The United States of America and Australia have friends and allies for many years, and the bonds of shared hardship was born in war and shared cultural history are strong indeed. An interesting, but perhaps not widely known fact is that some functions of the two systems of government that are surprisingly similar. I does not relate to me the democratic character of our two systems, none-the-less true, and something in which we can be proud of both peoples.

I am thinking of the structure of our elective legislature, particularly the impact that (the U.S.) on the other (Australia) had. Our two nations had their origin as British colonies, or rather, group of British colonies. In any case, were the groups of colonies together to form a new nation on a federal union of the colonies in a group of states from which an independent country. The United States was the end of the formed eighteenth century after the American Revolution. Australia was formed at the end of the nineteenth century by a peaceful federation movement.

Until then, the British had learned that we pesky colonialists best not messed with. A great influence on Australian thinking during the Confederation debates in the late nineteenth century was the obvious success of the American Federal Republic. Many Australians at the time saw the American model to follow than one. More conservative thinking prevailed, and the final structure of our parliamentary system of Government, mostly copies of the British Parliament in Westminster. Australia has, however, a House of Representatives and a Senate as the houses of their Parliament.

The Senate was originally planned as a home states and has a fixed number of senators elected from each state. The Senate, as a States house selected was on the American model. The role of the Australian Senate as a States house was so serious that for the first meetings of the Australian Parliament, Senators from Western Australia ignores party affiliation, and sat as a group that their state. Today, do more to enforce the party affiliation. Some commentators in Australia have described the Australian system as "Washminster" system, so clearly the influences of both the United States and to see the United Kingdom.