This article shares key findings from research that investigated the lived experiences of First Nations law graduates in colonial legal institutions in New South Wales. It adopts an Indigenous Methodological Framework that weaves together Indigenous Standpoint Theory, Dadirri and Indigenous Storywork — adopting one-on-one interview methods, story mapping, poetic transcription and thematic analysis. In doing so, it centres First Nations voices, experiences, values, epistemologies and histories within legal institutions, which have primarily remained absent, excluded, silenced or constrained. This research transcends the gaps in the field by privileging Indigenous ways of Knowing, Being and Doing through centring in-depth storying led by First Nations law graduates, their priorities and values. In these ways, this article contributes to a truth-telling in the field of law that uncovers the ongoing historical and contemporary nature of colonial legal institutions and their long-term and wide-ranging impacts for First Nations peoples. This storying rejects deficit narratives through centring the strengths, resiliency and agency of First Nations law graduates and is grounded in their relationships navigating across these institutions. From this place, collective understanding is nurtured and grown through a knowledge sharing process that allows for deep listening and learning. This article gifts the opportunity to transform selves and institutions towards a pathway forward that is embedded and committed to First Nations law and justice.
The convention of the financial initiative of the Crown has recently been applied by the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland to deny to private members the ability to introduce, and have considered by the assembly, Bills that deal with appropriations or revenue. In this paper, I examine historical and recent practice to demonstrate that Queensland has a mixed record of practice in relation to both appropriation and revenue Bills. Drawing on reforms from Canada and New Zealand, I propose that appropriation and revenue Bills introduced by private members could be ruled out of order at a later stage in the legislative process to better balance the rights of members against the executive’s right to control public finances.
Following the 2025 Bondi Beach terror attack, state governments have enacted, or are seeking to enact, laws criminalising the public use of certain pro-Palestine slogans, including the slogans 'globalise the intifada' and 'from the river to the sea'. This comment examines whether the prohibitions recently introduced by Queensland are likely to survive a constitutional challenge under the implied freedom of political communication. While last-minute amendments to the law — which mean that the slogans are now directly identified and prohibited by the legislation itself — have rendered it more vulnerable to constitutional challenge, the paper argues that the new laws will probably withstand such a challenge, nonetheless.
This article considers the doctrine of lawful act duress. It considers developments in the United Kingdom and Australia. Various doctrinal bases have been suggested for this doctrine. These include unconscionability, proportionality and good faith. The article critically considers each of these, before concluding that good faith is the best option. It provides specific examples of how good faith could assist in resolving cases of lawful act duress and provide different outcomes than those which would occur if other doctrines were utilised. Thus, it makes a substantive difference which of the doctrinal bases is chosen.
The unexpected defection of Igor Gouzenko in 1945 and the planned defection of Vladimir Petrov in 1954 led to similar Royal Commissions on Espionage in Canada and Australia respectively. Cold War security operations that followed extended well beyond international espionage to perceived domestic threats and security over-reach ‘beyond the law’ that persisted in Canada and Australia into the 1970’s. This article explores the formative influence of the Gouzenko and Petrov affairs with a focus on the legal dimensions and the issue of judicial independence in particular. The Supreme Court of Canada Justices who presided over the closed secret hearings of the 1946 Canadian Commission demonstrated outright complicity with government security measures as they assisted police investigations and recommended prosecutorial responses with little regard for constitutional rule of law and due process conventions. While Royal Commission hearings are inherently inquisitorial, unlike Canada’s Espionage Commission, witnesses at the 1954–55 Australian Commission were permitted legal representation and attention was paid to procedural fairness during largely open public hearings. Moreover, Chief Justice Owen Dixon refused the government’s request to head it, upholding a convention that judges of Australia’s highest court not preside over Royal Commissions. He nonetheless engaged in informal extrajudicial government advising as the Commission was formed and proceeded, and his close involvement with the government’s security response also raises questions about separation of powers and the integrity of judicial independence during perceived security crises. The later legislative tightening of security mandates and more robust oversight of security operations by Parliament and the Courts, the refinement of formal protections of judicial independence and further informal separation between judicial and political cultures and leading personnel, all represent an advance, but the possible compromise of judicial independence under the pressure of government security priorities remains a concern.
The performance of scientific and technological research has always been done openly, collaboratively and with the widest scope of international cooperation. However, recent moves by autocratic nations to exploit the standards of openness displayed by Western universities and research institutions has fuelled the emergence of ‘research security’, a domain invoking the protection of sensitive, classified or economically valuable knowledge and technologies from espionage, theft, interference and illicit transfers. Australia — once considered a ‘first mover’ by criminalising foreign interference and university espionage in 2018 — has since languished in legal and policy restrictions on research security. In some part, this is due to an unwillingness by academia to recognise that national security threats to the research enterprise are real. Therefore, this paper seeks to empirically examine live cases of research incidents from Australian institutions obtained from Freedom of Information requests. Building on those case studies, the paper then seeks to argue that Australian (and indeed global) academia is still a fundamental target for foreign adversaries seeking to expand or mature their technological and industrial bases through illicit means.
In August 2025, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia ruled that copyright in footage of a meat production company’s premises and practices, surreptitiously obtained by animal rights activists, was held on constructive trust for that company. This meant that the activists could not legitimately publish or license that footage, even though the filmmaker is the ‘author’ under copyright law. It also meant the activists were required to transfer the copyright in the footage to the meat production company. This paper suggests four reasons why this finding may be premature: the tentative nature of previous High Court of Australia obiter dicta that ‘opened the door’ to a constructive trust being recognised over copyright, the distinct features and aims of copyright, the availability of other remedies, and the tension of the Court’s approach with the moral rights authors have under copyright law. This analysis suggests there is good reason for courts to be hesitant to apply a constructive trust over copyright in the future.
The right to disconnect has been recognised in Australia following the passage of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No 2) Act 2024 (Cth). In short, the right allows employees to refuse to read or respond to communications from their employer or third parties about work outside of working time. This article will critique the adequacy of the model chosen by the Australian Parliament by reference to the rationale for implementing the right to disconnect and whether there are alternative mechanisms in Australia which are sufficient to achieve the same outcomes.
This article explains how the momentous High Court decision in NZYQ v Minister for Immigration (2023) 280 CLR 137 (‘NZYQ’), that triggered the release into the community of around 350 ‘unlawful non-citizens’ for whom removal from Australia was impracticable, prompted a succession of innovative and controversial legislative responses amidst political concerns about effective migration management and community safety. The article tracks and carefully critiques political and legislative responses to NZYQ, and other subsequent High Court decisions in ASF17 v Commonwealth (2024) 98 ALJR 782 and YBFZ v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs (2024) 99 ALJR 1, to demonstrate that crimmigration law, policy and practice is, more than ever, deeply and problematically entrenched in Australia. The article uncovers precisely who the unwanted aliens – the targets of crimmigration – are, why political uproar ensued following the NZYQ ruling, and how criminal and immigration law have been stitched together in novel ways to form a unique crimmigration control regime in Australia.
Lockdowns introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lives of Australians during 2020 and 2021. In this article, we analyse the number and duration of lockdowns in Australian states and territories during this period, with the aim of developing a picture of the differing impact of lockdowns across the country. We begin by considering the importance of transparency for the rule of law. We explain our methodology and challenges for collecting the data on the lockdowns, and the implications of this complexity for the rule of law. We then analyse the lockdowns in terms of their number and duration, beginning with a national overview and then analysis by individual state and territory. We conclude with recommendations for the future of public health directions in Australia.
Equality rights can be positioned as human rights, in dedicated discrimination statutes, or as a part of employment law. This article interrogates whether this positioning makes a difference to equality rights in practice, drawing on comparative examination of legislation and case law from Australia and the United Kingdom. It represents the first detailed study of equality rights in human rights statutes in Australia. It concludes that the positioning of equality law can make a difference, though the potential benefits of reframing equality rights as human rights have not yet been fully realised in Australian jurisdictions.
The origin of the modern doctrine of remoteness of damage in the law of contract is Alderson B’s famous dictum in Hadley v Baxendale (‘Hadley’). That dictum stipulates that, absent ‘special circumstances’, loss resulting from a breach of contract is recoverable only when it arose ‘according to the usual course of things’, or could ‘reasonably be supposed to have been in the contemplation of both parties, at the time they made the contract, as the probable result of the breach of it’. Persistent questions nevertheless remain regarding the precise content of the Hadley rule, and its most plausible justification, particularly following the House of Lords’ decision in Transfield Shipping Inc v Mercator Shipping Inc (‘The Achilleas’). A majority of that Court arguably there endorsed the proposition that, rather than being an externally imposed default rule, the contractual remoteness rule gives effect to an ‘assumption of responsibility’ derivable from the parties’ contract.
This article explains why the application of admissibility rules to the opinion of a forensic pathologist in Lang v The Queen (‘Lang’) (and forensic pathologists in Velevski v The Queen, and indirectly an anatomist in Honeysett v The Queen) seems insufficiently attentive to the expressed need for specialised knowledge and, inextricably, the actual abilities of those recognised as expert witnesses. The article explains why legal practitioners and judges should carefully attend to ‘specialised knowledge’, and treat independent evidence supporting specific abilities (in Lang, being able to discriminate between self-inflicted stab wounds and stab wounds inflicted by others) as a form of ‘specialised knowledge’. Notwithstanding obiter in Dasreef Pty Ltd v Hawchar, it cautions against placing too much reliance on training, formal qualifications, general experience, and past legal practice. Courts, in particular, should be more sceptical about opinion evidence adduced by parties (especially prosecutors in criminal proceedings), the abilities of trial lawyers, judges and other fact-finders, as well as the effectiveness of trial safeguards and appeals.
This article concerns the extent to which institutions should be held vicariously liable for abuse perpetrated by non-employees. Recently, in Bird v DP (‘Bird’), the High Court of Australia confirmed that a relationship of employment is a precondition to vicarious liability attaching to a defendant (subject to limited exceptions). Contrary to developments in overseas jurisdictions, the Court refused to expand the doctrine to encapsulate relationships ‘akin to employment’. This article first details the doctrine of vicarious liability and its application to institutional abuse cases. It then compares the historical approach in Australia to that adopted in the United Kingdom and Canada. Finally, it focuses upon the decision in Bird and analyse the competing arguments as to the appropriateness of the binary ‘employment or nothing’ test.
Should Australia’s Governor-General refuse royal assent to an anti-democratic or intolerant constitutional amendment that has been approved at referendum? The limits on the Australian people’s power to amend their own constitution have, to date, been the subject of limited scholarship. Through application of Yaniv Roznai’s theory of constitutional unamendability, it is argued that political constitutionalism is a core tenet of the Australian constitutional order, a tenet which would likely call for a refusal of assent to an anti-democratic amendment. By contrast, Australia’s relatively weak tradition of legal constitutionalism would not stand in the way of an intolerant alteration to the Australian Constitution. Understanding the legitimate boundaries of the Governor-General’s authority is an ongoing project in Australian constitutional theory. However, these issues can provide fresh insight on long-running academic debates about the role of Commonwealth vice-regal representatives and the source of the Australian Constitution’s authority.
