Costa Avgoustinos

The Australian climate litigation movement has recently made significant inroads into the field of negligence. In Sharma v Minister for the Environment (2021) (Sharma), the Federal Court held that the Minister for the Environment owes a duty to Australian children to take reasonable care when considering approval of a coal …

Anita Stuhmche

This series celebrates and analyses the ‘new administrative law’ as it has developed in Australia since the Kerr Committee’s report 50 years ago. The focus of this blog is the Commonwealth Ombudsman. My argument is that the institution is no longer fit for purpose. …

Gabrielle Appleby & Rosalind Dixon

Last week, the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law was delighted that the Hon. Margaret McMurdo AC launched the Feminist Judgments and Critical Judgments Projects website (www.criticaljudgments.com). Margaret was the first female president of an appellate court in Australia when she was appointed as the President of the Queensland Court of …

Sangeetha Pillai

It’s coming up to the 30th birthday of Australia’s policy of mandatory immigration detention for non-citizens who do not hold a visa. Throughout its lifetime, the policy has remained a controversial cornerstone of Australia’s migration law framework, facing – and withstanding – multiple High Court challenges.

Tristan Taylor

In 1996, the High Court struck down the validity of an ad hominem continuing detention legislative regime in the landmark case of Kable v Director of Public Prosecutions (1996) 189 CLR 51 (Kable). The principle established in that decision, has undergone significant development since. As it stands today, the principle will …

Anna Kretowicz

In March 2021, there were an estimated 2,100 undecided new applications at the Parole Board Queensland (the Board). While administrative backlogs are undesirable (one need only think of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, where a backlog of 53,000 applications in 2018 left the body in chaos), the problem here compounds with the legislative …

Josh Gibson

On 16 June 2021, the High Court delivered its judgment in LibertyWorks Inc v Commonwealth of Australia [2021] HCA 18 (LibertyWorks v Commonwealth). The case centred on the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018 (FITS Act), a legislative scheme introduced to expose foreign influence effected by foreign principals within Australia. In …

Yee-Fui Ng

The Kerr Committee’s vision for a new administrative justice system led to the ground-breaking introduction of the ‘new administrative law’ package in the 1970s, incorporating the establishment of a generalist administrative tribunal, statutory judicial review, the office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and later, in the 1980s, freedom of information …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …