Legal Studies – Australian context – Legal foundations – quotas and referendums

A resource which I think Legal Studies / Civics teachers will find helpful. If you use it, and like it, please give me a positive star rating / review.

A PowerPoint designed for use in the lead up to the exam to teach students about quotas and referendums. After defining each of these terms, an explanation is provided of the double majority requirement for passing a referendum and the reason for this. It also goes through the steps for a referendum to occur using the 2023 ‘Voice to Parliament’ debate as an example. I include the draft question and the final question, screen shots from social media in the lead up to the vote, screen shots from the yes/no pamphlet produced by the government as well as screen shots I took on the night of the vote calculation showing the progressive count. This is followed by some multiple-choice questions to check for understanding. Then just for interest there is an infographic about the other unsuccessful referendums in Australia’s history.

Following this there is some specific information about Part B of the exam (extended response) as students will be given their seen sources during this lesson (a week prior to the actual exam). Their exam topic is on the representativeness of parliament.

The slides contain an example response for a criminal law topic: drug possession so that students can see the skills in practice but with a different context.

NB: My lessons have been designed for use in Australian classrooms and will often feature examples from Queensland legislation.