Janina Boughey

When a government official tells you to do something, the instruction carries significantly more weight than when another person, without the cloak of government authority, issues the same instruction. If I tell a stranger not to smoke in a public place, they are very unlikely to stop smoking. For although I may be right about the harmful effects of their habit, I have no authority (at least in that context). But if the government puts up a ‘no smoking’ sign, or if a uniformed police officer, or, frankly, anyone in an official government uniform with perceived authority in the situation—such as a lifeguard on a beach or firefighter in the vicinity of a fire—tells a person to stop smoking, a fair number of people will obey. Certainly not all. But many, many more than if an ordinary member of the public issues the same command. This is so irrespective of whether the government official issuing the direction has actual legal authority to do so. Whether or not there is a law prohibiting smoking at that place, if the person issuing the order is perceived to have legal authority, then they are, in practice, exercising their special powers as a government official. And they ought to be treated as such and subject to public law accountability for the way they do so.

Paul Daly

Before situating the Kerr Report in what I consider to be its historical context, let me begin with a quibble. The Kerr Report considered comparative materials in some detail. This must have taken considerable effort in days where information from the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand …

Yee-Fui Ng

The Kerr Committee’s vision for a new administrative justice system led to the ground-breaking introduction of the ‘new administrative law’ package in the 1970s, incorporating the establishment of a generalist administrative tribunal, statutory judicial review, the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and later, in the 1980s, freedom of information …

Chantal Bostock

As noted by colleagues, this blog series celebrates 50 years since the publication of the Kerr Report, which brought about great changes in Australian administrative law. In this blog post, I am going to try a new approach and attempt Eleanor Porter’s ‘glad game’, focusing on Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) ...