Governor-General of Australia - Constitutional Role and Functions

Constitutional Role and Functions

Sections 61 and 68 of the Constitution provide that the Governor-General exercises certain powers as the Queen's representative. The limited form of this representation was explained in a 1988 Constitutional Commission report which concluded "the Governor-General is in no sense a delegate of the Queen. The independence of the office is highlighted by changes which have been made in recent years to the Royal instruments relating to it".

Although the Governor-General and the Queen occasionally observe certain formalities, in practice the Governor-General has constitutional responsibilities without reference to the Queen. In 1975, the Queen, through her Private Secretary, wrote that she "has no part in the decisions which the Governor-General must take in accordance with the Constitution". Sir Robert Garran noted as early as 1901 that the governor-general was distinguished from other Empire governors-general by the fact that "the principal and most important of his powers and functions, legislative as well as executive, are expressly conferred on him by the terms of the Constitution itself. They are legislative and executive powers and functions conferred on the Governor-General, not by Royal authority, but by statutory authority," a view held also by Andrew Inglis Clark, who assisted Sir Samuel Griffith with drafts of the constitution and later became Senior Judge of the Supreme Court of Tasmania. Clark and W. Harrison Moore, who had contributed to the first draft of the constitution put before the 1897 Adelaide Convention and was Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, postulated that the letters patent and the royal instructions issued by Queen Victoria were unnecessary "or even of doubtful legality".

Sir David Smith stated in 1988 that "the Governor-General is in no sense a delegate of the Queen. The independence of the office is highlighted by changes which have been made in recent years to the Royal instruments relating to it". He later opined that the governor-general's role was more than a representative of the sovereign, explaining: "under section 2 of the Constitution the Governor-General is the Queen's representative and exercises certain royal prerogative powers and functions; under section 61 of the Constitution the Governor-General is the holder of a quite separate and independent office created, not by the Crown, but by the Constitution, and empowered to exercise, in his own right as Governor-General and not as a representative or delegate of the Queen, all the powers and functions of Australia's head of state."

The Queen chose not to intervene during the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, in which Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed the Labor government of Gough Whitlam, on the basis that it was a matter "clearly placed within the jurisdiction of the Governor-General". Sir John Robert Kerr was at the time Governor-General of Australia.