[41.1] A statute has extraterritorial operation if it operates on, or purports to regulate, occurrences or conduct that occur either wholly outside the territory of the enacting legislature (whether federal or state), or partly within and partly outside the territory.

In this chapter, neoliberalism will be examined in more detail in relation to the ways in which it has reorganised and reconstituted schooling and education. Neoliberalism will be approached from a sociological perspective as the prevailing ‘mentality’ or ‘rationality’ of liberal rule in the West today. From this standpoint, neoliberalism can be understood as a systematic way of thinking about governance that focuses on neoliberalism’s new understanding of the market and its significance for all domains in society, including education. Marketisation will be considered from the sociological perspective as a major ‘technique’ of the neoliberal formula for rule.The chapter will discuss the competitive marketisation of schools; the construction of parents as consumers and teachers as entrepreneurs; and the philosophical underpinning of mass education by the logic of the free market. Of equal importance, it will consider the ‘performative’ character of neoliberalism.

[21.1] Legislative antecedents are the enactments that constitute the historical legislative development of the statute or statutory provision being interpreted, such as repealed statutes and successive amendments to the statute made by the same Parliament. Antecedents may also include statutes made by other parliaments where it can be inferred that the statute being interpreted is derived from that other statute.

This is the fourth edition of Making Sense of Mass Education. It continues the process of covering more issues than each preceding versions of the book: it updates aspects of the data, it discusses more recent research, it offers more nuanced assessment of specific problems and it does all this within a parallel digital environment ߝ one that provides additional ideas, activities and ways of seeing and understanding. While all these elements are significant, they do not really constitute the most important reason for writing a further edition of the book.

Changes to the field of education have not slowed since the publication of the third edition, which introduced new important discussions of Gonski and school funding equity, the debates over NAPLAN and school ranking tables, arguments over the Australian curriculum, the rise in interest in alternative forms of education and global concerns over the ethics of big data use. Of course, this edition offers an updated contemporary assessment of all these topics; however it also provides an extensive discussion of the important and rapidly changing area of schooling and sexuality, as well as a discussion of the field of children’s rights and the increasing marketisation of schools and its relationship with the professional life of teachers.

[39.1] Statute law is considered to be ‘retrospective’ if it has one of two general operations: it is retroactive, or it impairs an existing right or obligation.

This chapter addresses one of the most important areas of philosophy ߝ ethics ߝ and uses it to examine aspects of the role of the law within education. Of all the areas of philosophy, more has probably been written about ethics, and over a longer period, than any other. In addition, all cultures are structured around a fundamental ethical system: the law. However, irrespective of their importance, both subjects are currently notable for their lowly status within the teacher education curriculum.

[43.1] Most Acts include a section empowering the making of other instruments under the Act. Such instruments, when of a legislative character, are known as delegated legislation. A wide variety of terms is used across Australian jurisdictions to describe delegated legislation.

[8.1] The law of statutory interpretation directs us to ascertain the ‘purpose’ of an Act when construing a provision of that Act. This is one of the few general principles of statutory interpretation law that is the subject of a legislative mandate, though the common law has developed an equivalent principle. The mandate is that we must have regard to the purpose of an Act and choose the construction that promotes or best achieves that purpose. This does not warrant neglect of the statutory text or context, but instead requires the interpreter to have regard to the purpose in the context of the broader analysis of text and context required by the rules of statutory interpretation. Sometimes the purpose will be critical to the task of attributing meaning and sometimes it will be of little value. The value that purpose can provide to the task may depend on the degree of specificity with which it can be expressed. Many Acts embody multiple purposes or the purpose of the Act may be general. For these reasons, the purpose of the provision being construed can be more helpful for the interpretative task than the purpose of the Act as a whole.

As described in previous chapters, the touchstone of lawyers’ professional obligations to their clients are confidentiality and care. These duties can be understood as key elements in a relationship of trust and loyalty between client and lawyer. This chapter is chiefly concerned with this relationship of loyalty, and how it can be strained by, or overlooked because of, conflicting or competing interests and duties. The final part of this chapter traces how the different conceptions of the lawyer’s role might produce diverse legal principles, such as whether loyalty is or is not imposed beyond the end of legal relationship. As a matter of professional ethics, there are differing views about whether to allow certain conflicts to arise and be managed by the lawyer or law firm, and whether such management of conflicts should be done with or without client consent.

The profession, the legal system and society have all traditionally seen loyalty, care and competence, and confidentiality as cornerstones of professional responsibility. Lawyers are in a fiduciary relationship with their clients – clients need to be able to trust their lawyers to provide advice and represent them loyally in the legal system. This chapter first argues that strong obligations of confidentiality support the lawyer’s role as zealous advocate and officer of the court, but that there must be ethical limitations in some circumstances. Next we show that the concept of confidentiality has become quite tenuous in a world of surveillance, wired for instant disclosure and based on a communication and business model that feeds on demolishing all secrecy. We then examine the ideals of confidentiality and client legal privilege (‘CLP’). Finally, we consider whether lawyers should sometimes blow the whistle on their own clients or colleagues in order to fulfil their professional obligations as gatekeepers of justice.

[18.1] Linguistic canons recognise and put into effect general language conventions – that is, conventions relating to the use of language generally. Chapter 15 has dealt with the canon that the ‘ordinary and grammatical meaning’ and the ‘natural and ordinary meaning’ of the words in question are the presumptive legal meaning and are to be applied unless good reason is shown to depart from it.

It is important for students and adults alike to understand the pervasive, corporate, global and continually developing nature of our news media. The news media do not occupy a realm somehow removed from our schooling system; indeed, they impact education in a wide range of ways, both directly and indirectly. However, for much of the time, most of us barely pay attention to the thousands of media messages to which we are exposed every day; and even when we do, we generally assume that those messages are both objective and neutral. This is a mistake. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the media had had a significant role in influencing many aspects of schooling and public perception from one side to another, including in relation to pedagogy, ‘choice’ and using comparisons of the responses of different educational jurisdictions to the pandemic to direct the public gaze in different ways.