This article briefly describes the legal position in Australia prior to the Ice decision. It then explains the nature of the changes to that position as a consequence of the Ice decision. After dealing with the Ice decision, the recent first-instance decision in Phone Directories will be considered

This article is about the interpretation of legal texts. Its immediate aim is to defend, against a certain sort of originalist objection, the well-known cases that hold that the Australian Constitution, by implication, guarantees certain political freedoms and entitlements. That is not to say...

This paper first briefly introduces the reader to nanotechnology and the potential health risks it raises. It then reviews how nanotechnology is or may be used by the food industry so that challenges that must be addressed by food regulations can be better understood. The application of current...

Value-added Tax (VAT) has become one of the most pervasive tax instruments across the developed and, increasingly, the developing world. However, despite broad-based consumption tax reform dominating the Australian taxation agenda from the 1970s onwards, Australia did not introduce VAT until...

This article examines recent Australian reforms to extend the Goods and Services Tax to imports of low-value goods. The reforms will move Australia from maintaining one of the highest thresholds for the relief of payment of the GST on the importation of low-value goods to a first-mover in its...

This article examines to what extent there is legacy of the Commission’s labour standards in the new legislated standards in the National Employment Standards and dismissal protection in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth). The Commission’s ‘community standards’, mainly from ‘test cases’...

There has recently been a minor research and publishing boom in the field of refusals of royal assent to Bills in Australia. When in the throes of finalising my own contribution to this outburst of scholarship, I discovered that the figurehead German Federal President had just refused his assent...

In the middle third of the 19th century Upper Canada (now Ontario) followed by South Australia passed statutes for the legal recognition of religious bodies. The latter statute has already been the subject of a brief history. This article considers the background to the enactment of Upper...

In Australia, it is often thought that the decision whether to impose a constructive trust invariably attracts the exercise of remedial discretion. This paper argues that, in reality, the exercise of discretion is highly circumscribed. Further, where such discretion is exercised, it is useful...