Talk:Comparison of Australian and Canadian governments

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Untitled[edit]

With reference to the welfare state section, Australia does not have a two tier health system. While the coalition government has encouraged the use of private health cover, the public Medicare system is not a second class health system.

With reference to the war and peace section, the last paragraph of a speculative nature.

Two-tier does not mean that the public system is inferior, it just means that there is both a private and a public system in operation. - SimonP 13:50, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Federalism[edit]

The sentence: "In Canada, the British North America Act of 1867 thus created strong provincial governments that are in no practical way subservient to the federal government" Seems somewhat inaccurate. While it is true that Canada is quite decentralized now, the BA Act was designed to keep the provinces subsurvient to the federal government. Under John A. MacDonald the provinces were indeed kept under the guidance of the federal government. It was only later judicial review by British courts that would give interpretations of the BA as being more in favor of the provinces and effectively undercut the power that the federal government held.

This point is made much more clearly at the end of the "States and Provinces" section... but overall it appears somewhat conflicting.

Monarchy/modern multiculural society[edit]

I find the paragraph beginning

However, Canada has been more successful in reconciling the monarchy with a modern multicultural society than Australia

baffling. Apart from completely subjective nature of the statement, and the arguable implication that Jews are not an ethnic minority, what reason is there to look at vice-regal appointments only at a federal level? Even if having only white male representatives of the Queen did mean Australia is less successful in that regard, the statement is still only as true as saying Australian politics is dominated by the Lib-Nat coalition even though each state has a Labor government. JPD (whose governor is a Lebanese woman) 11:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Canada and private health care[edit]

I think the statement "In fact, Canada is the only industrialized democracy in the world that flatly prohibits private health insurance of any kind" needs to be qualified better. I understand that the Canada Health Act is one of the most prohibitive in terms of allowing Canadians to use private insurance for things otherwise covered by provincial health plans, even compared to countries like Sweden. But much of Canadian health care is private (pharmacy, dental, optometry, etc.) and if I wanted to I could buy private health insurance tomorrow (c.f. Blue Cross). Could anyone with a better grasp on this issue possibly provide some help here?

24.82.164.92 05:52, 3 June 2006 (UTC)skarredmunkey[reply]

Aboriginals[edit]

I think the Aboriginals section is a bit biased and no reference or examples are given. It's subjective.

"By contrast, Australia, under the leadership of Prime Minister John Howard, has paid scant attention to Aboriginal issues."

Some examples of what the Prime Minister is not doing should be cited, if not some sought of reference, because it's seems that the Australian government is paying attention in other area's mentioned in this section. Unsniffable/Opal Fuel.


"The current Liberal government has acted to abolish the self-governing panel ran by Aboriginals (ATSIC) citing corruption, not necessarily improving the quality of life for Australian Aboriginals, and empathises..."

This is ambiguous, is this saying that the Australian government abolished ATSIC to improve quality of life for Australian aboriginals and doesn't? Or that the result of abolishing ATSIC will not necessarily improve quality of life? Maybe this sentence should be restructured.

220.233.176.13 11:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Australian treatment of Aborigines in the past was generally more systematically cruel than in Canada" This again seems to be someone's personal opinion and needs to be deleted or verified in some way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.55.81.222 (talk) 17:30, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Vice-Regal positions[edit]

"Both Australian Premiers and the Canadian Prime Minister almost always choose members of their own party to fill the vice-regal positions." 'Huh? I don't know about Canada but a bit of research would show this to be untrue about Australia. 64.179.109.145 16:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)Grahame[reply]

This is untrue about Australia. I deleted the whole sentence as I suspect the Canadian statement to be false as well. Jleonau 07:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV[edit]

The Monarchy is not NPOV. for example "which model to replace it caused the referendum on the republic to fail" only republicans say that, and is not NPOV. Brian | (Talk) 04:59, 6 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Landlocked states[edit]

I know that technically Australia has no landlocked 'states', but should the Australian Capital 'Territory' (which is obviously landlocked) be mentioned? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.219.206.154 (talk) 11:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Immigration[edit]

From the article...

Australia, like much of Europe, has seen an anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party, briefly gain broad support in some areas – something which has never happened in Canada. While One Nation's power quickly dissipated, it's immigration policies were broadly copied by the federal Liberal-National Coalition which assisted its hold on power.

The first sentence is fine. The second setence I have issues with. It badly needs to be sourced. It's also not true to say the Liberals "broadly copied" One Nation's immgration policy as immgration into Australia remains both high and non-discrimintory. The case could be made that the government successfully adopted some of One Nation's rhetoric, particulary with regards to illegal immigration, but that isn't policy. The section needs to be reworded to reflect this.Teiresias84 12:35, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]


I agree with the above statement. Under the Howard Government Australia continued to increase the amount of immigrants (see: http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/15population.htm). Australia now leads the world in terms of the largest number of citizens born overseas. --Gginjapan (talk) 02:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Original Research[edit]

This article appears to me to be entirely Original Research per WP:NOR. Who is comparing the politics of Australia to the politics of Canada? Is it someone external we can cite, or is it the wikipedia writers who have contributed to this article?

If the latter, then I suggest it is deleted straight away! AndrewRT(Talk) 22:38, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From the perspective of someone interested in comparing the similarities between Australia and Canada, I found this article as a good starting point. There is no reason why an article that can be a source of stimulating learning and increasing one's knowledge of a particular topic should be so readily discarded. --Gginjapan (talk) 02:35, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Flags[edit]

It's cosidered very bad form to show one flag right over the other. That's why we have {{Infobox Bilateral relations}}. FIX IT! Kevlar67 12:54, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there something stopping you from fixing it? --G2bambino 15:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Governors General[edit]

In 1931, King George V appointed the first Australian as Governor-General; Canada did not have a Canadian Governor General until 1953.

I removed this because I believe that this is incorrect. As far as I know, Canada and Australia both had Governor Generals appointed since their statehood. 1931 was when Isaac Isaacs became the 9th Australian Governor General, and 1953 was the year after Vincent Massey was sworn in as the 40th Canadian Governor (18th Governor General from their 1867). CuffX(Talk) 06:50, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's true but could be better worded. It is trying to say that until 1931 in Australia and until 1953 in Canada all the GGs were British aristocrats, not locals. I've readded it with some more detail. - SimonP (talk) 13:46, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment[edit]

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Comparison of Australian and Canadian governments/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Interesting article, but needs sources.--Grahamec 09:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Last edited at 01:46, 1 January 2012 (UTC). Substituted at 12:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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