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47 Sydney L. Rev. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/sydney47 and id is 1 raw text is: George Winterton Memorial Lecture 2025 The Evolution of the Australian Electoral System as a Constitutional Process Stephen Gageler AC* Abstract The form of popular sovereignty empowered by the Australian Constitution was framed to be government by 'the people' in constitutive and routine manifestations, both sustaining and sustained by the system of government it called into existence. It was framed to be dynamic - the design of the electoral system according to which the people would act in those distinct manifestations having been entrusted to development by ordinary legislation made by the Commonwealth Parliament. And this form of popular sovereignty can be seen to have evolved: through the development of a broad franchise and through the establishment of a system of compulsory and preferential voting by which that broad franchise has come to be exercised. The form of popular sovereignty empowered by the Australian Constitution can accordingly be seen today to be government by 'the people' writ large. In this lecture, I trace this evolution as a process by which ordinary legislation has built out the constitutional structure empowering popular sovereignty. Please cite this lecture as: Chief Justice Stephen Gageler AC, 'Winterton Lecture: The Evolution of the Australian Electoral System as a Constitutional Process' (2025) 47 Sydney Law Review 21122: 1-17 <https://doi.org/10.30722/slr.21122>. This work is licensed via CC BY-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0. Unmodified content is free to use with proper attribution Chief Justice of Australia. This is an edited version of the 2025 George Winterton Memorial Lecture delivered inthe Banco Court atthe Supreme Court of New South Wales on 19 February 2025. Thanks are due to Flyn Wells and Priyanka Banerjee for their careful research and substantial contributions to the structure and content. Review~ and

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