Category: Australia
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Scott Stephenson: Federalism and Liberty in Australia Through the Lenses of Same-Sex Marriage and Organised Crime
American constitutional scholarship is replete with discussions of the relationship between federalism and liberty. Some argue that a plurality of jurisdictions creates competition, allowing citizens to ‘vote with their feet’ thereby providing a potentially more effective means of resisting oppression—relocation—than attempting to challenge state action at the ballot box or in the courtroom. Federalism can…
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Greg Weeks: Proposed changes to Australia’s Migration Act
Australia is in the midst of an election campaign and, as has been the norm over recent years, both major parties have taken an aggressive line on asylum seekers who enter Australia by boat. Both parties have released new, unashamedly harsher policies. They have also drawn distressed responses from those who advocate a more humane…
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Luke Beck: Swear Words and the Australian Constitution
It seems Australia’s new (and also former) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd likes to swear. There is a leaked video posted on YouTube of Rudd using a number of colourful expressions as he expressed his frustration at the difficulty of recording a video message in Mandarin some time ago. He also swore again last Thursday (27…
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Mark Aronson: Statutory Interpretation or Judicial Disobedience?
In Australia as in England, courts began “reading down” legislative grants of broad and seemingly unfettered discretionary power long before the currently fashionable “principle of legality” entered the public lawyer’s lexicon. Judges typically explained themselves as merely engaging in an exercise of statutory interpretation, saying that in the absence of express words or an absolutely…
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Greg Weeks: Can you stop the Revenue from acting on a change of mind?
A recent judgment in an interlocutory hearing in the Federal Court of Australia has raised the fascinating question of what redress might be available against a revenue authority for changing its mind. In Macquarie Bank Limited v Commissioner of Taxation, the applicant sought to restrain the Commissioner of Taxation from acting on his changed view…
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Paul Kildea: Reforming Australia’s federation: The People Lead the Way
As another fractious year in politics comes to an end, Griffith University has released the results of its third biennial survey on how Australians view their federal system. It reveals a public that is losing faith in both the current structure of the federation and the ability of different tiers of government to work together…
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Emily Burke: Same-Sex Marriage Legislation in Australia
There is a global trend towards the recognition of same-sex unions, with recent expressions of support from Prime Minister David Cameron, President Obama and the new French President Hollande. In the Australian Federal Parliament there are currently two bills in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate that would legalise same-sex marriage. When…
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Greg Weeks: What to do about private bodies with public functions?: Australia’s continued ambivalence to the Datafin principle.
A few weeks ago, two judges of the Australian High Court (French CJ and Bell J) heard an application for special leave to appeal from the decision of the Full Court of the South Australian Supreme Court in Khuu & Lee Pty Limited v Corporation of the City of Adelaide. That in itself is not…
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Nicholas Aroney: Federal Models for a U.K. Constitution?
When the referendum really comes, the sovereign Parliament must go. But whether for good or for evil, the referendum, in principle at least, seems to be coming. – C. H. McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy (1910), xv. [N]ow we are witnessing something that would have seemed almost impossible a few years…
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Paul Kildea: Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples: The ‘what’ and ‘how’ of reform
Amending the text of the Australian Constitution has been described as a ‘labour of Hercules’. It has been changed just eight times since Federation in 1901 (out of 44 attempts) and has remained unaltered for more than three decades. But a thawing of our famously ‘frozen’ Constitution may be just around the corner. On 19…