A European Informational Website
learn more
The Australia Act 1986 refers to two separate but related pieces of legislation. One is an act of the Parliament of Australia (No. 142 of 1985), the other being an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (c.2 1986). These acts eliminated the remaining ties between the legislature and judiciary of Australia and their counterparts in the United Kingdom. In particular, the acts resolved the anomalous power of the United Kingdom's parliament to legislate over the individual Australian states, a power that it had exercised since colonial times and which had not been affected by the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The Australia Act of 1986 was modelled after the Canada Act 1982.