This book reflects my research and thinking on the Australian Constitution and federalism since 1984. Since then I have had the privilege of working in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, initially in the Political Science Department, where I was responsible for the Federalism Project, and more recently in the Federalism Research Centre. Don Aitkin, then head of the department, had flagged federalism as a core issue of Australian politics that had been relatively neglected by Australian political scientists, and in the early 1980s he instituted the Federalism Project to stimulate research. John Warhurst initially ran the project, which entailed facilitating a research network of interested scholars from State universities, producing a newsletter and running an annual federalism conference in Canberra. I went to Canberra and the Federalism Project from Tasmania in 1984, after John left for the Australian Studies Centre in London, and have been at the ANU for a decade with a large part of my time devoted to federal issues.

My constitutional interest goes back two decades to graduate school at the University of Toronto, and in particular to a stroke of good fortune in 1974 at being chosen as a teaching assistant for the joint course taught by Walter Berns and Peter Russell on the Canadian and American constitutions. Both professors attended all classes, and there was a good deal of lively interchange between them and the keen students, many of whom were jostling to get into law school.