Laws are rules that keep order in our community. They also give us rights.
One easy way to understand laws is to think about the rules of a game. All games have rules. They help solve arguments and make the game fun to watch and to play. But for that to happen, everyone playing the game must know the rules and obey them.
Think about any game that you play with your friends. Now think about the rules that you use when you play that game. Discuss these rules with your classmates.
Now think about what the game would be like if there were no rules.
How do we make laws?
In Australia, our laws are made by people who meet in a parliament. Those people are called members of parliament, and they are sent to parliament by the people to speak for their suburb, town or local area. To decide which person will represent them in parliament, the people hold an election.
The Australian Parliament makes laws about things that affect the whole country, while each state and territory, like New South Wales or the Northern Territory, has its own parliament to make laws that affect them.
A different kind of law
For many thousands of years, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders followed their own laws. Yet these customary laws were mostly ignored by the Australian legal system. In 1992 the High Court, which is the highest court in Australia, said that native title – which is something like customary law – can be part of the law in our country.
In some parts of Australia, native title gives Indigenous Australians rights to do traditional things with areas of land or parts of the ocean, including hunting, fishing, holding ceremonies and caring for special places.
Is there a law about making laws?
Australia has a Constitution, which lists what kinds of laws the Australian Parliament is allowed to make.
Keywords
Parliament
Constitution
Election
Bill
Act of Parliament
Customary law
Native title
Let’s explore
Hold a class election and elect members to represent you.
If your class was the parliament, how would it discuss Lisa’s idea for a free ice-cream every day? What would the class do to make sure kids like Lisa didn’t eat too much ice-cream and get too fat? Would the class find ways to encourage Lisa to brush her teeth? The ice-cream may be free for the kids, but who will pay for it?
