Page 2434 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 6 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
BROPHO DECISION
Ministerial Statement
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement on the Bropho decision of the High Court and the extent to which the ACT Crown will be bound by statute law.
Leave granted.
MR CONNOLLY: Thank you. Mr Speaker, I say at the outset that I am not tabling a copy of this speech; I am adopting a practice. It would have been noted in question time this afternoon that the Labor Party did not take advantage of question time to ask itself dorothy dix questions. When we have an important matter to state to the Assembly we will state it in a ministerial statement. We were repeatedly critical of the former Government for taking up the time of question time when there should have been ministerial statements.
I therefore will briefly be advising the Assembly in the appropriate manner, in the time of ministerial statements, of an important decision that the Government has taken which, while not perhaps noteworthy to the general press, is something that the Assembly ought nevertheless be interested in. I am sure that the former Attorney and any lawyers in the Assembly particularly would be interested. The subject is the extent to which the Crown, the ACT Government, is bound by its own statute law.
Last year the High Court, in a landmark decision, in the decision Bropho v. State of Western Australia, held that the old common law rule that the Crown is presumed not to be bound by statute can no longer be relied upon, and that any court will, in future decisions - that is, decisions looking at Acts passed after the Bropho decision - look individually at the circumstances and divine whether or not the Crown is to be bound by statute. That somewhat confuses the question of the extent to which a government is bound by its own laws.
This is a subject on which perhaps it could have been hoped that the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General could have come to a uniform approach so that all governments would take the same view on whether or not they are bound by their own statutes, but unfortunately agreement was not possible. Some States, Queensland and Tasmania, are taking a very restrictive view and relying on provisions in their Acts Interpretation Act to say that no Act will ever be binding on the Crown unless it expressly says that it is.
The ACT Government has considered this matter and has adopted as a general policy that we will, in all future legislation where appropriate, bind the Crown. We will look at it on a case by case basis. We will go beyond that
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .