Gabrielle Appleby, Lynsey Blayden, Chantal Bostock & Janina Boughey

In the final post for the Kerr Report series, which examines whether Australian administrative law is still fit for purpose 50 years after the Kerr Committee Report, we reflect on a number of key reforms required to ensure the performance and integrity of Australia’s administrative review system. …

Guy Baldwin

Since the shift in focus for supporting Commonwealth migration legislation from the ‘immigration’ power under s 51(xxvii) of the Constitution to the ‘aliens’ power under s 51(xix) in the 1980s, there has been a great deal of litigation before the High Court about the scope of s 51(xix). Perhaps the most influential judicial dicta …

Lucas Lixinski

In mid-October 2021, the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia delivered ‘A Way Forward: Final report into the destruction of Indigenous heritage sites at Juukan Gorge’ (‘A Way Forward’, or ‘Report’). This Report makes recommendations to change Australian law to better safeguard First Nations identities and …

Hannah McGlade

The Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia’s Inquiry into the destruction of Indigenous heritage sites at Juukan Gorge reported in October. Its report, ‘A Way Forward’ called for a new national framework of Aboriginal heritage protection co-designed with Aboriginal people. It recommended that the responsibility for Aboriginal cultural heritage, sitting …

Georgie Clough

On 21 April 2021, the Commonwealth Minister for Foreign Affairs (the Minister) announced the cancellation of two memoranda of understanding between the Victorian state government and the Chinese government with respect to the latter’s Belt and Road Initiative (the Belt and Road agreements). The power to cancel the agreements …

Jonathan Bonnitcha

The High Court’s decisions in Mineralogy v WA and Palmer v WA end the dispute between Mineralogy/Clive Palmer and the Western Australian government as a matter of Australian law. It is not, however, the end of the dispute. A Singaporean-incorporated entity in Palmer’s corporate group is now poised to commence international arbitration. …

Anne Twomey

One of the difficulties in understanding and applying manner and form constraints on state legislative power is that there is little jurisprudence on the subject and what exists is often unclear, poorly reasoned and in some cases just wrong. That is why the manner and form arguments in Mineralogy …

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 …

Joseph McDonald

On 1 September 2021, the High Court handed down its judgment on a novel question of statutory interpretation in Director of Public Prosecutions Reference No 1 [2021] HCA 26 (DPP Reference No 1). The question for the Full Court was the interpretation of s 17 of the Crimes Act 1958 ...

Joshua Forrest & Adrienne Stone

On 13 October 2021, the High Court handed down its decision in Ridd v James Cook University [2021] HCA 32. The decision concludes a bitter, long-running and unedifying legal dispute between James Cook University (JCU) and a former professor, Peter Ridd. It also usefully clarifies the status, content …

Geoffrey Watson SC

In the 1970s Australia was poised to move ahead of the world in allowing access to government information. Just before the federal election in 1972 the Australian Labor Party promised legislation for that purpose – but Mr Whitlam faced a hostile Senate and could not get the …

The Hon William Gummow AC

When the Judiciary Committee of the 1891 National Australasian Convention, under the Chairmanship of Andrew Inglis Clark, prepared its report (which is reproduced in Judicial Federalism in Australia: History, Theory, Doctrine and Practice at pp 208 to 210), there were in operation in what today could be identified …

Brendan Lim

History, theory, doctrine and practice. The subtitle of this splendid new book by Gabrielle Appleby, Anna Olijnyk, James Stellios and John Williams, Judicial Federalism in Australia: History, Theory, Doctrine and Practice (Federation Press, 2021), reminds us of the many different resources on which we can draw in …

Sarah Murray

Appleby, Olijnyk, Stellios and Williams’ book, Judicial Federalism in Australia – History, Theory, Doctrine and Practice (2021, Federation Press), is nothing short of a constitutional law aficionado’s delight – unravelling the mysteries and twists and turns of Kable through the combined expertise of the authors and the historical, doctrinal …

Erin F. Delaney

If, as A.V. Dicey once wrote, ‘federalism means legalism,’ it is particularly surprising that studies of federalism so often overlook a federal system’s judicial architecture and its operation. Exploring the ‘predominance of the judiciary in the constitution’ often begins and ends with analysis of …

Gabrielle Appleby, Anna Olijnyk, James Stellios & John Williams

This book is the result of years of collective and collaborative thinking around Chapter III of the Australian Constitution, and, to use Professor Sarah Murray’s phrase, the ‘unique form of Australian judicial federalism’ that it reflects today. We are delighted to see the book launched …

Alan Robertson SC

Dr Amanda Sapienza’s Judicial Review of Non-Statutory Executive Action is an important work because it has as its centre of attention non-statutory executive action, rather than dealing with it, however well, in a more general context of public law. In this second category I would include, for …