'Time to reflect': Earl Bathurst and the origins of the New South Wales Executive Council

Abstract

Henry, the Third Earl Bathurst, deserves to be remembered as a founder of the modern Australian constitutional compact. Despite being described by contemporaries as a conservative, as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies he was responsible for a radical shift in the governance model for New South Wales (NSW) in the early 1820s. After the autocratic rule of the Macquarie era, Bathurst instituted three fledgling institutions, all of which survive today - the Supreme Court and Legislative Council of NSW founded in 1824, and the Executive Council established in 1825. These institutions and their successors provided the model for the federal institutions which now exist under the Australian Constitution. Of the three, very little has been written about the origins of the Executive Council, even though it became an increasingly important source of administrative power in the early colony. The Executive Council was retained in the New South Wales Constitution Act (1902) 'to advise the Governor in the government of the State', and the NSW Executive Council provided the model for the Federal Executive Council. So why was an Executive Council formed and what need was it designed to address?