The proscription of organisations has long been a central feature of legal regimes aimed at the suppression of terrorism. Australia is no exception. Going back many decades, the Commonwealth government has sought to meet the threat of political violence through the proscription of related organisations. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist strikes against New York and Washington, renewed efforts were made for the proscription of organisations in many national jurisdictions (for example, the United Kingdom, United States and Canada) as well as at the international level (for example, through the United Nations and the European Union.

In Australia, the Commonwealth looked directly to the justifications offered by the United Kingdom’s Lord Lloyd of Berwick and Paul Wilkinson just a few years before. In their major Inquiry into Legislation Against Terrorism, Lord Lloyd and Wilkinson presented three principal rationales to explain the role of proscription in the prevention of terrorism: ease of proof; providing a basis for the criminalisation of fundraising and other activities of terrorist groups; and as a clear symbol of ‘public revulsion and reassurance that severe measures [are] being taken’.

The central purpose of this article is to test the assumption that constitutional cases generally produce a heightened level of disagreement amongst the members of the High Court. In addition to extra-judicial statements indicating that is so, there are a number of theoretical and pragmatic reasons why we would expect greater individuality in the delivery of constitutional judgments than might be observed in other areas. However, there has not been an empirical study of the Court’s behaviour in these cases which is of sufficient longitudinal scope so as to verify this suspicion, no matter how compelling the arguments or anecdotal impressions.

This study attempts to overcome that deficiency. In order to do so, it adopts the following structure. In Part II, the hypothesis under examination will be stated with consideration of the reasons currently given for its acceptance. In Part III, the methodology employed to test the hypothesis will be set out. In Part IV, results of the study will be presented with accompanying analysis. In the concluding Part, the findings of the study will be summed up and possible directions for future research will be suggested.

In commencing his sprawling collective portrait of 19th century Britain a few years ago, A N Wilson stated simply, ‘[t]he Victorians are still with us.’ The truth of this, he went on to explain, lay in the fact that, though much changed, the world which they created persists. Although we seem to be at a great remove from the concerns, innovations and ideals of that era, Wilson ably demonstrated that the world left to us by the Victorians was immutably different from that which existed beforehand. As such it marked a break with the past and set in place the parameters within which the modern age has continued to develop.

Literature on the necessity for reform of Australia‘s federal division of government continues to blossom, reflecting the assessment of a leading expert in the area that the system is now at a ‘cross-road’ between delivering a vibrant and beneficial federalism to the Australian public or ‘merely a mask for the effective centralisation of power’. Although the solutions advanced by many commentators towards ensuring the first of these outcomes over the second are many and various, it is notable that none looks exclusively to constitutional amendment as the silver bullet of reform. The notorious difficulty of attaining a successful referendum result – particularly on federal issues which have traditionally been amongst the most contentious proposals –as well as the difficulty of encapsulating all that might be done in the way of federal reform within a single suite of proposed amendments, has ensured that sub-constitutional institutions and mechanisms have been looked to as a simpler, more effective way to achieve change.

Williams v Commonwealth of Australia is a landmark decision of the High Court on the scope of federal executive power in s 61 of the Constitution. The decision is also important for the interpretive methodology adopted by the Court. Notably, each judge based their understanding of s 61 upon federal readings of the Constitution. This methodology raises fresh questions about how the Constitution is to be interpreted, and whether Williams marks a break from orthodox understandings of that task. This article assesses the significance of Williams for constitutional interpretation in Australia, and whether it lays the foundation for a more robust protection of state interests by the High Court.

The establishment and rise of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) is, on balance, a story of the successful development of an executive-based institution for cooperative governance in the Australian federal system. By contrast, the Council of the Australian Federation (CAF), created in 2006 as a forum for interstate co-operation and policy development, has been far less effective. This article explores the reasons behind CAF's difficulties after a very short-lived initial impact. Integral to this account is the significance of Canadian experience of horizontal intergovernmental relations, which directly inspired the Australian Premiers to found CAF. The numerous indications of political congruence – some temporary, others systemic – between the Canadian and Australian settings obscured a deeper constitutional incongruence between the two jurisdictions and this is fundamental to appreciating CAF's failure as a transplant. CAF's ability to operate effectively as a significant institution was inevitably constrained by the parameters of the Australian federal system that its establishment was, in many ways, seeking to transcend.

Judicial incapacity, while under-researched, presents unique challenges for supporting and responding to issues of judicial performance. In this article, we argue for a reconceptualisation of this topic based on contemporary theories of socially-constructed disability and principles of anti-discrimination law. While assisting and supporting judicial officers who are attempting to work with a disability or ongoing health issue will always be complex, this reconceptualisation offers heads of jurisdiction, conduct commissions and parliamentarians, who retain the ultimate sanction of removal, the opportunity to craft a surer guide for handling cases of incapacity. This will not only better serve the individual concerned, affording them greater agency and dignity than has traditionally been the case, but also protect the principle of judicial independence.

We present the Sydney Radio Star Catalogue, a new catalogue of stars detected at megahertz to gigahertz radio frequencies. It consists of 839 unique stars with 3 405 radio detections, more than doubling the previously known number of radio stars. We have included stars from large area searches for radio stars found using circular polarisation searches, cross-matching, variability searches, and proper motion searches as well as presenting hundreds of newly detected stars from our search of Australian SKA Pathfinder observations. The focus of this first version of the catalogue is on objects detected in surveys using SKA precursor and pathfinder instruments; however, we will expand this scope in future versions. The 839 objects in the Sydney Radio Star Catalogue are distributed across the whole sky and range from ultracool dwarfs to Wolf-Rayet stars. We demonstrate that the radio luminosities of cool dwarfs are lower than the radio luminosities of more evolved sub-giant and giant stars. We use X-ray detections of 530 radio stars by the eROSITA soft X-ray instrument onboard the Spectrum Roentgen Gamma spacecraft to show that almost all of the radio stars in the catalogue are over-luminous in the radio, indicating that the majority of stars at these radio frequencies are coherent radio emitters. The Sydney Radio Star Catalogue can be found in Vizier or at https://radiostars.org.

Durable mechanical circulatory devices are commonly used to support children and adolescents in end-stage heart failure. However, these patients remain at high risk of acute medical complications, which may lead to significant impairment in functional capacity, altered quality of life, or death. We explore the incorporation of adolescent directives into medical decision-making in this scenario through a clinical case vignette.

Antarctic and Southern Ocean environments are facing increasing pressure from multiple threats. The Antarctic Treaty System regularly looks to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for the provision of independent and objective advice based on the best available science to support decision-making, policy development and effective environmental management. The recently approved SCAR Scientific Research Programme Ant-ICON - ‘Integrated Science to Inform Antarctic and Southern Ocean Conservation‘ - facilitates and coordinates high-quality transdisciplinary research to inform the conservation and management of Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the sub-Antarctic in the context of current and future impacts. The work of Ant-ICON focuses on three research themes examining 1) the current state and future projections of Antarctic systems, species and functions, 2) human impacts and sustainability and 3) socio-ecological approaches to Antarctic and Southern Ocean conservation, and one synthesis theme that seeks to facilitate the provision of timely scientific advice to support effective Antarctic conservation. Research outputs will address the most pressing environmental challenges facing Antarctica and offer high-quality science to policy and advisory bodies including the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, the Committee for Environmental Protection and the Scientific Committee of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.