The Australian acts were the final part of the Perth Agreement's legislative program agreed by the prime ministers of the Commonwealth realms to modernise the succession to the crowns of the sixteen Commonwealth realms, while continuing to have in common the same monarch and royal line of succession,[6][7] as was the case at the time of the Statute of Westminster 1931.
[2] Prior to the Act, the succession to the throne of Australia, like all Commonwealth realms, was controlled by a system of male-preference primogeniture,[8] under which succession passed first to the monarch's or nearest dynast's legitimate sons (and to their legitimate issue) in order of birth, and subsequently to their daughters and their legitimate issue, again in order of birth, so that sons always inherit before their sisters, elder children inherit before younger, and descendants inherit before collateral relatives.
This commission can be revoked by the King on the advice of the Commonwealth Prime Minister, as occurred when Sir Colin Hannah, Governor of Queensland, had his dormant commission revoked for making partisan political comments shortly before the 1975 constitutional crisis.
[22] Unlike the states, the relationship between Australia's self-governing territories and the sovereign is mediated by the Federal Government, similar to the situation in Canada.
This law required the consent of the Sovereign for any descendant of King George II to marry; hundreds of years after the death of George II, the number of people to whom the act applied was quite large, and almost none of them had any realistic chance of succeeding to the Crown.
Since the Succession to the Crown Act came into force, only the first six persons in line to the throne require the sovereign's approval to marry.
Also, several sections in the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 involving marriages with "papists" (Catholics) were repealed, and any references to provisions relating to "the succession to, or possession of, the Crown" were made to include, by reference, the provisions of the Australian act.