Understanding the Distinction Between Different Powers

Questions

Contents
Week 1.............................................................................................................................................1
Week 2.............................................................................................................................................2
(a).................................................................................................................................................2
(b).................................................................................................................................................2
Week 3.............................................................................................................................................2
Week 4.............................................................................................................................................3
Week 5.............................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

Week 1
The distinction between three different powers on the basis of their example is provided
below:
Exclusive powers: This includes the power where opportunity of law making is provided to only
Commonwealth and not to the state. The areas of national concern are covering under this
includes immigration, defence and currency. Here, power of law making is the part of specific
power but considered and termed differently because the states are excluded from them. It means
they don’t have the power to make laws upon all the aspects related to national concern (Balboni,
2019). It is also understood as the powers that can only be exercised by the Federal Parliament.
All these powers are duly listed in constitution and includes;
 Section 90 power to impose customer and excise duties
 Section 114 prohibits the stats from raising naval and military forces
 Section 115 prohibits the states regarding minting of their own coins
Concurrent powers: In this, number of law making powers are non-exclusive and shared
with the states. The basic reason behind their recognition as concurrent powers is providence of
authority to both Commonwealth and States to legislate in some specific areas. These areas are
marriage, divorce and bankruptcy. Here, the one aspect which is important to understand is that
if the law made by state conflicted with the law of commonwealth then as per the section 109 of
the constitution only the law made by commonwealth overrides that of the states. Some of the
powers mentioned in section 51 which are mentioned below;
 Trade and commerce with other nations
 Taxation
 Marriage
 Divorce
 Postal, telegraphic, telephonic and similar services
Residual powers: These law making powers is not vested within the Australian constitution. At
the time of federation, colonies wanted to hold some of the law making powers instead of
providing all of their legislative authority to the commonwealth. In this regard, they hold the set
of law making powers that will be used by each state on the basis of the need of their states.
These areas of law making are related to education, criminal law and health. For ex., in Victoria
have VCE as oppose to HSC (Dowding, Martin and Evans, 2019).
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