"Is Australia's Constitution appropriate for the Twenty First Century?".
Having been created over 100 years ago, it has been suggested that the Australian Constitution has passed its use by date. This essay aims to explore whether or not the Australian constitution is still relevant for application in the twenty first century. This will be achieved by investigating both the current short falls of the constitution, including the need for the constitution to better reflect the current political and government systems, the inclusion of human rights provisions, updates to include specific technological advancements and a reformed process of changing the constitution itself. This paper will also outline some disadvantages and difficulties associated with reform, including problems associated with who would detail the changes, how the changes could be adopted given the current process for constitutional change and how to overcome the fear of change within the Australian public. Due to word constraints, this paper will only provide a brief introduction to constitutional reform, and does not intend to provide a detailed insight into the topic.
According to Jaensch (1997, p. 44) "a constitution is a means to arrange a political system", however, our current government and parliamentary systems defy this. There exists limited information within the constitution concerning these institutions and it includes no real specific information relating to the framework and operations of the two most powerful organisations within the polity of Australia. Arguably then, the constitution does not provide a clear enough guide to how the polity actually works (Emy, 1997). Within the constitutional document there is no mention of the Prime Minister or Cabinet, instead, emphasis is placed on the British Monarchy and the Governor General. However, a glance at today's political institutions shows little evidence of a contribution from either of these parties (Craven, 1999).
