Jerry To

The recent judgment of the Federal Court of Australia in Smart Education Program Pty Ltd (in liq) v CLGC Australia Pty Ltd [2023] FCA 826 (Smart Education) has raised much consternation. At first glance, the case appears to be a run-of-the-mill contractual dispute. However, the source of controversy arises from an unexpected source, which concerned not the parties but the conduct of the judges themselves.

Smart Education prompts interesting questions about whether there is any scope in Australian public law to provide relief to the parties in circumstances of undue judicial delay. This article will focus on one such possibility: whether the High Court of Australia could have issued a writ of mandamus compelling the Federal Court to hand down its judgment in a timely manner. This, in turn, raises complex questions going to the very heart of the operation of the federal judiciary and the High Court’s ability to regulate their conduct.

Jack Zhou

States and Territories allow the possibility, in certain circumstances, for a review of a conviction or sentence even after an offender has exhausted all avenues of appeal. But do these circumstances apply in federal jurisdiction over Commonwealth offences? In the absence of Commonwealth law to that effect, s 68 of the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), which places the administration of federal criminal law substantially in the hands of the States and Territories, could possibly achieve that.

This post will consider the High Court’s recent decision in Attorney-General (Cth) v Huynh [2023] HCA 13 (Huynh) and outline the reasoning of the majority and minority judgments. It then provides some observations about the importance of post-conviction inquiries and the potential gap left by the High Court’s decision.