Running a Government on Three Levels

Running a country is a complex job with responsibilities shared between different levels of government representation.


Watch the video above. Think:

Who are the people calling ‘Malcolm Turnbull’ on his phone during the video?

Why does the Prime Minister need ministers to help run the country?

Why do you think ‘running a country’ is such a big job for its leaders?


The Government Cabinet:

Cabinet is a group within the government consisting of no more than 30 top-level ministers. They are the main decision-making group and help the Prime Minister with governing and policy-making.

Cabinet’s role is to make decisions about national issues. Cabinet ministers spend a lot of time discussing current national problems and how these can be solved. Once Cabinet has made a decision, all Cabinet ministers are expected to support the decision publicly. Cabinet records are kept secret for twenty to thirty years.

All Cabinet discussions are top secret, so that ministers feel able to speak freely about any issue, including highly confidential matters such as national security. Ministers are not even allowed to take mobile phones or laptops into the cabinet room!


The Three Levels of Government:

As Australia is so large, the Federal Government cannot manage all the services needed to run the country on its own.

Our representatives on the three levels include:

National:

 

State:

 

Local:

 

To make sure that there is enough funding for each service (and they are managed efficiently), Australian government services are assigned to the Federal, State and Local governments.

 

Make a list of some services the government might be responsible for in order to keep the country running smoothly. Once you are done, compare the list of services on the following slide with the list you created.

 

The Australian Government is responsible for providing the public with a range of services. Think of all the services that you use each day. How many of these services are supplied by the government?

 

In groups of 4-5 make a list of all the government services that your class would use in one week.

 

Final thoughts: Where does the money to pay for these services come from? How does taxation work?

About Ms Salmon

I am a teacher in NSW, Australia. I use this blog for my students each year, and for collecting games, videos, images etc. for use with those classes.

2 Comments

  1. I really enjoyed this lesson and the one where we got to make the posters. All the posters looked really good.
    From Jessica.

  2. Hi Ms Salmon I hope you had a nice holiday and enjoyed the last term at school.
    From Jessica.