Page 1041 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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The courts have also demolished Mr Stevenson's argument. The most effective demolition was that of the High Court of Australia in a unanimous judgment, which as lawyers in the chamber will know is a rare enough occasion of itself, in the case of the Union Steamship Company of Australia v. King in 1988, reported in volume 82 of the Australian Law Reports at page 43. In that case the High Court of Australia said that the power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of a Territory is as ample and plenary as the power possessed by the imperial parliament itself.
The words "for the peace, order and good government" are not words of limitation. They went on to explain that the peace, order and good government power, which is, of course, the power conferred on this Territory, is a total plenary power. The Supreme Court of South Australia has recently, in 1984, in The Grace Bible Church v. Reedman unequivocally asserted that the power of a State parliament to pass laws for the peace, order and good government of that State is untrammelled and cannot be called in question in court.
I refer Mr Stevenson to an article on this by Professor de Q. Walker who has difficulties with this proposition. Professor Walker argues that as a matter of jurisdiction it should not be the law, but he concedes that that is the law in Australia. It has also been clearly asserted by the Supreme Court of New South Wales in the 1988 litigation concerning the deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation. The case in question is the Building Construction Employees and Builders Labourers Federation of New South Wales v. The Minister for Industrial Relations, reported in 1986, volume 7 of the New South Wales Law Reports at page 372.
In that case some judges toyed with the idea that a State supreme court could hold invalid a law of a State parliament because it was not a law for the peace, order and good government of a Territory because it infringed on some alleged basic constitutional rights. In the end, they concluded that that was not the state of the law; that although that may have been an attractive, philosophical or jurisprudential proposition, it was not the law.
The Supreme Court of South Australia has unanimously told us that what Mr Stevenson said is nonsense. The Supreme Court of New South Wales has, by clear majority, said that what Mr Stevenson told us is nonsense. The High Court of Australia has told us unanimously - and again I say that it is rare for the High Court to speak unanimously - that what Mr Stevenson said is nonsense. I hope that Mr Stevenson reads this and, as I say, is better informed, if no wiser.
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