What is Australia — country, continent and federation

Australia covers 7,692,024 square kilometres according to Geoscience Australia, the Commonwealth agency responsible for national mapping. That makes it the sixth-largest country on Earth after Russia, Canada, China, the United States and Brazil, and the only country that occupies an entire continent.

Abstract numbers do not convey it. Perth to Sydney is roughly 3,290 kilometres in a straight line — further than London to Moscow. The state of Western Australia alone is larger than Western Europe. A drive from Cairns to Melbourne, both on the east coast, takes about 33 hours without stopping. Domestic flights in Australia are not a luxury; for most cross-country journeys they are the only sane option.

The population, by contrast, is small and extraordinarily concentrated. Around 27.4 million people live here, which works out at roughly 3.5 people per square kilometre — one of the lowest densities of any country. But that average is meaningless: about 86 per cent of Australians live in urban areas, and the great majority live within 50 kilometres of the coast, mostly on the eastern and south-eastern seaboard.

Australia is a federation. Six states — New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania — existed as self-governing British colonies before 1901 and joined together to create the Commonwealth. They did not surrender their existence in doing so; they surrendered a specific, listed set of powers and kept everything else.

Two internal territories, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory, have self-government but hold it by Commonwealth statute rather than by the Constitution. In principle the federal Parliament can override territory laws in a way it cannot override state laws. In practice this power is used rarely, and its use is always politically contentious.

There are also seven external territories, including Norfolk Island, Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, plus the Australian Antarctic Territory, which claims about 42 per cent of Antarctica and is not recognised by most other countries.

Section 51 of the Constitution lists the matters on which the Commonwealth Parliament may legislate. Anything not on that list, or not otherwise assigned, remains with the states. The practical division that trips people up looks like this.

Federal: taxation and the tax file number, Medicare, social security payments through Centrelink, immigration and visas, superannuation, defence, foreign affairs, customs, quarantine, telecommunications, corporations and the Australian Consumer Law.

State or territory: residential tenancy law, driver licensing and vehicle registration, stamp duty and land tax, public hospitals and ambulance services, schools, police, criminal law for most offences, workers' compensation, fines, and the enforcement of consumer law through state fair-trading agencies.

Local government — around 537 councils — is a creature of state law, not of the Constitution. Councils handle rates, rubbish, local roads, planning approvals, libraries and parks.

Australia is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system inherited from Westminster and a federal structure borrowed from the United States. The head of state is King Charles III, represented by the Governor-General, who acts almost entirely on the advice of ministers. The head of government is the Prime Minister, who holds office by commanding a majority in the House of Representatives rather than by direct election.

The federal Parliament has two chambers. The House of Representatives has 150 members elected from single-member divisions by full preferential voting. The Senate has 76 senators — twelve from each state regardless of population, and two from each of the ACT and the Northern Territory — elected by single transferable vote. The Senate is unusually powerful by international standards, and governments routinely have to negotiate with crossbenchers to pass legislation.

Voting is compulsory for citizens aged 18 and over, at federal, state and (in most jurisdictions) local elections. Failing to vote attracts a modest fine. Turnout consequently sits above 90 per cent, far higher than in comparable democracies.

Australia is one of the most migrant-shaped societies in the world. At the 2021 Census, 27.6 per cent of the population was born overseas and just over half had at least one parent born overseas. England, India, China, New Zealand and the Philippines are the largest countries of birth.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the First Peoples of the continent, with archaeological evidence of continuous occupation for at least 65,000 years — among the oldest continuing cultures on Earth. The 2021 Census counted 812,728 people identifying as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, about 3.2 per cent of the population.

There is no official language in Australian law. English is the national language in practice. At the 2021 Census, more than a fifth of people used a language other than English at home, most commonly Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Punjabi. Around 167 Indigenous languages are still spoken, most of them endangered.

Australia has a high-income, services-dominated economy that is nonetheless unusually reliant on resource exports. Services — health care, professional services, education, retail, finance — employ the overwhelming majority of workers and generate most of the gross domestic product. But export earnings are concentrated in iron ore, coal, liquefied natural gas and gold, with education and tourism as major services exports. China is by a wide margin the largest trading partner.

The country has recorded one of the longest uninterrupted growth runs in modern economic history, broken only by the COVID-19 recession in 2020. Its persistent structural issues are housing affordability, low productivity growth and a heavy dependence on commodity prices set elsewhere.

Australia drives on the left. The electricity supply is 230 volts at 50 hertz with the Type I flat-pin plug used in few other countries. Tap water is drinkable everywhere on the reticulated supply. Tipping is genuinely optional because hospitality staff are paid an award wage, and it is not expected.

The seasons are inverted relative to the northern hemisphere: summer runs December to February, winter June to August. Northern Australia does not have four seasons in any meaningful sense — it has a wet season and a dry season, and the wet brings cyclones.

Practical civic infrastructure runs through a small number of systems worth learning early: myGov links your federal services, Medicare covers most essential health care for eligible residents, a tax file number is needed before you can be paid properly, and each state issues its own driver licence.