Index

Proportionality, rights and Australia’s COVID-19 response: Insights from the India travel ban

Liz Hicks & Sangeetha Pillai

The closure of international borders has been a key pillar of Australia’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. Australia’s strategy to “aggressively suppress” (in practice, eliminate) COVID-19 within its borders has relied heavily on restrictive measures, including flight caps and travel bans, to limit the importation of the …

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Superimposing private duties on the exercise of public powers: Sharma v Minister for the Environment

Ellen Rock

In May of this year, Bromberg J in the Federal Court handed down a key decision in climate change litigation which has made waves both within Australia and internationally. Sharma v Minister for the Environment [2021] FCA 560 was a negligence claim commenced in connection with an application to expand …

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The “Car Park Rorts” Affair and Grants Regulation in Australia: How can We Fix the System?

Yee-Fui Ng

Yet another rorts scandal is swirling around the federal government, dubbed the ‘car park rorts’ affair. The Auditor-General has reported that a $389 million car park construction fund has been administered ineffectively and that the Minister had distributed the grants with ‘inadequate assessment’ for eligibility (at [25]). The Auditor-General’s …

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Overcoming Graham: The s 75(v) constitutional guarantee and non-disclosure in migration and citizenship decisions

Isolde Daniell

The Migration and Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Information Provisions) Bill 2020 (Cth) (the Bill) was introduced to the Commonwealth House of Representatives on 10 December 2020. It has since been considered by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, and …

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Preventive measures and the far-right threat; the limit of Commonwealth power

Jessie Smith

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (the Committee) is currently examining extremist movements and radicalism in Australia. This follows a public statement by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that the far-right threat has increased. The Home Affairs Minister has referred several topics for …

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Not “just another piece of material”: the value of Tribunal review

Chantal Bostock

As noted by colleagues, this blog series celebrates 50 years since the publication of the Kerr Report, which brought about great changes in Australian administrative law. In this blog post, I am going to try a new approach and attempt Eleanor Porter’s ‘glad game’, focusing on Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) ...

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The Global South and liberal constitutionalism: incommensurable opposites?

Theunis Roux

Philipp Dann, Michael Riegner and Maxim Bönnemann’s edited collection of essays on The Global South and Comparative Constitutional Law constitutes a major advance in scholarly thinking on this topic. Theorising the Global South as an ‘epistemic, methodological and institutional sensibility’ (p. 3), Dann and his co-editors persuasively show …

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