One of the distinctive features of the Australian legal landscape is the increasing use of commissions that possess coercive powers to supplement normal police methods in the investigation of crime. This practice became common in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when a number of Royal Commissions into organised crime or corruption were conducted. It continued with the establishment at both the Commonwealth and State level of standing commissions charged with the investigation of various types of serious crime or corruption. This article is concerned with an analysis of the ability of Royal Commissions and standing commissions to use their coercive powers to investigate crime when the investigation may interfere with pending criminal proceedings. It argues that the divergent authorities in this area can best be understood as turning on the fact that the separation of powers doctrine imposes limits on the powers of Commonwealth commissions that do not exist in relation to State commissions.

In 1998 Australia's public employment service was replaced with a national network of public, private and community agencies—the Job Network—which compete for contracts to deliver services to unemployed people. This development represents the encroachment of competition policy and market ideology into one of the most fundamental areas of government responsibility—the welfare of citizens. The broader ramifications of the contracting out of employment services in terms of quality, efficiency, social costs and accountability are only beginning to be explored. This article examines the impact these changes have had upon one important feature of the social security system—the accessibility and effectiveness of external merits review.

Instruction on the Great Depression used to come from our parents, our grandparents, and the History Channel. Now everyone has something to say about it. Economists tell us that the global financial crisis is the biggest economic reversal since the Great Depression, and governments in Washington, London and Canberra are likening their resolve to that displayed by President Roosevelt in the early days of the New Deal. If they were even half-way right, then these would be busy times indeed for administrative lawyers. Although they are wrong, the legislative and administrative responses to the current crisis include measures that should rekindle some of administrative law's deepest concerns about the democratic legitimacy of the administrative state. New banking laws, in particular, have transferred enormous discretionary powers to central government's regulatory authorities, and these pose real issues about protection from arbitrary power, and about the very process of making laws and holding the administration to account. In other areas, we are likely to see a more hands-on style of market and corporate regulation, but probably nothing so radical as to require us to dig out the history books.

The announcement by the former Attorney-General, Mr. T. E. F. Hughes, at a meeting of Attorneys-General on July 9, 1970 that the Commonwealth Government was investigating the possibility of introducing a system of family courts into Australia and that a senior officer of his Department would visit overseas countries to study the operation of such courts has raised a number of questions as to the possible form that they would be likely to take. Since then, the officer concemed has made his investigation and returned, and there has been a change in the occupancy of the office of Attorney-General. Apart from that slender factual background there can be only speculation. From speculation one turns to a consideration of the legal and constitutional framework within which the Commonwealth's power to manoeuvre is to be found. It is the existence of that framework and the limitations it brings with it that distinguishes Australia's position from that of most overseas countries. That circumstance alone will of necessity influence any action the Commonwealth may be minded to take in the direction of family courts.

The only mention of juries in the Commonwealth Constitution is in section 80, which provides (inter alia) that “The trial on indictment of any offence against any law of the Commonwealth shall be by jury”. Apart from cases on the question what is meant by “ trial on indictment ”, there is not a great deal of authority on the constitutional questions that arise in relation to juries, civil and criminal, in federal jurisdiction.

Food insecurity (also known as food poverty) is the inability to afford or access a healthy diet. It has become recognised as a public health emergency and is a priority in the context of the environmental, geopolitical and socio-economic implications on businesses, households and civic society. This review paper aims to discuss the merits of collecting food insecurity data and its importance in informing cross-sectoral government and others’ understanding, policymaking and action on hunger. The review paper’s key findings are that concerted action on measuring and mapping food insecurity with the aim of eliminating or reducing its prevalence represents a triple win for government, business and citizens. However, measurement does not provide solutions to food insecurity but contributes importantly to understanding its extent and severity to inform and evaluate proffered solutions. Government, business and food insecurity researchers and commentators cannot merely continue to simply describe food poverty - but must effect meaningful change amidst our communities to improve life quality in a timely way for those experiencing acute and chronic hunger. This is best done by addressing the structural causes of food insecurity through economically, socially and culturally fair and appropriate policy levers, requiring cross-sectoral collaboration. Ultimately, food insecurity requires a long-term, sustainable solution that addresses the policy issues under focus: low income, under/unemployment, rising food prices and Welfare Reform, informed by routine, Government-supported monitoring and reporting of the extent of food poverty among our citizens.

The principal focus of this essay is review of administrative decisions taken in the course of co-operation between governments in a federation or in a constitutional system with some federal characteristics.

The nature of the problem is illustrated, albeit in a different context, by a decision of Sir Anthony Mason in Tasmanian Wilderness Society v Fraser. The decision concerned an inter-governmental body, the Australian Loan Council. The Loan Council was established pursuant to the Financial Agreement, authorised by s 105A of the Australian Constitution. Its members were the Prime Minister and the Premiers of each of the States, or their nominees who were often, in practice, their Treasurers. As it then stood, the Financial Agreement provided for approval of the combined borrowing program of all Australian governments by the Loan Council, under weighted majority voting rules that gave the Commonwealth two votes and a casting vote. In practice, the Loan Council had long since assumed the function of approving the aggregate borrowing program for “larger” semi-government authorities as well, under the socalled “Gentlemen's Agreement”.

Constitutional law — Law for establishing any religion — Grant of Financial Assistance to States — Validity of Commonwealth legislation providing financial assistance to non-government schools — Constitution ss. 96, 116

In public administration many decisions made in purported exercise of statutory powers are, as a matter of practical necessity, made not by the officer or body in whom the power has been reposed by statute but by persons purporting to act as delegates or agents of the repository of the power. Nowadays the empowering statute will often contain a provision which expressly authorises delegations of power or the appointment of authorised officers who, by virtue of their appointment, will be invested with specified powers. The statute may limit the powers which may be delegated. It may restrict the classes of persons who may be selected to act as delegates. It may stipulate that delegations be effected by instruments in writing or by some other procedure.

The issue of simplification of taxation law has been an important part of the fiscal agenda in Australia since the establishment of the Tax Law Improvement Project (TLIP) back in December 1993. The TLIP, which aimed to simplify income tax legislation embodied in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (Cth) through the use of shorter and clearer sentences and the use of plain English, was conceived in response to widespread criticism that the income tax legislation was difficult to read and understand.

It has been contended that this inherent difficulty in understanding income tax legislation due to the length and complexity of the legislation led to increased costs, both for the taxpayer in the form of increased tax compliance costs, and for the Federal Government in the form of increased tax administration costs. The TLIP's role was to rewrite the primary income tax legislation which culminated in the development of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth).

In numerous histories of Aboriginal peoples in Tasmania written up to the 1970s, the image of Truganini, in western clothes seeing out her days, is the visible presence of extinction. “Her last years were comfortable, it seems, but there was a shadow over them—her fear of the body-snatchers and mutilation after death... ‘Don't let them cut me up’ she begged the doctor as she lay dying. 'Bury me behind the mountains.' The histories end with romantic philosophical musings over the inevitable demise of Tasmanian Aborigines. “The Tasmanians were hurried and harried from the face of this earth by the poison of European contact and the sword of destruction. Unable to merge with the European colonists, unable to withstand them, they perished.” The histories present a natural and irrefutable closure. There are no Tasmanian Aborigines.

The advent of native title law has brought with it a new interrogation of the history of Aboriginal people in Australia. The claims process has produced new ethnographic, anthropological and historical interest in indigenous history and culture.

The concept of tianxia (All-under-Heaven) has been described as a Chinese version of cosmopolitanism. However, tianxia is a hard-to-define term, with political, cultural, and geographic meanings. From the fifteenth century onwards, maps exist that claim to show tianxia, therefore allowing us to reconstruct how Chinese mapmakers understood tianxia’s geographic extent. Other terms in the titles of maps that show space beyond the borders of the Ming and Qing states include huayi (civilized and barbarian/Chinese and non-Chinese), wanguo (10,000 countries), and sihai (four seas). This article examines the geographic extent of these terms and changes in their usage between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. It argues that Ming Chinese mapmakers and scholars presented tianxia as equivalent to the Ming empire and used terms such as huayi and wanguo to advertise the maps as showing regions far away, like western Asia and the Americas. Jesuits in China, on the other hand, applied a broader meaning of tianxia, equating it with the whole globe. During the Qing, the extent of tianxia expanded to represent a cosmopolitan empire connected to a range of surrounding states, embedded in a wider world.

There was published in the University of Chicago Law Review some years ago a debate between Professor Dworkin and Judge Posner in the course of which Judge Posner drew a distinction between “top down” and “bottom Up” reasoning. He accused Professor Dworkin of being a “top downer” and professed himself to be an unashamed “bottom upper”.

Let me explain the distinction. In “top down” reasoning the judge or legal analyst adopts a theory about an area of law. The theory is then used to organise and explain the cases; to marginalise some and to canonise others. In “bottom up” reasoning the judge or legal analyst starts with the mass of cases or the legislative text and moves only so far as necessary to resolve the case at hand. According to Judge Posner “[t]he top downer and the bottom upper do not meet”.

The distinction is useful although the dichotomy is not complete. The “bottom upper” would be lost in the wilderness of the single instance without some organising theory.