The main purpose of this article is to review the limitations that will be imposed by the Privy Council (Limitation of Appeals) Bill on appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council from the High Court of Australia, federal courts other than the High Court, and the Supreme Courts of the Territories as well as the limitations and restrictions which now apply to appeals to the Privy Council from the High Court and courts exercising federal jurisdiction.

In a recent work dealing with Dr Evatt, the politician, he is described in the title as an “enigma”. Perhaps there is some enigmatic quality in Evatt, the High Court judge and constitutional lawyer. In the ten years he was on the High Court (1930-1940) a number of dominant themes can be detected in his judgments on constitutional law which at first sight seem to be not fully consistent with each other. In many cases they show a concern to prevent the undermining of State executive and legislative authority and a tendency to restrict Commonwealth power. In other cases, his judgments propound a rather broad interpretation of Commonwealth powers.

Although the framers of the Commonwealth Constitution, steeped in the study of American federalism, found the United States Constitution a valuable model which they could copy or adapt to the requirements of the six federating Australian colonies, they deliberately departed from the judicial provisions of that model in two major respects: first by creating the High Court of Australia as a general court of appeal from the Supreme Courts of the States; and, secondly, by empowering the Parliament to invest State courts with jurisdiction in all matters which might be brought before the High Court in its original jurisdiction.

The battles over official secrecy have to be fought on many different fronts. In the United Kingdom—whose ministers and public servants allegedly have a “passion for secrecy”—this was more than usually evident during 1967. Two pieces of legislation—namely, the Parliamentary Commissioner Act, 1967 (U.K.) and the Public Records Act, 1967 (Eng.)—represented a modest triumph for those who would wish to see more light shed upon the affairs of the nation. Elsewhere the picture was rather more familiar. The Security Commission recommended a further tightening of documentary security in the Cabinet Office; this followed upon the conviction under the Official Secrets Acts, 1911 to 1939 (U.K.) of a young typist in the Cabinet Office, “the first known occasion on which classified papers have been extracted from” this inner sanctum of government.

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.

Nearly half a century has gone by since Sir Cecil Hurst invited readers of the British Year Book of International Law to consider with him the question—“Whose is the Bed of the Sea? ”

Almost twenty-five years ago, President Truman initiated State action to assert authority over the natural resources of the sea-bed and sub-soil of the continental shelf beyond the limits of the territorial sea.

In 1953, Australia contributed significantly to the body of State practice. On 11 September 1953, the Governor-General issued a proclamation declaring the existence under international law of Australia's sovereign rights over the sea-bed and subsoil of the continental shelf contiguous to the coasts of Australia and its Territories for the purpose of exploring and exploiting the natural resources of that sea-bed and subsoil. At about the same time, the Commonwealth Parliament enacted the Pearl Fisheries Act (No.2) 1953 (Cth) amending the Pearl Fisheries Act 1952-1953 (Cth), which made subject to Australian control foreign nationals and foreign vessels engaging in pearling on the continental shelf. In section 5 of the Principal Act, “pearling” was defined to include—

The Commonwealth grants power refers to the legislative power conferred by section 96 of the federal Constitution. Section 96 provides that:

There is no exact counterpart of this section in the United States Constitution, though Congress has authority to make grants to States under the so-called General Welfare clause—section 8 of Article I—which declares that:

One is not often called upon to review for a law journal a book which is not written either by a lawyer or specifically for a lawyer. Mr Stanley Brogden's Australia's Two-Airline Policy is such a book and its paper jacket states that the book is of particular interest for students of economics, public administration, business administration, political science and for general readers and libraries. Since, however, the Melbourne University Press is noted for its publication of serious and scholarly works, and further, because the two-airline policy cannot properly be understood without an adequate grasp of the legal and constitutional framework in which it operates, it seems quite proper to make an assessment of Mr Brogden's work. Mr Brogden is a very experienced aviation writer as the book will quickly demonstrate. It is the purpose of this review not only to assess the book on its merits but also to supplement the account of the two-airline policy by a closer examination of legal issues and some observations on the future implications of the policy.

If it is in any sense true that the establishment of the federal arbitration system created “a new province for law and order” as Higgins asserted, then it is certainly true that the concept of the basic wage as a foundational element in all awards of that system made in settlement of interstate industrial disputes became the single most important factor in the development of that law and of that order. From the Harvester judgment of 1907 emerged the structure of:

1. (i) a basic wage common to all workers irrespective of the work upon which, or the industry in which, they were employed and

2. (ii) a secondary wage or margin for the skill, responsibility, or particular circumstances of the work, or industry, in question

which was the distinguishing feature of wage determination in Australia for the next sixty years. All federal and State industrial tribunals operated with in this structural framework, either by legislative direction, or as a result of their own deliberate decisions based upon a common acceptance of this structure by the parties coming before these tribunals.

Recent proceedings brought in the South Australian and Victorian Parliaments against persons alleged to be in contempt of Parliament and a report relating to the penal jurisdiction of Parliament that was presented to the House of Commons in 1967 have once again raised the issue whether Parliament is a proper body to exercise the power to punish certain conduct as contempt.

This Digest is intended to provide lawyers with a key to those questions and Ministerial Statements in the Commonwealth Parliament in which they are most likely to be interested, and it is, of course, selective. It covers the period 12 March to 28 November 1968, and is compiled from the published debates of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The page references to Parliamentary Debates (“S.Deb.” and “H.R. Deb.”) are to the published debates of the Senate and the House of Representatives, for the second Session of the Twenty-sixth Parliament, first and second periods.

This Digest is intended to provide lawyers with a key to those questions and Ministerial Statements in the Commonwealth Parliament in which they are most likely to be interested, and it is, of course, selective. It covers the period 21 February to 8 November 1967, and is compiled from the published debates of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.