The preamble to the Australian Constitution declares that the Commonwealth of Australia is a ‘Federal Commonwealth’. What did the framers of the Constitution mean by this, and why did they choose to create such an entity? It was certainly incumbent upon them to choose an expression that would capture the essential meaning and nature of the new polity they wished to see created. And so the framers said that this polity would be formed ‘under the Crown’ and ‘under the Constitution’ to be enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. But they named it the ‘Commonwealth of Australia’, and they designated it a ‘Federal Commonwealth’.

Speaking abstractly, the framers of the Constitution might just as easily have created a polity that called for a somewhat different description – perhaps, for example, as a representative democracy or a constitutional monarchy. Indeed it is clear that the Constitution was constructed upon representative, democratic, constitutional and monarchical foundations, so that labels such as these would not necessarily have been out of place. The principles of representative government, responsible government and the rule of law are certainly fundamental features of the commonwealth that the framers wished to create.