Catherine Williams

Upwards of $55 billion has been spent on Commonwealth grants programs since mid-2018, when the current Prime Minister came to power. In that period, there has been a series of findings of maladministration – and worse – by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) in respect of Commonwealth grants programs, giving rise to an urgent need for reform in this area.

Luke Beck

With the recent implosion of the Morrison Government’s Religious Discrimination Bill and both major parties continuing to promise to legislate in this space in future, it is timely to think about how to draft a workable Religious Discrimination Bill.

The Government’s Bill was controversial because it included provisions overriding existing anti-discrimination protections to enable a range of religiously-motivated conduct (such as refusing to hire gay people or making disparaging comments about disabled people in healthcare settings) that would otherwise be prohibited. This post considers some key issues of process and constitutional substance, and concludes with a proposal for a proper Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into the issue.

Graeme Orr

In late 2021, the Australian government enacted various amendments affecting the registration of political parties, with the support of the Labor opposition. The oddest, if not most contentious, aspect of the reforms is a rule allowing established parties to effectively “bags” key words in their names. Words such as ‘liberal’, ‘labo(u)r’, ‘greens’ – even ‘Christian’ – and grammatical variants are now controlled by the oldest registered party with that word in its name. (Certain words, such as ‘democratic’ or ‘country’, place names like ‘Australia’ and ‘collective nouns for people’ are not so controlled.)

Craig Lenehan

Shipra Chordia’s excellent book, Proportionality in Australian Constitutional Law, is a fine contribution to this difficult and developing area. As Sir Anthony Mason observes in his foreword, it is “an important addition to the Australian Constitutional Law Bookshelf” (at vi). Notably, the High Court has already begun to engage with Dr Chordia’s work …

Murray Wesson

Proportionality is a vexed topic in Australian constitutional law. On the one hand, the High Court has for many years relied upon forms of proportionality to characterise laws enacted with respect to purposive and incidental law-making powers, and to determine the validity of laws burdening constitutional limits. On the other hand, …