Category: Australia
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Greg Weeks: Comment on Australia: A history of judicial disrespect and the current “crisis” in the Queensland judiciary
It has never been a universal requirement that a candidate for senior judicial office is either well respected or even well liked, by the public at large or by his or her judicial colleagues. For example, Lord Hewart was a political appointee who had no judicial experience upon becoming Lord Chief Justice. He has been…
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Murray Wesson: What is the (Australian) Constitution For?
At some point in the next few years, Australians are likely to vote in a referendum to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Australian Constitution. The exact timing of the referendum is currently unclear, as is the form of the proposed amendment. It seems that, at the very least, Australians will vote…
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Greg Weeks: Comment on Australia: Protection of refugees who do not “live discreetly”
At the political level, Australia’s lamentable record of mistreating refugees is well established and is catalogued and critiqued elsewhere, such as by my colleagues at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. Within the scope allowed by Australia’s stringent migration legislation, the judiciary has a much stronger modern record in regard to protecting the interests…
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Luke Beck: Scottish Independence and Australia
What effect might Scottish independence might have on Australia’s constitutional arrangements? This might seem like an odd question but there has been a suggestion in Australia that there might be a profound effect. Macquarie University’s Iain Stewart is reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as recently saying that Scottish independence ‘could remove [Australia’s] head of…
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Greg Weeks: Comment on Australia: A Disappointing Backward Step in Information Policy
Australia’s Coalition government handed down its first Budget on 13 May 2014, which has since proved controversial in several respects. The Budget’s impact on groups such as the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and University students, as well as on indigenous programs and the environment has occupied much of the commentary and has additionally generated…
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J. R. Nethercote: Forgotten centenary: Joseph Cook and the 1914 Double Dissolution of the Australian Parliament
The assassination and obsequies of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Duchess did not occupy the front pages of newspapers for long. Various European capitals were preoccupied by the crisis, with varying degrees of intensity, but behind closed doors. Australia quickly returned to its own political crisis, a parliamentary crisis pitting the Labor-dominated Senate against the…
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Gabrielle Appleby and Joanna Howe: The High Court ends backdoor law making (for now)
Central to the Australia’s conservative Coalition Government’s successful 2013 electoral campaign was its promise to ‘stop the boats’. By this, it was intended that the Coalition would do all it could to deter asylum seekers from arriving in Australia by boat. The measures it intended to implement included the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs).…
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Andrew Lynch: Judicial Appointments in Australia – Reform in Retreat
The creation of formal processes governing the appointment of judges has been a notable element in the broader project of constitutional reform in the United Kingdom over the last 16 years. As is frequently acknowledged, the changes introduced by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 were that rare thing – an instance of the executive relinquishing…
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Paul Kildea: Australia’s abandoned local government referendum
It is almost forgotten now, but Australians were recently set to vote in a referendum on the constitutional recognition of local government. Had it gone ahead, the referendum would have been the first since the republic poll in 1999, and potentially would have seen the first amendment to the Constitution in 36 years. But the…