Being the last speaker of the day I suppose has advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that, as I had anticipated, much of what I would have wished to say about the Franklin Dam case has been said — and well said — by earlier speakers. One advantage, however, is that I may now speak substantially without fear of contradiction — perhaps the “infallibility offinality”, as it has sometimes been called, is not the exclusive province of the High Court! In any event, I will confine myself to some very general remarks — not so general, I hope, as to be trite, but general enough, at least, to put some of the points we have heard earlier today into perspective.

Persons employed within the public (that is, governmental) sector are employed under a variety of legal arrangements. Some are employed under contracts of employment or as independent contractors. Some are employed as members of a government service such as a public service, a police service or a teaching service, pursuant to detailed legislative provisions. A few may be employed solely under the common law relating to service under the Crown. Some are persons who have been appointed to public offices, that is positions which exist separately from the persons who hold office and to which particular powers and duties are attached. Some are both members of a government service and holders of public offices. Terms and conditions of employment within the public sector may also be affected by industrial awards, awards made by remuneration tribunals and general legislation on employment.

It is often claimed that, in addition to arriving at the “correct or preferable” decision in the individual case, a primary objective of an administrative review system is to have a “normative” influence on government decision-making. As the Federal government has made a commitment to the overhaul of the administrative review system, it is timely to question the significant normative achievements which have been claimed over the past two decades of codified administrative review rights in Australia.

The first part of this article outlines the theoretical and practical foundations of the normative goal and the changing influences upon it. It attempts to unpack the concept and consider some of its claims. Is it, for example, realistic in the context of the dynamics of government administration, to continue to claim the “normative effect” as a goal of administrative review? Is the administration responsive to review? Is there evidence of administrative law “values” in the culture and processes of the administration?

We present the results of searching for new dwarf galaxies in the Local Volume. We found 40 satellite candidates in the double-virial-radius regions of 20 Milky Way-like and LMC-like galaxies in the southern sky using DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, 10 of which were known but not clearly associated with the Local Volume previously. Among the 40 satellite candidates, 8 are supposed members of the NGC6744 group and 13 are located in the vicinity of the Sombrero galaxy. Based on seven companions to the giant spiral galaxy NGC6744 with measured radial velocities, we estimate that the total mass of the group is MT =(1.88 ± 0.71)×1012M⊙ and the total mass-to-K-luminosity ratio MT /LK =(16.1 ± 6.0)M⊙/L⊙. We reproduce a distribution of 68 early- and late-type galaxies in the Local Volume situated around the Sombrero, noting their strong morphological segregation and also the presence of a foreground diffuse association of dwarf galaxies at 8 degrees to SE from the Sombrero.

The Expert Panel on the Constitutional Recognition of Indigenous Australians has recommended the repeal of the ‘race power’ in the Constitution and its replacement with a power to make laws with respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This article analyses that recommendation, the assumptions that underlie it and the way the new provision might be interpreted by the High Court. In doing so, it uses archival material to shed new light on the 1967 referendum and whether it was intended only to permit ‘beneficial’ laws. The article concludes that there is a disjunction between the intention of the Expert Panel and the likely effect of its proposed amendment.

Enactment of the United States Freedom of Information Act (“FOI Act”) in 1966 was a landmark event in the history of American administrative law. Among the most important of American administrative law reforms, the FOI Act has engendered a veritable cottage industry devoted to securing access to government-held information. In the sixteen-plus years since the Act went into effect Congress has twice amended the Act and is currently considering yet another round of amendments. Each occasion has engendered a new round of studies and commentaries on the Act, its purposes and effects.

The attention given to the subject by Congress pales in comparison to the attention given it by the courts. A September 1981 list shows more than 1300 decisions construing the FOI Act, and companion laws: the Privacy Act, Sunshine Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act.

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy”, said Joseph Pulitzer. Needless secrecy is as difficult to eradicate as the evils which it spawns, though Mr McMillan suggests administrative and legislative techniques that could redress the balance in favour of openness. Much of the article is a discussion of one such technique, freedom of information legislation, and of a report on that topic published in 1976 by an interdepartmental committee established by the Federal Government. By reference to past Australian secrecy, U.S. experience under similar legislation, and bureaucratic inevitability, Mr McMillan argues that legislation based upon the committee’s report would do more to entrench the Administration’s right to withhold official information than to secure the public's right of access to it. Alternative proposals for a freedom of information Act are suggested.

Since this article was written the Federal Government has announced that it will introduce a Freedom of Information Bill after considering the committee’s proposals and comments thereon.

The comprehension of irony involves a sophisticated inferential process requiring language users to go beyond the literal meaning of an utterance. Because of its complex nature, we hypothesized that working memory (WM) and fluid intelligence, the two main components of executive attention, would be involved in the understanding of irony: the former by maintaining focus and relevant information active during processing, the latter by disengaging irrelevant information and offering better problem-solving skills. In this eye-tracking reading experiment, we investigated how adults (N = 57) process verbal irony, based on their executive attention skills. The results indicated a null (or indirect) effect for WM, while fluid intelligence directly modulated the comprehension and processing of irony during reading. As fluid intelligence is an important individual-difference variable, the findings pave the way for future research on developmental and clinical populations who tend to struggle with nonliteral language.

Constitutional law — Commonwealth — Excise duties — Tax on production — Licence to slaughter animals — Fee based on number of animals slaughtered in period prior to licence period — Whether invalid as tax on goods produced or valid as tax on business generally — Whether governed by Dennis Hotels case — Constitution (Cth) s 90 — Meat Industry Act 1978 (NSW) s 11C — Meat Industry (Licensing) Regulations (1980) (NSW) cl 41.

Constitutional jurisprudence in the United States and Australia is said to be separated by two factors: an entrenched Bill of Rights and the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy. Views of this distinction have been expressed by a succession of High Court Chief Justices.

According to the orthodox principles of private international law, as applied within Australia during the twentieth century, the different States are essentially to be regarded as foreign entities. At common law, the courts of one State will generally apply the statutory laws of another State to resolve a civil law dispute if directed to do so by the common law choice of law rules, but not otherwise. Yet federation was a eustatic event in the evolution of the Australian legal system, albeit that the sea change has taken some time to flow through to many areas.

Australian States are not foreign nations but sub-entities within one nation established and maintained by the Australian Constitution. The law to be applied when there is some competition between Australian legal rules cannot appropriately be dictated just by the common law. That raises constitutional questions by its very nature.

In March 2007, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission ('HREOC’) concluded that ‘it's about time for a new approach’ to the problems faced by men and women in respect of work and family responsibilities in Australia. Based on two years of consultation, HREOC issued its final report, It's About Time: Women, Men, Work and Family, noting that many Australians struggle to combine work and family and that workers with family responsibilities experience significant discrimination and inequality. HREOC concluded that the federal government could do more to address the difficulties faced by workers trying to satisfy both their work and family responsibilities and put forward a wide array of recommendations to this effect. Its central recommendation was the enactment of new federal legislation to promote cultural change through greater protection and support for workers with family responsibilities. The Family Responsibilities and Carers’ Rights Act would serve to bolster the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of carers’ responsibilities and provide employees with a right to request flexible working arrangements.

Back in 1972-1973 when the idea of freedom of information legislation was first floated in Australia, a decision was made — and never seriously challenged — that our legislation should be modelled on the United States Freedom of Information Act. The result, as Professor Robinson points out, is that a remarkable parallel exists between the Australian and United States legislation.

In another respect too United States experience became relevant to Australia at an early date. Proponents of FOI in Australia learned from a close study of United States experience that legislation might not be received enthusiastically nor readily by some key Ministers and public servants. Legislation, particularly strong and workable legislation, would be enacted only if a vigorous and unyielding public campaign was undertaken. Indeed, the fact that an Act exists in Australia owes much to the campaign waged or supported by groups like the Freedom of Information Legislation Campaign Committee, Rupert Public Interest Movement. the Australian Council of Social Services, the Library Association of Australia, the Administrative and Clerical Officers’ Association, the Australian Consumers’ Association, and by a small number of parliamentarians and sympathetic senior public servants.

The proper approach to constitutional interpretation, and the role of the High Court in that interpretation, have recently begun to be widely debated, not just in legal circles but also in the wider community. This debate has been stimulated in part by significant decisions like the Franklin Dam case, and proposals to give judges jurisdiction to interpret a Bill of Rights. In the United States a never ending debate continues on the question of judicial review of the Constitution without any consensus being apparent on what is the proper role of the Supreme Court. Nor should one expect any similar debate in Australia necessarily to lead to agreement on what is a proper approach to constitutional interpretation.

As part of the debate, a study of the approach taken by individual judges can, it is suggested, help to illuminate recurring issues, illustrate an approach that has in fact been followed and provide a contrast with the approach of other present or past judges.

In recent years there has been unprecedented concern about the impact of population change on Australian society. The concerns come from different quarters. Commentators have variously remarked that fertility is too low, immigration is too high, the population is ageing too rapidly, and that uneven spatial distribution is placing too great a burden on the infrastructure of already crowded cities. As further evidence of the growing interest in population dynamics, in 2010 the Australian Government created a new office of the Minister for Sustainable Population to help guide the development of policies to meet Australia’s future population needs.

These are important issues in a national population debate, yet demographic change also affects specific workforces in specific ways, and this has led to a new interest in workforce planning. This article examines how demographic change is likely to affect one aspect of the Australian judicial system in the future, namely, the cost of judges.