Teaching death, spirituality, and palliative care equips students with critical skills and perspectives for holistic patient care. This interdisciplinary approach fosters empathy, resilience, and personal growth while enhancing competence in end-of-life care. Using experiential methods like simulations and real patient interactions, educators bridge theory and practice. Integrating theological insights and inclusive-pluralism encourages meaningful dialogue, preparing students to address patients’ physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. This holistic pedagogy not only improves patient outcomes but also promotes collaboration and compassion in healthcare.

Anthony Frank Mason came to the notice of many in the legal profession early in his career. He was admitted to the New South Wales Bar in 1951 and three years later had his first significant success in a constitutional challenge to provisions of the Bankruptcy Act, arguing that provisions purporting to give power to the registrar were contrary to Chapter III of the Constitution. Shortly afterwards he endeavoured to appear for Fitzpatrick in the proceedings before the House of Representatives against his client and Browne for contempt of Parliament but he was denied permission. He has said that that experience had a considerable effect on his outlook in respect of the principles of natural justice and the importance of the courts in protecting the citizen.

In 1964 he was appointed Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth. While he was the fourth person to hold that position (the others being Garran, Knowles and Bailey) he was the first Solicitor-General who was not also Secretary of the Attorney-GeneralIs Department. His main duties were, therefore, to act as counsel and adviser to the Commonwealth. This gave him insights into the institutions and organisation of government which no doubt played their part in the formation of his later judicial views on public law.

Amidst the turmoil of the recent Gair controversy in the Senate the Attorney-General tabled the first report of the Legal Aid Review Committee. Somewhat in keeping with the real political significance of the subject under review, the report was tabled very late one evening. Little or no publicity was given to its tabling, any notice taken being washed away by the turmoil of the times. Some might say that the modest size of the report deserved no greater recognition, but such a view is ungenerous and most certainly naive.

The document tabled is quite bulky, the greater part being taken up by the appendices. The almost clinical dissection of the existing legal aid facilities throughout Australia will give the role of this Committee real impetus. For too long lawyers and politicians in Australia have been smugly satisfied with the existing legal aid services. A close examination of the Report's appendices will reveal that local legal aid is very much like a badly moth-eaten patch work quilt.

Sometime after 1992, I first learned that the High Court of Australia had discovered that the Australian Constitution contained something that sounded very much like a freedom of speech guarantee. And the reasoning that supported that discovery sounded like the philosophy of Alexander Meiklejohn which I had been teaching in a seminar on Free Speech for several years.

Although Meiklejohn was talking about the United States Constitution, he was not emphasising the words of the First Amendment thereto. Drawing upon pre-Bill of Rights commitments recorded in various historical documents, Meiklejohn's view was that the framers of the United States Constitution had made a covenant with each other to build a democracy in which the people were both the governors and the governed. Freedom of speech, according to Meiklejohn, was necessary to make a democracy, and that was all that freedom of speech was designed to do.

The role of the judiciary in public law cases is a topic of debate in every age. The present age is no different. On topics as diverse as implied constitutional rights, native title, refugee determination and public sector tort liability, there has been a vigorous public debate between the critics and the defenders of judicial power. We live in an age, as the Tampa litigation reminds us, in which the national public policy agenda is increasingly structured by legal claims.

Many commentators would take the judicial role a step further by giving judges a more explicit role in applying human rights standards when evaluating the validity of executive (and, possibly, legislative) action. A constitutional or statutory Bill of Rights would be the most direct way of conferring that function on the judiciary. Less direct is the option, with steadily growing support, of judges taking account of international human rights instruments in discharging their adjudicative function. Whatever level of support those options attract, it seems probable that human rights principles will play an increasing role in judicial review of executive action. The principles are stamped already on many aspects of public law.

The nature of the Australian Consitution is usually described as eiher monarchic and parliamentary, or republican and federal. However, more than succinct expressions of the key political concepts behind the Australian Constitution, the two metaphors are the products of particular forms of analysis. Essentially, the terms parliamentary or consitutional monarchy and federal republic are the products of either revisionist or institutional interpretations of the Australian Constitution. The institutional interpretation focuses on tie practical function of the Constitution's federal and parliamentary institutions, and the origins of these devices within the British and American Constitutions. For example, as the Australian Constitution embraces the institutions of both Anerican federalism and British parliamentary government, institutionalists interpret its nature by relating the strucure and operation of Australia's federal and parliamentary institutions to the function of sinilar devices within the British and American Constitutions.

Constitutional law—Commonwealth—Legislative power—Implied limitations—Power to bind States—Power to bind State authorities—Discriminatory law—Invalidity of law—Commonwealth Constitutions 51(xxxv)—Conciliation and Arbitration (Electricity Industry) Act 1985 (Cth).

Industrial law—Commonwealth—Conciliation and arbitration—Legislative power—Implied limitations—Power to bind States—Power to bind State authorities—Discriminatory law—Extent to which discrimination authorised—Commonwealth Constitution s 51 (xxxv)—Conciliation and Arbitration (Electricity Industry) Act 1985 (Cth).

Constitutional Law—Separation of Judicial Power—Constitution s. 51(xxxv)—Dispute as to classification of employee under Commonwealth Award—Whether dispute extends beyond the limits of any one State

This Article explores, from a participatory perspective of an engaged legal scholar, the case of homeless EU citizens in the Netherlands and the mobilization of their rights. By marking them as so-called niet-rechthebbenden (“non-rightholders”), Dutch municipalities have systematically denied homeless EU citizens access to overnight shelters and general homelessness services on equal footing as Dutch citizens. This legal and practical deadlock—a classic case of non-compliance through “law in action”—has most probably led to a denial of rights to EU citizens entitled to shelter as permanent residents, (former) workers, or otherwise legally residing EU citizens. The contribution explores the context and motivations that led a broad coalition of actors—ranging from homelessness organizations, advocacy groups, a public interest litigation organization and legal experts—to join efforts and consider strategic litigation a credible avenue to protect the interests of the most vulnerable under EU law within a national and local context. The case demonstrates, however, how strategic litigation is not considered the most effective or preferred strategy when other avenues for legal mobilization open up.

In Egan v Willis, the High Court declared that the New South Wales Legislative Council had a common law power to call for state papers from Ministers in the House. The case's greatest constitutional significance, however, may be its effect on the relationship between the Parliament and the Court. By making declarations about the relationship between a Minister and the House, the Court appears to have taken on a new role of arbitrating internal parliamentary proceedings independent of any substantive issue outside the House. While such intervention may help secure the rule of law within the legislature, it has traditionally been held that the internal proceedings of the legislature should be subject to the control of the people's elected representatives alone. The need for independence between the legislative, judicial and executive arms of government and their effective operation has, within the British and American constitutional traditions, led to the identification of certain issues as being outside the jurisdiction of the courts or otherwise not justiciable.

Section 92 of the Australian Constitution contains a terse statement that “trade, commerce, and intercourse among the States ... shall be absolutely free”. The High Court's troubled search since Federation to give that statement a clear and certain interpretation is well known and requires no reiteration here. Michael Coper has identified 32 different phases in the history of the interpretation of s 92 between 1909 and 1980. When the latest phase was ushered in with the High Court's 1988 decision in Cole v Whitfield, it was accompanied by predictions by some commentators that it would be the last Professor Lane, for instance, said that “The decision descended as a deus ex machina, providing an uncomplicated solution for those who write and advise on the kind of freedom of interstate trade and commerce that is now guaranteed by s 92 of the Constitution”. The more pessimistic might wonder whether the Cole v Whitfield interpretation will in fact prove more durable than any of its predecessors.

The title of this seminar reminds us of the extraordinary increase in access to information of all kinds which has overtaken us. This enhanced access to information is the chief gift bestowed on us by the information revolution of the past 15 or 20 years. And its gift has been an abundant one; some might describe it as over abundant, fearing lest the relevant be submerged in a great tidal wave of unco-ordinated information. This fear echoes the thought which lies behind TS Eliot’s lines when he wrote, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”.

Clearly enough, mere information, now proffered to us in such profusion is only the raw material of knowledge. But so long as we recognise that information is only the raw material from which knowledge derives, not confusing information with knowledge, and so long as we are skilful in our use of the electronic tools which the information revolution has given us, narrowly focussing our retrieval processes, the raw material which information consists of can be precious stuff indeed.

It could hardly be disputed that the fundamental issue in Australian constitutional law and theory is federalism. Federalism is the keystone of the Australian constitutional system, and is the battleground over which most of the great conflicts in Australian constitutional law have been fought. Nor could it plausibly be denied that the absolute basis of Australian federalism is the continued existence of the States. What makes Australia ‘federal’ is the presence of two separate spheres of government, each with its own organs, powers and functions, the Commonwealth and the States. Whatever other features of the Australian constitutional system might safely be dispensed with without endangering the title ‘federal’, there can be little doubt that the abolition of the States would involve the termination of federalism within Australia.

The present article, then, is concerned with an issue which goes to the heart of Australian federalism — the abolition of the States which collectively go to make up the federation itself.

In a series of judgments in August and October 2004, the High Court found that the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (‘the Act’) unambiguously provides for the indefinite detention of unlawful non-citizens, and that such a law is constitutionally valid. In doing so, a majority on the High Court arguably rewrote the rule book on the operation of Chapter III of the Constitution (‘Ch III’), undermining the majority judgment in Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration in the process.

This case note focuses primarily on Al-Kateb v Godwin. To the extent that they clarify or expand on the reasoning with respect to the operation of Ch III, reference is also made to Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs v Al Khafaji and Behrooz v Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs which were argued at the same time as Al-Kateb, and to Re Woolley; Ex parte Applicants M276/2003 by their next friend GS, which concerned the administrative detention of non-citizen children.