House convened on September 6, to ask the House to vote for the war – there was no military urgency that required a decision on September 3 rather than on September 6, only three days later. Menzies would have won by a great majority.But Menzies did not do that – because Australia was not free to do that.Prime Minister Menzies could have waited until after such a vote on September 6, 1939, before he and the other members of the Federal Executive Cabinet, with support of the Australian elected representatives and by cabinet consensus, then advised Governor-General Baron Gowrie to declare that Australia was at war with Germany.But Menzies did not do that – because Australia was not free to do that.Prime Minister Menzies stated in the House of Representatives on September 6, 1939, which we find on Home :: Historic Hansard:“On Sunday last the 3rd September, shortly after 8 p.m. in Australian time, the Prime Minister of Great Britain announced that the time limited by a notification to the German Government had expired and that Great Britain was at war with Germany. An hour or two later, a proclamation was issued in the Commonwealth of Australia, declaring the existence of a state of war in Australia.”Menzies, after citing solely the announcement by “the Prime Minister of Great Britain,” and not citing any action by any Australian government minister, said “an hour or two later, a proclamation was issued in the Commonwealth of Australia, declaring the existence of a state of war in Australia.”The Australian Prime Minister did not say that the ministers of Australia convened after receipt of the British Prime Minister’s announcement; the Australian Prime Minister did not say that the ministers deliberated, and then advised the Governor-General to issue a Proclamation “in the Commonwealth of Australia, declaring the existence of a state of war in Australia.”And thus we have to conclude, by the Australian Prime Minister’s omission, an omission in his own official public statement in the Australian House of Representatives, that the Australian ministers did not convene after receipt of the British Prime Minister’s message, and that the Australian ministers did not then, after their own deliberation (no such deliberation having occurred), give advice to the Governor-General to issue a Proclamation “in the Commonwealth of Australia, declaring the existence of a state of war in Australia.”Instead, Australian Prime Minister Menzies used the passive voice: “a proclamation was issued.” By whom? Not said (though they all understood it was by the Governor-General). On whose advice? Also not said – and this is the omission that is significant. The source of power to issue that proclamation of war is kept hidden, by use of the passive voice.The Leader of the Opposition, Curtin, spoke in the House, as we find on Hansard for Australia:“There is a great deal that Australia can do in order to help the whole of the British Commonwealth. Our platform declares that nothing shall be left undone to ensure the greatest effectiveness among out people to hold this country for the citizens of the Commonwealth. In giving effect to that policy, as I see it, there ought not to be, but there may be, two major points of difference between the Government and ourselves. One is conscription, to which we are opposed. The other does not arise, in view of last night’s pronouncement by the Government that it does not contemplate expeditionary forces.”Notable here, the Labour Party declared support for war provided there was no military draft – and because the Menzies government had announced on September 5, 1939, the eve of the House convening, “that it does not contemplate expeditionary forces.” Contradicting this last point, on September 15, 1939, Menzies would announce the formation of an expeditionary force of troops, which would be sent ultimately to fight in North Africa.Thus it is clear that in September 1939 – 38 years after the supposed January 1, 1901 “independence” of Australia – Australia was not in fact independent, because it did not have the power to decide for itself whether it was at war, under circumstances where not only had Australia itself not been attacked, but where the attack made was all the way on the other side of the world – and it was, as in World War I, an attack by Germany not against any portion of the British Empire, but against a nation that UK ministers alone given a promise of protection – Poland.This time, the British case was even weaker than the case in World War I, because here, the protection-promise was not based on any official treaty as was the old treaty of protection of Belgium, but was based solely on a promise made by the UK ministers only, on short notice, never ratified by the King, nor approved by the UK Parliament, let alone by the Australian Commonwealth Parliament.Australia’s fact of going to war was the right policy action. But if Australia had been independent in September 1939, Australia’s Commonwealth government Prime Minister and the Commonwealth legislature would have convened, debated, and voted on their own, discussing all these issues, to make an Australian decision. They did not. And hence, you find these points written, not in the Hansard records of the Australian Commonwealth Parliament, but only here, in my rather obscure and unofficial Quora answer.And I’m not even Australian! I’m not even writing in Australia! I’m an American and living on the other side of the world, in Delaware USA. I’ve never even been to Australia – the closest I’ve gotten is Hawaii, 50 years ago.Diplomatic Ambassadors and Ministers.My research into Australia in 1939 led me to inquire into a related subject: did Australia have its own diplomats in the United States in 1939?I am well aware of the significance of diplomatic representatives as a sign that a nation is independent – because one of my own great-grandfathers was such a diplomat. Helmer Halvorsen Bryn was born in Norway when Norway was part of Sweden under the Swedish King. A son of a farmer who died when he was an infant, Bryn put himself through law school, and joined the Norwegian section of the Swedish Foreign Service.Norway, then a shipping nation, wanted its own independent diplomatic service, to represent Norway’s interests free of Swedish influence.And thus arose in 1904 a Norwegian independence movement.Bryn was a key participant in this, and when the Swedish King granted peaceful independence to Norway in 1905, Bryn was the first Norwegian “minister” (ambassador) back to his former King of Sweden. After postings in France and in South America, Bryn then in 1910 became Norway’s third “minister” (ambassador) to the United States, until 1927. After that he went to Montreal, Canada (perhaps with a short post in the Netherlands in between) where he died in office in 1933.Norway thus had its own “minister” in Washington since 1905, a sure sign of real independence. And for 17 years, 1910 to 1927, independent Norway’s minister in Washington was my own great-grandfather. I have his medals, his top hat, his overcoat, innumerable photos and newspaper clippings, even letters to him from his King of Norway – and the invitation cards issued for White House visits.Did Australia, which today claims it became independent four years before Norway did, have any of that in Washington? Was there an Australian minister in the Washington diplomatic corps in 1901, or in 1905, or in 1910 to 1927, sitting at formal events in the same seating-area as did my own great-grandfather during those years?No, Australia did not.My great-grandfather, as diplomatic representative of independent Norway, paid official calls on Presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge. Did any Australian pay any similar calls on those Presidents, as diplomatic representative of Australia?No, no Australian did.Through the end of 1939, all of Australia’s diplomatic relations with the United States were handled by the United Kingdom’s ambassador in Washington – not through “the Australian Counsellor at His Majesty’s Embassy,” but by the UK ambassador directly.The United States Department of State has posted online the voluminous contents of “Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers.” These provide the full text of the official correspondence between ambassadors and State Dept. officials, organized by region and by year. The volumes we want – the volumes that every Quora reader can read directly online, as I have done – are those including “The British Commonwealth.”As an example of British representation of Australia, we can use this, from British Ambassador Sir Ronald Lindsay dated December 10, 1938. The subject is a “trade agreement” regarding the U.S. and Australia:“His Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth of Australia have carefully considered the proposals of the United States Government … regarding the possibility of a trade agreement between the two countries and in particular the question of the most effective method of finding a basis of agreement. Australia’s major export commodities are few in number. … In consideration of her trade with the United States Australia is faced with a great and growing disparity between her purchases from and sale to that country. … [T]he extraordinary height of the tariff duties of the United States which affect a few main items of Australian exports and other impediments to import have much to do with the limited volume of Australian shipments to the United States. … [T]he Australian Government is of the opinion that conversations and negotiations could best be facilitated if the United States Government were to intimate the maximum import duty concessions it is possible to contemplate on wool, mutton and lamb, beef and butter. … In making this proposal the Australian Government also have in mind the fact that a number of United States requests will involve consultation between the Australian Government and Governments of other members of the British Commonwealth before it will be possible for Australia to give a comprehensive reply to them. … [T]he Australian Government agree that conversations should be placed on a formal basis and that they should proceed without delay. Mr. L. R. Macgregor, the Australian Government Trade Commissioner at New York City, in general consultation with Mr. F. Keith Officer, Australian Counsellor at His Majesty’s Embassy at Washington, is being instructed to carry on conversations in detail, and should it appear to the Australian Government as a result thereof that there is a prospect of making a trade agreement, officials would be sent from Australia to Washington.”The UK ambassador is providing good representation to Australia in this – but he is not an ambassador from Australia. No Australian played any official role in his selection for the post. The highest-level Australian in Washington is Sir Frank Keith Officer, a councilor.Sir Frank Keith Officer, in 1938 the Australian councilor aide to the UK ambassador, later would compile an extraordinary list of personal achievements, serving as Australian “minister” to the Netherlands, then Australian “ambassador” to China (recalled when the communists took over), then Australian “ambassador” to France; in 1950 Australian minister Richard Casey wrote him that “you can properly regard yourself not only as one of the founders of the Australian Foreign Service but as a model which men of succeeding generations can seek to emulate.”When we see titles such as Australian “minister” and Australian “ambassador,” we think: here is evidence that foreign countries are recognizing that Australia is an independent country. How did this come about? Is this what it really means?After the outbreak of war with Germany in September 1939, the United Kingdom government began to promote the idea that Australia should have its own representatives in foreign countries, and no longer be treated as an appendage of the United Kingdom foreign service.In 1940, for example, Japan accepted Australian jurist Sir John Latham as the first Australian minister to Japan, effective August 17, 1940. In 1941, China (under the Republican government) accepted its first Australian minister. Also in 1941, Australia contemplated offering a minister to Thailand, but this was impracticable due to conflict between Thailand and Vichy France and the threat of Japanese incursions. Most of the rest of the nearby regions were held as dominions by the United Kingdom, as colonies by France or the Netherlands, or by the United States (the Philippine Commonwealth), so there was no legal basis for sending Australian ministers there; instead what was needed was to send ambassadors to the powers that claimed these regions. In 1942, the exiled Netherlands government accepted its first Australian minister. In 1945, the Free French government accepted the first Australian minister to France.It was with the United States that the United Kingdom actually began this process. On UK initiative as we will see below, the U.S. accepted an Australian minister, Richard Casey, who took office on March 1, 1940.The U.S. Department of State website, Diplomatic Papers, 1939, General, the British Commonwealth and Europe, Volume II, gives us a footnote to an undated letter the UK ambassador handed to the U.S. Secretary of State, stating in that footnote:“[T]he Australian Prime Minister announced over the radio on April 26 [1939] his intention to exchange Ministers with the United States and Japan if possible before the end of the year.”However, it took months before the United Kingdom government saw fit to support this proposal. In fact, it took the outbreak of war of the UK against Germany.The U.S. Department of State website has separate pages, one for each country, titled “A Guide to the United States’ History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and Consular Relations.”On the page for Australia, the U.S. State Department, as befits good diplomats, tries to avoid conflict with the Australian government’s current description of events:“On January 1, 1901, six colonies were joined together to create the Commonwealth of Australia, a self-governing Dominion in the British Empire. While the new nation was sovereign when it came to its domestic affairs, the United Kingdom maintained control over its relations with the wider world. Over the next four decades, Australia gradually gained control over its external policy. The Balfour Declaration of 1926, issued at the end of the Imperial Conference held in London that year, recognized that the United Kingdom and the Dominions were ‘autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs.’ In December 1931, the United Kingdom approved the Statute of Westminster, codifying this relationship; the statute specified, however, that its provisions would not come into effect until formally adopted by the government of Australia. On October 9, 1942, Australia’s Statute of Westminster Adoption Act became law. The act was made effective retroactive to September 3, 1939, the date of ‘the Commencement of the War between His Majesty the King and Germany.’ … The United States recognized Australia on January 8, 1940, when the Governments of the United States and Australia announced the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations. … On March 1, 1940, [Australian] Richard Gardiner Casey presented his credentials as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Government of the United States. … On July 17, 1940, [American] Clarence E. Gauss presented his credentials as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Government of Australia. On July 9, 1946, the White House announced the elevation of the Australian and American legations to embassy status. On September 11, 1946, Norman J. O. Makin presented his credentials as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Australia to the Government of the United States.”There was no constitutional change in the status of Australia in 1939 that led to this wave of acceptance abroad of diplomats from Australia beginning in 1940.What there was, was the war that the United Kingdom now faced, against Germany in Europe.Suddenly the United Kingdom needed all the help it could get from the children of its “second family” – including the Australians – and especially, from the alienated child of its “first family,” America.Thus the United Kingdom was extremely receptive to granting requests from children of its “second family” for greater recognition and dignity.And who better to show this increased good treatment of children to, than to the alienated child of the first family? It is the father showing the alienated child of the first family “Look how well I am treating the children of my second family; surely this proves that I am a reformed and better father than I was to you. So now that you see how I am reformed, won’t you please help me fight the enemy who threatens me?”The U.S. Department of State website, Diplomatic Papers, 1939, General, the British Commonwealth and Europe, Volume II, gives us the following November 30, 1939, letter from the UK ambassador, now Lord Lothian, proposing an Australian diplomat in America, that tells us the true status of the proposed Australian minister. Because this set the policy for the Australian ministers sent in the 1940s to all the other countries (Japan, China, Netherlands, France, etc.), this letter applies to the status of all of those Australian diplomats. I present it in full, bolding the important portion for our topic:“At the instance of His Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth of Australia and under instructions from His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State [UK] for Foreign Affairs [Australia had an “external affairs” minister, not a “foreign affairs” minister], I have the honour to inform you that His Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth of Australia have come to the conclusion that it is desirable that the handling of matters at Washington relating to Australia should be confided to an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary accredited to the United States Government. Such a Minister would be accredited by His Majesty The King to the President of the United States of America, and he would be furnished with credentials which would enable him to take charge of all affairs relating to Australia. He would be the ordinary channel of communication with the United States Government on these matters. The arrangements proposed would not denote any departure from the principle of the diplomatic unity of the Empire, that is to say, the principle of consultative co-operation amongst all His Majesty’s representatives as amongst His Majesty’s Governments themselves, in matters of common concern. The methods of dealing with matters which may arise concerning more than one of His Majesty’s Governments would therefore be settled by consultation between the representatives of His Majesty’s Governments concerned. In proposing the establishment of an Australian Legation, His Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth of Australia trust that it will promote the maintenance and development of cordial relations, not only between the United States and Australia, but also between the United States and the whole British Commonwealth of Nations.”This is plainly not an “independent” minister or ambassador of Australia.UK Ambassador Lord Lothian added a separate note to his above-quoted letter, reflecting the war-created need felt by the United Kingdom to obtain warm relations with its “children” of both the “first family” and of the “second family:”“I am instructed by His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State [UK] for Foreign Affairs to say that His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom fully endorse the hope expressed by His Majesty’s Government in the Commonwealth of Australia that the establishment of an Australian Legation will promote the maintenance and development of cordial relations not only between the United States and Australia, but between the United States and the whole British Commonwealth of Nations.”The U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, welcomed the UK government’s hope for better relations, in a letter of December 6, 1939:“The Secretary of State acknowledges the receipt of Lord Lothian’s memorandum dated November 30, 1939, ancillary to his note no. 527 of the same date, in which Lord Lothian conveys the endorsement by the British Government of the hope expressed by the Australian Government that the establishment of an Australian Legation will promote the maintenance and development of cordial relations not only between the United States and Australia, but between the United States and the whole British Commonwealth of Nations. The Secretary of State cordially expresses the endorsement of the Government of the United States to that sentiment.”The U.S. Undersecretary of State, Sumner Welles, actually much closer to Roosevelt than was Hull, simultaneously sent his own note, labeled as from the “acting Secretary:”“[T]he appointment by His Majesty the King of an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, who will be furnished with credentials which would enable him to take charge of all affairs relating to Australia, and who will be the ordinary channel of communication with the Government of the United States on these matters, is entirely acceptable to the Government of the United States, and that it will be agreeable to the President to accord him formal recognition at the convenience of His Majesty the King and the Government of Australia. … [This] will promote the maintenance and development of cordial relations not only between the United States and Australia but also between the United States and the whole British Commonwealth of Nations.”Nowhere is there any action or words by President Roosevelt himself, or by Hull or by Welles, describing Australia to be an independent nation. Nor was this required as a precondition to the establishment of the proposed Australian legation. The U.S. Constitution, Article II section 3, merely states of the President that “he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers” without imposing any precondition that the ambassador or public minister be from a state that the President has first found to be independent of any other state.The motive here, both by the United Kingdom and by the Roosevelt administration, is to “promote the maintenance and development of cordial relations not only between the United States and Australia but also between the United States and the whole British Commonwealth of Nations” right at the moment when the “whole British Commonwealth of Nations” is at war with Germany.Britain in 1939 thus accommodated Australian sentiments – and won American admiration for so doing – because Britain in 1939 was in the midst of a war, and needed the vigorous and emotionally warm support of the Australians.As, in fact, was also the case in 1900, the period in which Britain received and supported so willingly an earlier expression of Australian desires: the Australian Commonwealth Constitution.UK 1900 Consideration of the Australian Commonwealth Constitution.As we are about to see, the Parliament of the United Kingdom approved the Australian Commonwealth Constitution through legislative sessions beginning May 12, 1900, through July 5, 1900.The British Empire – the Imperial Parliament – was right then embroiled in a major war: in South Africa, against a population of descendants of earlier white settlers from the Netherlands, known as the Boers. Soldiers from Australia were a key, essential component of the Empire forces in that war. On May 31, 1900, Empire forces captured the city of Johannesburg, and on June 5 captured the city of Pretoria. The dates of the battles and city-captures were within the dates of Parliament’s consideration of the Australian Commonwealth Bill – and it was Australian troops who were first into Pretoria on June 5.It is irrational to assert – as today’s Australian government does – that at the very moment when the United Kingdom was relying on Australian soldiers to expand the Empire in South Africa, in May and June 1900, the United Kingdom was contemplating and happily granting independence to the country from which those very troops came – and thereby giving-up sovereignty over troops then in the field and winning battles for the Empire – moreover, giving up sovereignty over those troops while the battles were still going on and while those troops were still in the field.For example: on June 11 and 12, 1900, during the UK Parliament’s consideration of the Australia Commonwealth Bill, a South Australian unit fought in the Battle of Diamond Hill, in central Transvaal, South Africa, to preserve the British hold on Pretoria – and among its sergeants, so he later said, was the later-to-be-famous Australian “Breaker Morant.”It is irrational to assert – as today’s Australian government does – that at the instant that the Parliament of the United Kingdom was funding a war and losing British lives to expand its sovereignty in Africa, it was abandoning its sovereignty over an entire continent that had been peacefully under its imperial sovereignty for almost 100 years, and whose people expressed no desire for independence from the Empire.Moreover, in addition to the ongoing 1900 war in South Africa, an unexpected new and dangerous war simultaneously had broken out: in China, known as the Boxer Rebellion. Tensions had been building, such that on May 31, 1900, about 400 troops, including Americans, British, and Germans, arrived via railroad from the port of Tianjin (Tientsin) to the Beijing diplomatic quarter to serve as a garrison, supplementing the relatively small number of embassy guard-troops of each country’s legation. They arrived just in time; on June 5, the Chinese cut the railroad line.On June 17, 1900, warships of various powers (including Britain, but not the US) opened an attack at the mouth of the Hai River, to take some forts that guarded the passage to the port of Tianjin, which succeeded.On June 18, 1900, Chinese army forces waylaid a British expeditionary force of 2,000 sailors and marines, traveling overland from the Tianjin to Beijing, and forced the British to retreat. The British stumbled upon a massive cache of Chinese arms and ammunition, and holed-up for siege.Simultaneously, beginning June 20, 1900, Chinese forces laid siege to the diplomatic quarter in Beijing, which had the garrison in-place composed of about 400 Americans, Germans. The next day, June 21, the Empress of China declared war on the western powers.Meanwhile, the British troops who had been besieged by the Chinese mid-way between Tianjin and Beijing, at last were relieved by an expedition of 900 Russian soldiers and various British forces hastening from Tianjin. They got back to Tianjin on June 26.The western powers, and Japan, assembled ships and troops to fight through to Beijing and save the besieged diplomats. By July 17, an armed force of about 20,000 was landed (of which one of my great-grandfathers, U.S. Army Captain John Torrence Nance, was a part; I have his letters home from the time) and marching towards Beijing (my great-grandfather’s cavalry unit remained to guard Tianjin). The relief force arrived at the diplomatic compound in Beijing on August 14; the diplomatic siege was over, and for the most part, the war ended then as well.Australia played a role in this. At the time, there being no Commonwealth central government, the six different Australian colonies contributed separately. Among them, from the Colony of Victoria Navy, 200 men were sent; from the Colony of New South Wales Navy, 262 men; from the Colony of South Australia, the gunboat Protector, with its crew of 96. The Australian forces arrived in China in early September, 1900, after the lifting of the Beijing diplomatic siege, and relieved some earlier forces that were sent back home. After spending some six months on peace-keeping and garrison duty, the Australians left China on March 26, 1901.Thus, during the consideration of the Commonwealth Constitution Bill, the United Kingdom was relying on Australian military aid not only in South Africa, but also in China.We now examine what was said in 1900 and 1901 regarding the meaning of the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and whether anyone at the time thought that it meant independence for Australia, in the sense that we celebrate the independence-day of a nation.Going onto Australia’s excellent trove newspapers website, select dates 1900-01-01 to 1901-02-01, be sure to search all newspapers for article, editorial, law, and news, on the word “Commonwealth.” You will find thousands of articles. Narrow down the search to a smaller range of dates, and you will find hundreds. Focus on May 14, 15, and 16, 1900 – reports on the introduction of the Australian Commonwealth Bill in London on May 14; focus on May 22, 23, and 24 – reports on the Commonwealth Bill’s second reading on May 21, 1900.In those articles, many writers describe the pre-Commonwealth six colonies of Australia as “independent” long before the Commonwealth constitution – yet no one would say that they were independent of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The term “independent” as they use it means that each of the six colonies was independent of the other five.They also use independent as a synonym for the level of self-government provided under the term “responsible government.”But I do not think anyone will find even one article in which any government official at any level in any government describes the adoption of the Commonwealth Constitution as an act of independence for Australia, in the sense of independence meaning what it means today.Follow the newspaper reports through, in the House of Commons, “first reading,” which is the introduction of the bill and opening case by the government for making it law (May 14, 1900); “second reading,” which customarily is the key stage for disputed legislation, where the most significant debates are found, if there is a dispute (May 22); “committee,” which is the amendment stage of a bill that has passed second reading (June 22); and “third reading,” in which the bill as amended in committee is voted-on and passed to the House of Lords (June 25). I have, and have taken screenshots of some of the actual Australian newspaper articles.Do the same for Australian newspaper reports of the House of Lords (first reading June 26, 1900) second reading (June 29), committee (July 3), third reading (July 5). I have, and have taken screenshots of some of the actual Australian newspaper articles. Queen Victoria gave “Royal Assent” on July 9, 1900, and on September 17, 1900, Queen Victoria signed a Proclamation that declared the effective date of the Commonwealth government would be January 1, 1901.The Australian newspaper reports accurately reflect the debates in the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1900. The original debates are online on Hansard (although one page has a typo in the year, giving 1950 instead of the correct 1900); and are online in the original published volumes on google books; and in addition, also on google books, the debates are in a book compendium of all the debates, published in December 1900, “Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Bill. Reprint of the Debates in Parliament.”The debate compendium book “Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Bill Reprint of the Debates in Parliament” makes it easy for anyone to perform the following test, as I have: search it on the word “independence” and its variants, and you will find, as I have, there is not one assertion anywhere in all the debates that the Australian Constitution that the Members and Lords were voting on granted independence to the Commonwealth of Australia. Federation, yes; independence, no.Indeed, a search upon the word “war” produces the opposite evidence.On May 14, 1900, in the House of Commons, the leader of the bill, Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, (and father of both future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and future frequent cabinet member Austen Chamberlain, by two different wives) chastised the leader of the opposition, Asquith, for a speech Asquith had made a few days earlier (not in the House) in which Asquith supposedly said that there was “a matter of serious conflict between ourselves and the colonies of Australia” regarding the only clause in the constitution that Chamberlain proposed to amend, which limited the right of appeal in certain lawsuits out of the highest Australian court all the way to London and the Privy Council. After a short denial by Asquith, Chamberlain said:“I regret his allusion in connection with this matter that the revolutionary war in America is a warning to us. Sir, what connection does the right hon. Gentleman suppose there can be between the two cases? … I do not ask for anything more than Canada and South Africa have already most willingly granted.”To reject any comparison with the Australian Commonwealth Constitution and the American Revolution necessarily means to reject the idea that the Commonwealth granted independence.A small bit of background regarding Joseph Chamberlain and the Australian Commonwealth Bill is important. Chamberlain, leader of the Australian Commonwealth Bill in summer 1900, had less than a year earlier, during summer and fall 1899, taken the lead in a developing conflict in South Africa that led to the outbreak of war of British against the “Boers,” the Transvaal, the Dutch-oriented Republic of South Africa. The circumstances are described in the 1900 book, on google books, “The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain” by N. Murrell Marris, at pages 359 and after.The relevance to us is that soldiers from Australia were fighting in South Africa in support of British Imperial interests in a war for which Chamberlain was largely responsible. The background of imperial war, and Australian armed assistance in it, necessarily predisposed Chamberlain towards gratifying the desires of the Australian people and their leaders.A key date in the House of Commons regarding the “Second Boer War” is October 19, 1899; and as we see on Hansard, on that same day, in the House, Chamberlain was asked “when it is proposed to introduce legislation with regard to the Australian Commonwealth Bill,” to which Chamberlain replied “The legislation is in a forward state of preparation, and it is hoped that the Australian Commonwealth Act will be passed early next year.”The House then went into a vigorous debate upon the Boer War (you can read it all on Hansard, October 19, 1899, under “Third Day’s Debate”), which Marris in his book on Chamberlain describes at page 360:“Not since Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill had the House been so crowded. Some members stood for two hours and forty minutes while Mr. Chamberlain was speaking, for a number of them could not obtain seats; others sat on the steps of the gangways, while the peers gathered in great numbers in their gallery. Mr. Chamberlain, as on the opening night of the Session, was greeted with an outburst of cheering.”During this debate, Chamberlain made a comment that I have taken as rule for myself also, which, while not on our topic, ought to be preserved here. Chamberlain was taken to task for, early in the developing conflict, having called the Boer leader “magnanimous.” Chamberlain responded:“When I have been in doubt as to President Kruger’s intentions, I have given him the benefit of the doubt. I am taunted with having spoken of his magnanimity. I desired to believe him magnanimous. Some great man – Goethe, I think – said that if you wish a man to be what you want him to be, you must express your belief that he is so.”Chamberlain then spoke of his motivations for insisting so strongly on certain positions that Britain had now gotten into war:“[F]rom first to last in these negotiations, while I have put first in my mind the determination at all costs to secure justice for British subjects, and to secure the paramountcy (or call it what you will) of this country – that is not the immediate subject of discussion – while I have done that, within these limits I have striven to the very best of my poor ability to secure a peaceful settlement. …“[I]n the interests of South Africa and in the interests of the British Empire, Great Britain must remain the paramount Power in South Africa. Let me at once say that, when we talk about South Africa … we mean … the two Republics and the British colonies. Almost everyone will admit that that great principle is one which both sides of the House are determined to maintain. Why do we maintain it? Because, as the Leader of the Opposition said – most wisely, if I may venture to say so – the peace of South Africa depends upon our accepting the responsibilities of that position. …“[W]e are at war now because the oligarchy – for it is nothing more than an oligarchy; it is a Republic, but it is not a democracy … has persistently pursued, from the very day of the signing of the Convention of 1881 down to now, a policy which … has conspired against and undermined the suzerainty, the paramountcy which belongs to Great Britain.“I say that these are the objects of the war; and I challenge – no, I do not challenge, I invite – hon. Members opposite, or the vast majority of them, at any rate, to say whether they differ from me in thinking that these two great objects – to maintain the rights of British subjects and the paramountcy of this country – are objects in which they share as fully as ourselves.”Plainly the Second Boer War was an imperial war, fought “to maintain the rights of British subjects and the paramountcy of this country.” Neither Chamberlain, nor anyone else in the House, would have supported for one second the Australian Commonwealth Constitution if that Constitution had granted independence to Australia, and thereby substantially diminished “the paramountcy of this country.”As the man largely responsible for the Second Boer War, Joseph Chamberlain was keenly interested in its victory; no politician’s career survives the blame for getting the country into a losing war. Australia’s military contribution, though relatively small, increased the chances of success in the war – and of success in Chamberlain’s career.On May 14, 1900 – while the fighting was still going on in South Africa, with Australian troops in the field, to maintain the “paramountcy of this country,” meaning the paramountcy of Great Britain – this same Joseph Chamberlain rose in the House of Commons to introduce the Australia Commonwealth Bill, which we find at page 46 of “The Parliamentary Debates (Authorized Edition), Fourth Series,” “63 Victoriae,” Volume LXXXIII (83). I give more from Chamberlain’s speech than comfortable Quora reading allows, so that my answer may aid further inquiry by those especially interested in these questions:“I have no doubt there are many Members of the House who will be inclined to envy me the privilege that has fallen to my lot in introducing this Bill for the federation of some of our greatest colonies – a Bill which marks an era in the history of Australia, and is a great and important step towards the organisation of the British Empire.“This Bill, which is the result of the careful and prolonged labours of the ablest statesmen in Australia, enables that great island continent to enter at once the widening circle of English-speaking nations. No longer will she be a congeries of States, each of them separate from and entirely independent of the others, a position which anyone will see might possibly in the future, through the natural consequences of competition, become a source of danger and lead, at any rate, to friction and to weakness.“But, if this Bill passes, in future Australia will be, in the words of the preamble of the Bill which I am about to introduce, ‘an indissoluble federal Commonwealth firmly united for many of the most important functions of government.’ …“[R]elations between ourselves and these [six Australian] colonies will be simplified, will be more frequent and unrestricted, and, if it be possible, though I hardly think it is, will be more cordial when we have to deal with a single central authority instead of having severally to consult six independent Governments. …“[O]n the whole, this new Constitution, although it is in important respects unlike every other constitution at present existing, still in the main, and more than any other, follows the Constitution of the United States of America.“But it would be, perhaps, more interesting to us to contrast it with the Constitution of our own colony of Canada. The differences between the Constitution of the Dominion and the Constitution of the new Commonwealth are, I think, to be explained in a certain fundamental diversity in the position of the two colonies ….“In Australia, it must also be remembered, the separate States have enjoyed for a much longer period than had the provinces of Canada complete independent self-governing existence, and, accordingly, while in Canada the people had before them at the time that the Constitution was decided upon, the warning I might almost say, afforded by the Civil War in America, of the danger of exaggerating State rights … in Australia there was no such example to fear, and the [six] separate colonies had enjoyed for so long such great powers that they were naturally unwilling to part with them to anything like the same extent [as the Canadian provinces did].“Accordingly, while in Canada the result of the Constitution was substantially to amalgamate the provinces into one Dominion, the Constitution of Australia creates a federation, for distinctly definite and limited objects, of a number of independent States, and State rights have throughout been jealously preserved.“In Canada everything that was not given expressly to the provinces went to the Central Government. In Australia the Central Government has only powers over matters which are expressly stated and defined in the Constitution. …“Now, to this new [Commonwealth] Parliament so constituted thirty-nine distinct subjects have been expressly referred. Amongst them are the tariff, post office, and telegraph services, defence, currency, bankruptcy, marriage and divorce, and old-age pensions, and also the following matters – to which I call special attention because they involve interest outside Australia as well as locally – first, the fisheries in Australian waters, beyond the territorial limits of Australia; secondly, copyright; thirdly, legislation dealing with the people of any race not being natives of either of the States (I think that has in view legislation in regard to Asiatics); fourthly, ‘external affairs,’ a phrase of great breadth and vagueness, which, unless interpreted and controlled by some other provision, might easily, it will be seen, give rise to serious difficulties; and, fifthly, the relations with the islands of the Pacific, which also involves, of course, many questions in which foreign nations are concerned.“It will be seen that almost all the points to which I have thus called special attention are matters in which the Imperial Government may have to deal with foreign countries. It is important, therefore – I say this in passing, although I shall deal with it more at length – it is important that measures of this kind, which may involve the Imperial Government in the most serious responsibility, should be interpreted by a tribunal in which all parties have confidence. [Note: this refers to the issue of lawsuits being appealable out of Australia to the Privy Council in London; the Privy Council is what Chamberlain means by “a tribunal in which all parties have confidence.”] …“[T]here are a great number of propositions in the Bill which, if it were a case of freely discussing a Constitution of our own, would arouse much difference of opinion. If we had been invited to frame a Constitution, or if we had been consulted after the Constitution had been framed, it is quite possible – I do not say it would have been so – it is quite possible we might have had many suggestions to make and some amendments to offer. But that is not the position.“The Bill has been prepared without reference to us. It represents substantially and in most of its features the general opinion of the Australian people …“[T]he result of the labour of their representatives should receive in the Imperial Parliament the fullest consideration and even the fullest discussion; although I deny altogether that the Australian people have ever considered, or shown that they consider, the Imperial Parliament as merely a Court for the registration of their decrees; and although I am convinced that the Australian people will be neither offended nor insulted if we alter here a word or there a word, or even a clause, in this Bill, I think, on the other hand, they do expect that we shall have a reasonable regard to the labours which they have already expended upon this measure, and to the general feeling of the Australian people; wherever it has been really and conclusively shown, and to those rights of self-government of which they have made so magnificent a use and which we have so freely and gladly conceded.“Now, it is therefore on these main principles that the Government have proceeded in dealing with this Bill. On the one hand, we have accepted without demur, and we shall ask the House of Commons to accept, every point in this Bill, every word, every line, every clause, which deals exclusively with the interests of Australia. ...“But the second principle which I ask the House to assent to, and to which we have given application by certain amendments we have made in the Bill, is that wherever the Bill touches the interests of the Empire as a whole, or the interests of Her Majesty’s subjects, or of Her Majesty’s possessions outside Australia, the Imperial Parliament occupies a position of trust which it is not the desire of the Empire, and which I do not believe for a moment it is the desire of Australia, that we should fulfil in any perfunctory or formal manner. …“This Constitution is to be an Imperial Act, and it is, in substance, the delegation of powers to an authority which is created by the Imperial Parliament. …”The only disputed issue was that the Australians had adopted a draft Commonwealth Constitution, and then sent it to Britain for enactment by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, that put greater limits than the United Kingdom Commons and Lords could accept upon judicial lawsuit appeals from the new High Court of the Commonwealth to the Privy Council in London.The reason for the month delay between “second reading” on May 22, and “committee amendment” on June 22 was to negotiate with, and explain to, the Australians why the London Parliament had to insist that more kinds of cases be appealable from Australia to London, to ensure that the Australians would defer to the “Imperial Parliament’s” position.The issue of Privy Council appeals having been addressed in the House of Commons, there was no dispute of any kind in the Lords on the merits of the Australian Commonwealth Constitution – just an argument about a partisan attack made by one Lord, Lord Carrington, formerly Governor of the Colony of New South Wales in Australia, on Chamberlain. The reason for the attack? Not to challenge the bill, but rather, to chastise Chamberlain for having supposedly mishandled the success of the bill – attacked for bad bill-management.Not once through the Commons debates does any Commons Member claim, and not once through the Lords debates does any Lord claim, that the Australian Commonwealth Constitution Bill grants independence from the Parliament of the United Kingdom – which regularly calls itself and is called by all others the “Imperial Parliament.”Does any rational person today think that if the Australian Commonwealth Constitution that the Parliament of the United Kingdom adopted in 1900 really had granted meaningful independence, independence as today’s Australian government understands it on its website, to Australia, that this momentous change would have sailed through both Houses of Parliament, without a single Member or Lord complaining about it?Without a recorded “voice vote” (in American practice), without a single “division” (the Parliamentary practice for putting representatives on record on a bill by name), at even one of the eight stages (four in each House) that a bill must pass before becoming law?It cannot be true that the Imperial Parliament gave-away without a single objecting comment an entire continent then within, and subject to, that same Imperial Parliament.There is not a newspaper in Australia in 1900 that would have printed as true the description that today’s Australian government gives to the Australian Commonwealth Constitution, as establishing an “independent” nation.If any Australian newspaper in 1900 had tried to find even a single government official, in any government, in the six Australian colonies, or among the promoters of the Commonwealth Constitution, or in the United Kingdom, who would go on record in 1900 saying what the Australian government says today in 2019 about the Commonwealth Constitution, that Australian newspaper, even with an unlimited budget for traveling reporters, would have sent its reporters all over Australia and all over the United Kingdom, and yet not found a single official anywhere who would say what the Australian government today asserts, 119 years later, about the adoption of the Australian Commonwealth Constitution. Not one.It simply cannot be that the Britain’s most public and vehement advocate in 1900 of British “paramountcy” and “suzerainty,” Joseph Chamberlain, simultaneously advocated adoption of a Commonwealth Constitution that abandoned British “paramountcy” and “suzerainty” over a huge part of the Empire, Australia. The fact that this is the man, Joseph Chamberlain, who did advocate for the Australian Commonwealth Constitution, is proof absolute that the Constitution did not abandon the “paramountcy” and “suzerainty” of Britain over Australia. The 1901 Commonwealth Constitution could not possibly have had the effect of granting independence to Australia, that today’s Australian government claims that it did.Subsequent to the Royal Assent on July 9, 1900, and Queen Victoria’s September 17, 1900 Proclamation that the new Commonwealth would take effect on January 1, 1901, there was still one more stage at which officials of the United Kingdom would go on record saying what the Commonwealth Constitution meant.That event would be the official opening of the new Commonwealth Parliament. Which would not occur until after elections to the House and the Senate, and the readying of their meeting-chambers.On January 22, 1901, long before the necessary Australian elections occurred, Queen Victoria died; and her son Edward VII ascended to the throne. The Proclamation in Australia, dated January 28, 1901, printed in the Commonwealth Gazette, and which we find on Australian trove online in The Riverine Grazier of February 1, 1901, expressly grounds the right of rule in Edward VII in the divine right of kings, and reads as follows in pertinent part:“A Proclamation. Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God to call to His mercy our late Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria … the Imperial Crown … is solely and rightfully come to the high and mighty Prince Albert Edward, we, [the Governor-General, the Prime Minister and External Affairs Minister, and the Attorney-General] therefore do now … proclaim that the high and mighty Prince Albert Edward is now … become our only lawful and rightful liege lord, Edward the Seventh, by the grace of God, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the faith, Emperor of India, Supreme Lord in and over the Commonwealth of Australia, to whom we acknowledge all faith, and constant obedience, with all humble and hearty affection, beseeching God, by Whom kings and queens do reign, to bless the Royal Prince Edward the Seventh with long and happy years to reign over us.”Thus it would be in the name of King Edward VII that an official from Britain would come to Australia to officially open the new Commonwealth Parliament.On February 23, 1901, King Edward VII signed the “Commission” empowering his son, the future King George V, but at the time Duke of Cornwall and York, to declare the Commonwealth Parliament open, and George took ship for Australia for the scheduled May 9, 1901 formal opening.Recall the Australian Navy personnel sent to China for the Boxer Rebellion? They had left China on March 26, 1901, and arrived in Australian waters on April 25. However, due to disease concerns, they were kept in “quarantine” until landing in Sydney on May 3, 1901, receiving a “tumultuous” reception – just five days before George, Duke of Cornwall and York’s arrival to open the Commonwealth Parliament.At the May 9, 1901 opening of the Australian Commonwealth Parliament, in Melbourne, the Clerk of Parliament read-out the Commission (which does not contain anything but formalities) and then the Duke of Cornwall and York, future King George V, read a speech that we find on trove. The notable portion of his speech is this:“[King Edward VII is] moved by his sense of the loyalty and the devotion which prompted the generous aid afforded by all the colonies in the South African war, both in its earlier and more recent stages, and of the splendid bravery of colonial troops. It is also his Majesty’s wish to acknowledge the readiness with which the ships of the special Australian squadron were placed at his disposal for service in China, and the valuable assistance rendered there by the naval contingents of the several colonies. …“The King is satisfied that the wisdom and patriotism which have characterized the exercise of the wide powers of self-government hitherto enjoyed by the colonies will continue to be displayed in the exercise of the still wider powers with which the United Commonwealth has been endowed. His Majesty feels assured that the enjoyment of these powers will, if possible, enhance that loyalty and devotion to his throne and Empire of which the people of Australia have already given such signal proofs.“It is his Majesty’s earnest prayer that this union, so happily achieved, may, under God’s blessing, prove an instrument for still further promoting the welfare and advancement of his subjects in Australia, and for the strengthening and consolidation of his Empire.”Plainly this is not an acknowledgement of any independence of Australia from Great Britain or from the British Empire. The Duke’s speech – drafted by the same ministers who led the Commonwealth bill to enactment – is a statement that the Commonwealth Constitution is intended not to separate Australia from the empire, but for “the strengthening and consolidation of [the] Empire.”So much for today’s Australian government assertion online that the 1901 Commonwealth Constitution marked Australia’s “independence.” And so too, so much for the parroted assertions on Quora, that 1901 was the date of Australia’s independence.So: what was the Australian Commonwealth Constitution?It was – as was the American federal constitution it used as a model – merely a response to the geography of the land. The Australian Parliamentary Education Office website, quoted above, explains this.Australia, like America, though more than 130 years later, was occupied by Britons and settled piecemeal, due to the accidents and conditions of the time, in several different, separated colonies – ultimately, 6 colonies.In America, prior to the Seven Years War that ended in 1763, there were about 14 – Delaware, which came into the union as a separate state, started out as merely part of Pennsylvania, but there was Nova Scotia (which nominally included today’s New Brunswick, though as a practical matter the French held it to 1763), and Newfoundland, both of which never joined the Revolution.Most having been founded before the Parliament of Great Britain came into existence in 1707, and all having been founded long before that Parliament began in 1765 to assert lawmaking power inside those colonies, each had a direct relationship with the King or Queen, without the Parliament of England in London, or the later Parliament of Great Britain, standing in-between. Thus, the 14 (or so) American colonies developed in a system that was at least as free as the post-1931 Statute of Westminster system, but which was more like the post-1986 relationship of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to the Crown – each of which is completely free of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.Australia developed as six separate colonies, and because each developed long after the Parliament of Great Britain’s assertion of power to make laws in colonies, indeed, after the replacement of that Parliament by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1800, each was individually and separately subject to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and only through it, to the Crown.Like the Americans who went into revolution, the six Australian colonies were all together on one continent, connected geographically one to another, but disconnected politically from each other.Being on one continent, the six Australian colonies had common practical issues and problems.But administratively, due to the developing political history, the one continent had six separate but equal governments.And thus, to get a common continent-wide solution to one and another practical continent-wide problem, the same law had to be passed through six separate governments.Each of the six colonial governments was independent of the others – but each was dependent on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Local power-brokers saw each move for continent-wide rules as an opportunity to extract special benefits, or else obstruct the proposed rule.It was, frankly, like the American colonies – now States – under the very weak Articles of Confederation (1781-1788). Nothing continent-wide could get done.There was, however, a very profound difference between the 13 American states in the pre-1788 Confederation, and the 6 Australian states before the 1901 Commonwealth. The 13 American States really were independent – there was no sovereign over them, vetoing actions regarding ocean-trade or foreign relations, rendering judicial judgments overturning their laws.The 6 Australian colonies were each subject to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to the ministers in London, and to the British judges and courts. The 6 Australian colonies had no power to declare war; to receive ambassadors and other ministers from foreign countries; to send ambassadors and other ministers to foreign countries; etc.On most of the Australian continent-wide issues, the Parliament of the United Kingdom – the Imperial Parliament – had no interest whatsoever in the details. The Imperial Parliament wanted each colony to be economically sound, able to send money to Britain (in part, by providing salaries to British gents appointed to colonial government positions) and able to send soldiers to fight in imperial wars.But the smooth operation of the continent of Australia was being impeded by the structure of the six separate colonies.A continental government, empowered to make the rules on matters of continent-wide concern, was the obvious solution. Yet no one of the six colonies was so dominant as to be able to absorb all the others, and even if one had been, it would have exalted its leaders into power, and reduced the leaders and people of the other five.In 1885, the Australians had successfully urged the Imperial Parliament for the establishment of a weak, limited central government, remarkably similar to the American precedent of the “Articles of Confederation” central government that began during the Revolutionary War but that soon revealed its inadequacy in the four years after the peace in 1784. Professor Keith, in his authoritative multi-volume treatise “Responsible Government in the Dominions,” describes it (in the UK Parliament, called the “Federal Council of Australasia Act”) in Volume II of the 1912 edition, at pages 781-783, in discussing early efforts in Australia to form a union of the six colonies.Seeing the inadequacy of this “Federal Council” system during the latter part of the 1880s into the 1890s, the Australian leaders took note of the obvious example of the United States federal Constitution, which the Americans had made to replace the “Articles of Confederation” and which went into effect in 1789. It had been in operation for more than 100 years. It had kept all of the states that formed it equal to each other, and was adopted by conventions in each state, and provided for democratic elections by the people (the House of Representatives) as well as representation of each state as a state (the Senate).And, most notably, the U.S. federal constitution had defined, limited powers, intended to restrict its operation to continent-wide rule-making only, and foreign affairs, while the states retained all powers not so allocated to the federal government.It made sense for the Australians to follow that model.And, with admirable understanding of, and application of, the American system, that is exactly what the Australians did. They drafted a constitution to establish a limited-power, continent-wide federation government, and put it to referendum votes in each of the six colonies. Five readily assented, and the sixth, Western Australia, which considered itself so far away from the others that it resisted, at last, agreed as well.They designed their federation government so wisely that it so pleased the superintending power over them, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, acting as the Imperial Parliament, that the Imperial government found just one point of difficulty in the entire document – the kinds of law cases that would get a final decision in a solely Australian court, without any possibility of taking the legal points in issue over to London for decision by the Imperial government, in its Privy Council.It was the creation of a new government, created by the fully-informed people of the whole continent, through an open, public, democratic process – as had been the case with the United States federal constitution. Their achievement earned at the time, and deserved at the time, great praise.But what they created was not an independent government. Because the colonies that created it, unlike the American states in 1788, were not independent themselves at the time they made – well, not made – but proposed it to the power that could make it: the Parliament of the United Kingdom, acting as the Imperial Parliament.The whole structure was still under the Parliament of the United Kingdom – as each of the six colonies were – acting as the Imperial Parliament.And everyone in Australia, and in the United Kingdom, knew this at the time.Nobody in Australia in 1900 wanted to be independent.The Australian people then, and now, have a sound, practical, instinctive understanding that they must have warm, committed allies and friends in other countries across the oceans, because, although the Australians have a continent, that continent does not have all the resources that the Australian people need, to have the quality of life that they wish to have.I make no complaint at all, either political or moral, that the Australian people of 1900 ought to have wanted independence. I agree with them of the time: they ought not have.Of all other countries to be attached to in 1900, Britain was the best – and I say this because of the consistent high competence and practicality of the professional administrators out of London, and of their legal analysts and practitioners of law. They were far, far different than the, to be blunt, looters and oppressors of 1765 and after, who tried to bully their way into rule in America.Anyone who reads the Hansard report of debates in Parliament, who reads British state papers, ministerial letters, etc. – and I over the last ten years, 2009 through 2019, have read thousands of pages of it covering several hundred years, courtesy of our wonderful internet and the diligence and completeness with which government officials, and archivists all over the world, have posted it all – immediately will see the difference between the British leaders of 1764, and the British leaders of 1864.The first group was filled with an arrogance of power, born of the sense that the British military could conquer anybody anywhere, due to having just soundly defeated the great powers of France and Spain simultaneously.The second group acted with deliberation and restraint, due having a far more accurate understanding of the limits of Britain’s actual military and economic power.The loss in 1784 of what became the United States, and the subsequent need to tread gently with Canada lest Canada too be lost, taught them professionalism, competence, deliberation, and restraint in the late 1800s that their predecessors 100 years earlier had sorely lacked in the late 1700s.It is regrettable that, feeling a need not to expose their predecessors of the late 1700s to very valid criticisms, and thus embarrass the family descendants of those predecessors, the British leaders and administrators of the late 1800s, and even to today, have never admitted just how greedy, overbearing, and incompetent their predecessors of the late 1700s actually were. Instead, they follow the habit of those predecessors in casting blame on the Americans, when the reality is that the blame properly goes the other way – as anyone can see upon looking in detail at the source documents regarding America, 1764-1776, as I have, and provide, in my September 2017 lengthy study on SSRN.It is absolutely clear that the Australians of the late 1800s, leading up to the Commonwealth Constitution in 1901, had no desire for independence in the sense of freedom from the rule of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Professor Keith, in his “Responsible Government in the Dominions,” provides the following, in Volume II of the 1912 edition, at page 780, while discussing early efforts in Australia to form a union of the six colonies, about the one such “independence” proposal to emerge from Australia (I have added the bolding):“[I]n 1870 Mr. Gavan Duffy induced Victoria [Colony] to appoint a Royal Commission which suggested the remarkable and absurd scheme that the Mother Country [the United Kingdom] should give the Colonies rights of treaty-making, and that it should secure for them a position as neutral sovereign states. [Cite: Victoria Parliamentary Papers, 1870, Sess. 2, ii. 247.] The idea was a singularly inept one, and was justly derided by their opponents at the time.”What Professor Keith in 1912 described as “singularly inept” is what the Australian government today describes as what the Australian people wanted, and as what the United Kingdom Parliament wanted, twelve years earlier in 1900, in the Australian Commonwealth Constitution. Today’s Australian government is wrong about the people of 1900: they agreed with Professor Keith 12 years later that it would be “singularly inept” to seek “rights of treaty-making, and … a position as neutral sovereign states.”A key element, indeed a vital element, is that the Imperial Parliament – the Parliament of the United Kingdom – had unlimited scope, had the power to make law on any subject it chose.The federal system in the United States and in Australia did not establish their federal governments as having such power. In the United States and in the Australian system, the individual states chose to delegate defined powers, and no others, to the central government. On those subjects and those alone, the central government may “pre-empt” state laws.This is why the American and Australian states properly can call themselves “independent states,” not only vis-à-vis the other states, but also vis-à-vis their own central government itself, because the only subject-matter areas on which their own laws may be overridden by the central government are areas that the states themselves have chosen to permit the central government to have such power.The anomaly that exists in the Australian system, unlike the American system, is that the individual six separate states of Australia, not ever having been fully independent and sovereign themselves, never had any powers in certain major subjects of law and statecraft, and thus, themselves lacked certain vital powers to offer to delegate to the Commonwealth federal government. These powers included, for example, the powers to make and break treaties, to declare war, to settle and end war, to send ambassadors to foreign nations, to receive ambassadors, etc.What the six states did not have, the Commonwealth by its nature could not have.Thus, even when Australia became independent in 1986, how did any Australian government, state or federal, “get” these special powers that only independent states have?The Commonwealth Constitution does purport to grant the Commonwealth certain powers that in reality the states did not have at that time to delegate – but which the states might have in the future. Chapter I, Part V, section 51, provides a long list of powers delegated by the States to the Commonwealth. Power number xxxviii (power 38) purports to give the Commonwealth, from the States:“The exercise within the Commonwealth, at the request or with the concurrence of the parliaments of all the States directly concerned, of any power which can at the establishment of this Constitution be exercised only by the parliament of the United Kingdom, or by the Federal Council of Australasia.”The reference to the “Federal Council of Australasia” refers to the weak pre-Commonwealth Australian central government, the Australian analog to the weak pre-Constitution American “Articles of Confederation” central government.Was this clause 38 of section 51 of Part V of Chapter I a grant of power to the Commonwealth to do what, otherwise, only the Parliament of the United Kingdom could do? If so, how could such a provision have sailed through the eight separate stages of Parliamentary legislation without any dissent?We find one answer at pages 350-352 of the 1901 “Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth,” by John Quick and Robert Randolph Garran, which tells the story of London’s legal analysis of the clause in 1900, and concludes that the clause was of unenforceable and no effect, because “the Crown Law Officers were satisfied that the Colonial Laws Validity Act is applicable to the Constitution as it stands.”Professor Keith in the 1912 edition of his treatise, Volume II, page 816 notes regarding power 38 (xxxviii):“On this head no legislation has yet been passed. xxxviii is not of course an authority to alter Imperial Acts; see Harrison Moore, p. 487; Quick and Garran, pp. 650, 651.”In 1927, Professor Keith published a revised second edition of his treatise; Volume II of the 1927 edition, page 627, footnoting the same power 36, says merely “This gives no power to alter Imperial Acts.”Thus, power 38 (xxxviii) stands as a forward-looking provision, anticipating that at some future time, if a power that “at the establishment of this Constitution [July 1, 1900] [can] be exercised only by the parliament of the United Kingdom” later becomes a power that Australian governments can exercise – such as by the Parliament of the United Kingdom choosing to relinquish exclusive exercise of that power – the Commonwealth government cannot presume that it alone has that new power. Instead, the Commonwealth government will have to obtain the concurrence, via separate state legislation, from each state affected by an exercise of that new power.So understood, it is easy to see why power 38 (xxxviii) was not controversial in the United Kingdom Parliament in May through July 1900.Power 38 (xxxviii) anticipated in 1900 a situation such as actually occurred in 1931 with the Statute of Westminster: if the United Kingdom Parliament abandoned the “Colonial Laws Validity Act,” or abandoned its monopoly on extra-territorial legislation, or abandoned the “repugnancy” doctrine – all of which the Statute of Westminster did in 1931 – how would Australia assign the exercise of the new powers that, by means of a kind of United Kingdom “quit claim” (rather than a direct transfer of powers) were now available to Australia to claim?In short, the Commonwealth would obtain the new powers, but could exercise them only with the consent of the states.Professor Keith notes in the 1912 edition, Vol. II page 818, and in the 1928 edition, Vol. II at page 629, under power 38 (xxxviii) “legislation by the State is necessary to give effect to the Commonwealth legislation” (1912) or “legislation by the State is necessary as part of the scheme of the federal authority to legislate” (1928).It is interesting to compare this with American practice, in which the federal government has no power to legislate in many areas. In those areas, if the states want uniform laws, they must each enact the same law, without the federal government having to, or even being able to, enact a similar law. There is an unincorporated nonprofit organization in the U.S., the “Uniform Law Commission,” founded in 1892, that drafts and proposes such state legislation.A closer analog to the Australian power 38 is the U.S. constitutional provision permitting “interstate compacts,” article I, section 10, provided that Congress consents to the terms of the “compact.” Wikipedia has an interesting page on “interstate compacts,” which usually “create a new governmental agency which is responsible for administering or improving some shared resource,” or create “a coordination mechanism between independent authorities in the member states.” The Congressional “consent” requirement gives the federal government a lawmaking role similar to that of the Commonwealth government in Australia.What Happened in 1986? Real Independence.Nothing very memorable happened to trigger complete independence, and the documents accomplishing independence say nothing very quotable or memorable.As Professor Twomey wrote in 2018, and as the High Court justices wrote in 2003, the process of Australian independence was slow, because, as Justice Callinan said: “The Australian people have since 1900 proceeded regularly, indeed scrupulously and overtly legally, in collaboration with the Parliament of the United Kingdom along the path to full and independent nationhood.”It is Professor Twomey, writing seven years before her 2018 Oxford treatise chapters, in 2011 in “The Australian” issue of March 2, under the title “We only became independent of Britain on this day in 1986,” who tells us the trigger. The reason is a technical loophole in the 1931 Statute of Westminster – one that I said above I would not drag Quora readers into. Well, now we have deal with it, since it was the trigger for final, true Australian independence.As we noted above, section 2 of the Statute of Westminster voided both the “Colonial Laws Validity Act” and the “repugnancy” doctrine. But as to Australia, this option – an option that Australia did not “pick up” until 1942 – only applied to the Commonwealth government.The six component states of Australia – that were not independent in 1901 or in 1931 or in 1942 – never had the “option.” But, of course, as governments they still existed, as they do today.The Australian states had transferred to the Commonwealth government a long list of enumerated powers – but not all of their powers – unlike Canada, in which the enumeration went in the other direction, the central government having everything but what it delegated to the provinces.Thus, even into the 1970s, in those areas of power not transferred to the Commonwealth government, each Australian state government was under direct supervisory power of the Parliament and ministers of the United Kingdom.The UK refrained as much as it felt it could from exercising its supervisory power over the separate Australian states. Thus for a long time, nothing came up that brought this issue into conscious attention.But, Professor Twomey tells us in 2011, in the 1970s some issues came up:“In 1975 when [Queensland State Premiere] Joh Bjelke-Petersen tried to get the Queen to extend the term of a controversial Queensland governor, British ministers refused to pass the advice to the Queen. …“In 1979 [New South Wales State Premier Neville Wran] proposed the enactment of laws terminating Privy Council appeals from state courts and requiring the Queen to act on state advice in appointing state governors.“The British foreign secretary, at the insistence of Buckingham Palace, sent a dispatch to the governor telling him the bills would have to be reserved for the Queen’s consent [note: “reserved” was a procedure whereby UK ministers, not Australian ministers, could assert power to decide whether a bill ought to become law] and that he [the UK foreign secretary] would advise her to refuse assent [note: “assent” is the formal name for converting a mere Bill into a Law, an Act].“The Privy Council bill had already been passed by both houses of NSW parliament with bipartisan support [note: NSW means the State of New South Wales].“[The New South Wales State Privy Council Bill, despite having already passed both NSW legislative houses] was quietly buried in the governor’s desk drawer rather than being reserved and refused assent.“The other bill [that required the Queen to act on state advice in appointing state governors, which the NSW Houses had not yet voted on at the time the UK Foreign Minister’s reprimand came in] did not proceed.“Most Australians would have been shocked to know that the British government was telling NSW what laws it could or could not pass in 1979.“But the Australian people were not told. It was all too embarrassing.“While the public was not aware of the true position, the politicians were. …”Simultaneously, Canada was getting restless again about its own lack of complete independence – and the UK, mindful of the annoying Americans next door to Canada, and thus always desirous to keep Canada happy, responded.The Canadian dissatisfaction did not stem from a technical loophole in the Statute of Westminster concerning Canada’s provinces. The Statute of Westminster in 1931 was designed to keep Canada happy, and as noted, Canada’s political construction was the opposite of Australia’s: the provinces only had the powers that the central government gave them.Instead, Canada’s concern was more fundamental: the Canadians wanted to end the power of the United Kingdom to amend their own Canadian constitution. This problem also faced Australia, but the Australians were not so concerned about it. Canada, however, was under French Canadian-born Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was determined to foster a nationwide sense of Canadian unity. Subservience to a British Parliament obstructed the sense of unity in Canada felt by French Canadians.Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau obtained a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that he did not need the consent of the Canadian Provinces form unilaterally to “repatriate” the Canadian Constitution, but he obtained consent anyway from nine of the ten Provinces by late 1981.On March 29, 1982, Queen Elizabeth II of the UK gave her Royal Assent to a UK Parliamentary Act, titled “An Act to give effect to a request by the Senate and House of Commons of Canada.”The Parliament of Canada then adopted its own Constitution Act, 1982. Queen Elizabeth came over to Canada in April 1982, and on April 17, 1982, as Queen of Canada, signed the Proclamation that brought the Constitution into force.Canada’s action in bringing its constitution “home” brought to the attention of Australia that Australia ought to do the same.Professor Twomey in her 2011 article tells us of developments in Australia:“After years of negotiations the constitutional links between Australia and Britain were finally broken, not by a referendum but by legislation passed by the state, commonwealth, and British parliaments. On March 3, 1986, these acts, the Australia Acts, came into force.“They state that the British government is no longer responsible for the government of any state and that the Westminster parliament can no longer legislate for Australia. Most important, they transferred into Australian hands full control of all Australia’s constitutional documents.“So March 3, 1986, is the day Australia achieved complete independence from Britain. Happy Australian Independence Day.”With Professor Twomey’s “Happy Australian Independence Day,” March 3, 1986, I think I have completed a competent Quora answer.