This chapter complements Chapter 5 in Government Accountability: Australian Administrative Law, third edition, which investigates the role of parliament and other bodies, such as auditors-general and ombudsmen, in scrutinising and investigating the actions of government.

This chapter complements Chapter 3 in Government Accountability: Australian Administrative Law, third edition, which investigates the various classes of executive power, both statutory and non-statutory. The vast majority of executive power is conferred by statute. The extracts emphasise the importance of statutory interpretation when establishing the scope of express and implied powers. The final two extracts consider prerogative power.

This chapter complements Chapter 7 of Government Accountability: Australia Administrative Law, third edition. An important point is that merits review is a creature of statute. The availability of merits review, the authority responsible for conducting review, the nature of review, the process to be followed and the remedies available in a given case can only be determined by careful examination of the relevant statutory provisions. For this reason, this chapter is not a collection of canonical authorities on merits review; few, if any, such authorities exist. The first two sections of this chapter provide government perspectives on the need for, aims of, and potential drawbacks of, merits review. The third section consists of two case studies of merits review. These cases are chosen to show how a merits review application might proceed; how merits review arguments are constructed; and the possible outcomes of merits review.

This chapter complements Chapter 13 of Government Accountability: Australian Administrative Law, third edition. The cases extracted in this chapter illustrate the operation of limits on power that can be discerned from the statute conferring the power: misconceiving the nature or scope of the power, jurisdictional facts (both objective and subjective), procedural error, improper delegation, and mandatory and prohibited considerations. The cases in this chapter are worth studying both for their exposition of legal principles, and for the application of those principles to the facts. O’Reilly v Commissioners of the State Bank of Victoria, for example, is not only the leading Australian case on improper delegation, but also an excellent example of the reasoning process used to determine whether delegation is permissible in a particular situation. With one exception, the cases in this chapter are decisions of the High Court of Australia. The exception is Liversidge v Anderson – which is included because Lord Atkin’s dissenting judgment is one of the most celebrated administrative law judgments.

This chapter complements Chapter 10 of Government Accountability: Australian Administrative Law, third edition. The supervisory role of the courts is powerful and constitutionally entrenched. However, any system that enables one arm of government to supervise the actions of another requires a certain level of restraint to balance the separate powers appropriately. The exclusions built into the statutory judicial review schemes and the focus in common law and constitutional judicial review cases upon jurisdictional error impose limitations on the scope of judicial review. This chapter considers further limits on judicial review, specifically justiciability, standing, and attempts by parliament to impose statutory limits.

This chapter complements Chapter 6 in Government Accountability: Australian Administrative Law, third edition. Information disclosure is fundamental to all areas of administrative law. Whether a request for information comes from a superior court, a parliamentary committee, a royal commissioner, an ombudsman, a journalist, or an individual questioning a government decision, access to information is essential when holding governments to account. The sources in this chapter consider secrecy, unofficial disclosures by leaks and whistleblowers, statutory obligations of the executive to publish information, and the rights of individuals to apply for access to government-held information and reasons for decisions.

This chapter complements Chapter 14 of Government Accountability: Australian Administrative Law, third edition. The grounds of review in this chapter arise as a matter of general presumption or implication, unless excluded by statute. The extracts relate to the grounds of improper purpose, acting under dictation and inflexible application of policy, unreasonableness, irrationality/illogicality, and no evidence. Several of these cases illustrate the interplay between different grounds of review.