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| Landmark Constitutional Documents of the Commonwealth of Australia | ||||
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Register no. | 003 | ||
| Year of registration | 2001 | |||
| Abstract | This is a collection of documents charting the evolution of Australia as one of the world?s most stable and long-lived democracies, an internationally viewed model of democratic experimentation, and the first country in the world to be created through the free vote of its people. The federated Commonwealth of Australia came into existence on the first day of the 20th century - 1 January 1901 - and the ceremonies were filmed : it was also the first country to be born in front of a movie camera, and with the intent of deliberately creating an archival film record (the surviving film footage shows the actual moment of the country?s creation). | |||
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| 1.0 Identity and location | 1.1 Name of documentary heritage | Landmark Constitutional Documents of the Commonwealth of Australia | ||
| 1.2 Country | Australia. | |||
| 1.3 State, Province or Region | Australian Capital Territory (ACT). | |||
| 1.4 Name of organisation or institution (if appropriate) | The Parliament of Australia (item 1, 14), National Archives of Australia (item 2), National Library of Australia (item 3), Office of the Governor General (item 4), Office of Parliamentary Counsel (Items 5 to 13, 15), High Court of Australia (item 16), ScreenSound Australia (item 17). | |||
| 1.5 Address | Parliament House, Canberra, ACT (item 1, 14), Queen Victoria Terrace, Parkes Place, ACT 2600 (item 2), Parkes Place, Canberra, ACT 2600, (item 3), Government House, Yarralumla, ACT (item 4), Parkes Place, Canberra, ACT (item 16), McCoy Circuit, Acton, ACT 2601 (item 17). | |||
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| 2.0 Legal information | 2.1 Owner (name and full contact details) | As set out under organisation. | ||
| 2.2 Custodian (name and full contact details) | As set out under organisation. | |||
| 2.3 Legal status (if different from 2.1) | ||||
| (a) category of ownership | Public. | |||
| (b) details of legal and administrative powers for the preservation of the documentary heritage | Enabling Acts, Cabinet or Ministerial directions as appropriate to each body. | |||
| (c) accessibility | [Film] availability of video copies for public sale. Other items available on the internet and/or via public exhibition. | |||
| (d) copyright status | Public domain or control of the creator as defined in law. | |||
| 2.4 Responsible administration | As set out under organisation. | |||
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| 3.0 Identification | 3.1 Description and inventory |
As indicated on the list below, the documents are owned by and/or are in the custody of a number of different Australian public institutions. Details of the history, provenance and significance of the seventeen individual documents are available from the custodial institution. All of the owning/holding institutions have provided their consent for this nomination. The documents themselves are all freely accessible to the general public, with some being on permanent exhibit in the National Archives of Australia?s Federation Gallery in Canberra.Commonwealth of Australia.
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| 3.2 Bibliographic/Registration details | As above, and as set out in attached detailed information from NAA website and documented description from ANSSA. | |||
| 3.3 Visual documentation, if appropriate (for example photographs or a video of the documentary heritage | Described on website www.foundingdocs.gov.au and in video copies of the film available for public sale. | |||
| 3.4 History | The paper documents have always been in Government hands. The film survived in corporate or private hands for long enough to ensure its survival, and was acquired by the National Library of Australia in the 1950s. Separate attachment details the production of the film. | |||
| 3.5 Bibliography |
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| 3.6 Names, qualifications and contact details of up to three independent people or organisations with expert knowledge about the values and provenance of the documentary heritage |
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| 4.0 Assessment of the documentary heritage against each criterion | Criterion 1 - Influence |
Sixteen of these seventeen documents have been selected as the most significant original legal instruments effecting major Constitutional change in Australia over the course of the twentieth century. The seventeenth document, the film of the inauguration ceremony of the Commonwealth of Australia, has been added to the collection because it records the inauguration of the nation, complementing the original legal instruments and because of its intrinsic significance. The film is the product and evidence of the fact that Australia was the first nation to be born in front of a movie camera, an event which took place on the very first day of the twentieth century ? a new nation for a new century. Collectively, these documents help tell the story of the birth and continuing evolution of Australia?s federal nationhood and democratic system of government. Australia is a documentary democracy. Australian democracy works because of its legal instruments. Australians can tell the story of their nation through tracing the documents which give our governments the right to govern. These national charters are the documentary guarantors of democratic liberty and the rule of law enjoyed by all Australians today. Internationally, these documents are significant because of the international significance of the development of the democratic system of government in Australia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Australian nation was established, Australia was viewed internationally as an exciting model of democratic experimentation for a new century. Out of a colonial settler society was born a new and vigorous nation, not by revolution or bloodshed but by peaceful democratic processes given effect by referenda and the passage of legislation through the British Parliament. Since then Australia has gradually asserted its growing independence from the imperial power to which it once belonged and has also given recognition to the legal and moral rights of its indigenous inhabitants. Over the course of the past one hundred years the Australian system of government has provided the people of Australia with a stable and peaceful environment of democratic liberty. One hundred years after its establishment, Australia now stands as one of the world?s most stable and longest-lived democracies. While many new nation states came into existence during the twentieth century, Australia was the first. Moreover, it was the first to be created as a result of a free vote of its citizens. These seventeen documents tell the story of this successful democratic experiment and are the documentary means by which this success was made possible. In the lead up to the centenary of the creation of the Australian nation, the National Archives of Australia established a national advisory panel of experts to help it identify and select the most significant documents relating to the development of democratic institutions and the system of democratic governance in Australia. Documents selected by this national advisory panel were then digitised for access via the Documenting a Democracy website hosted by the National Archives of Australia (www.foundingdocs.gov.au/) and/or for permanent display in the Federation Gallery housed in the National Archives of Australia?s headquarters building in the national capital of Australia, Canberra. The documents listed in this nomination have been selected from the larger pool of documents as the most significant landmark Constitutional documents of the Commonwealth of Australia. |
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| Criterion 2 - Time | Each of these seventeen documents is a creature of its respective time. Indeed, the documents have been selected in order to illustrate that the Australian nation is not a static, but rather a constantly evolving entity. For example, the High Court?s Mabo Judgement of 1992 (document #16) would have been inconceivable in 1901. It took ninety years of democratic agitation and gradually changing conceptual frames of reference before Australian courts were able to recognise the legal fiction of the assertion of terra nullius, the assertion that the Australian continent was devoid of any notion of land tenure prior to initial European claim and settlement in the late 18th century. The fact that Australia could accommodate this fundamental shift of legal ground in a peaceful manner through a ruling of its paramount legal institution says much about the nature of democratic governance in Australia and the development of the rule of law in Australia through the hundred years since the new nation was hailed in Europe as ?a democratic experiment in the southern seas?. | |||
| Criterion 3 - Place | ||||
| Criterion 4 - People | ||||
| Criterion 5 ? Subject/Theme | ||||
| Criterion 6 ? Form and style |
Most of these documents are original legal instruments, such as legislation, commission, letters patent, proclamation, petition and legal judgement. As such, they conform to the form and style required of such instruments in the British legal tradition. The selection of documents that constitute this nomination highlight the way in which documents with this form and function can shape the lives of an entire people and the destiny of an entire continent. While many of the documents are utilitarian in appearance, some of the documents in this collection are particularly beautiful and noteworthy objects in their own right. This is particularly the case for the Commission of Assent, the Letters Patent and the Royal Proclamation of Inauguration Day, all of which are on parchment with impressive royal wax seals attached. The Yirrkala bark petitions are significant as the first documents to bridge Commonwealth law as it then stood and the indigenous laws of the land. These petitions were the first Aboriginal traditional documents recognised by the Australian Parliament. They combine Aboriginal bark painting with typed text on paper. The painted designs proclaim the law of the Yolngu people, depicting traditional relations to the land. The typed text is in English and Gumatj languages. |
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| Criterion 7 ? Social value | ||||
| Secondary criterion 1 - Integrity | ||||
| Secondary criterion 2 - Rarity | ||||
| 4.2 Contextual assessment including an assessment of the importance of a series of documents, the importance of a series of documents in a particular setting, and the assessment against other documentary heritage | From the potentially large number of documents available, this particular group has been arrived at by archivists and historians specialising in constitutional history as the definitive sequence. | |||
| 4.3 An evaluation of the authenticity | These are the original documents and their authenticity is attested by the National Archives of Australia and the relevant owning/ controlling/ custodial institution. (In the case of the film, it is the earliest surviving generation, and internal and contextual evidence establishes authenticity. | |||
| 4.4 An assessment of any threat(s) to the preservation of the documentary heritage | ||||
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| 5.0 Management plan |
Every document is physically stable, has been inventoried and is held under secure, environmentally appropriate storage or display conditions. Physical condition is checked at appropriate intervals under the collection management regime of the custodial institution. Copies of all documents exist in digital, hard copy or photographic formats. None of the documents is judged to be at risk by virtue of political conditions, environmental or physical conditions, or usage demand (which is met by providing access to copies, and/or public display under secure conditions). No budgetary threat to the documents exists or is foreseen. Detailed information on the state and preservation history of each document is held by the relevant custodial institution. Briefly, each institution is committed to observing world?s best practice in its preservation responsibilities.
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| 6.0 Consultation | 6.1 Details of consultation about the nomination with the: | |||
| (a)Owner | This nomination has been compiled by National Archives of Australia on the initiative of the Australian National Memory of the World Committee, and with the consultation and cooperation of all the owning/custodial bodies listed above. | |||
| (b) Custodian | ||||
| (c) Relevant Regional or National Memory of the World Committee (if appropriate | UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee, ANU Centre for UNESCO, 5 Liversidge St., Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200. Telephone +61 2 6125 9943, Facsimile +61 2 6125 4959, Email carole.caldwell@anu.edu.au, http://www.amw.org.au. | |||
| (d) Independent institution(s) and/or experts |
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| 7.0 Nominator | 7.1 Name | National Archives of Australia. | ||
| 7.2 Relationship to the documentary heritage | Coordinator. | |||
| 7.3 Contact person (if appropriate) | Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, Acting Director-General, National Archives of Australia. | |||
| 7.4 Contact details | National Archives of Australia, PO Box 7425, Canberra BC, ACT 2610. Telephone +61 2 6212 3600, Facsimile +61 2 6212 53699, Email archives@naa.gov.au, http://www.naa.gov.au. | |||
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