Why would it be good for Australia to become independent?

Australia is an independent nation, separate from the UK, and has been so officially since 1986, when Australian Parliament passed the Australia Act. Yet Australia was actually considered independent long before 1986. Even though the formal declaration only came in '86, most historians point to 1901, when the six UK crown colonies of Australia joined a federated government, which ratified its own constitution and eventually built a capitol city in Canberra.

As for why it...

Australia is an independent nation, separate from the UK, and has been so officially since 1986, when Australian Parliament passed the Australia Act. Yet Australia was actually considered independent long before 1986. Even though the formal declaration only came in '86, most historians point to 1901, when the six UK crown colonies of Australia joined a federated government, which ratified its own constitution and eventually built a capitol city in Canberra.

As for why it was good for Australia to become independent, the answers are pretty straight forward. What was best for the economy of Australia was not necessarily what was best for England, the seat of the United Kingdom's vast empire. Indeed, today, Australia's economy is far more dependent on trade with China, Indonesia and other neighboring Asian nations than it is on trade with European nations.

Furthermore, the ability of Australia to manage its own currency, set its own domestic agenda based on the unique challenges it faces (like chronic drought and a long history of discrimination against its indigenous population) is essential to its success. Moreover, Australia benefits economically and from a national security point of view because it can formulate a foreign policy that takes into account its geographic location on the other side of the world from England. The notion that the security of the UK and Australia should be bound up together is laughable when one considers the vastly different geo-strategic concerns each confronts.

Even so, Australia and England remain very close allies because of their shared culture, history and interests. Australia is also a vital ally of both the United States and Canada. Ultimately, Australia only benefitted from gaining its independence from the United Kingdom, but one reason that its succession was so smooth was that it happened over a long period of time, from the 1890s until the 1980s. That slow, methodical and mostly amicable approach to sovereignty allowed for less instability and more cooperation from its former mother state.