The Australia Act 1986 is an act of the Parliament of Australia (No. 142 of 1985) and the Parliament of the United Kingdom (c.2 1986) which eliminated the remaining ties between the legislature and judiciary of Australia and their counterparts in the United Kingdom. In particular, the act resolved the anomalous power of the United Kingdom's parliament to legislate over the individual Australian states, a power that it had exercised since colonial times and which had not been affected by the 1931 Statute of Westminster. (more...)