Page 3477 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 18 September 1991
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The Crown Suits (Amendment) Bill is an ongoing law reform move by the Government's Law Reform Unit. It performs the useful task of making sure that there are not any unintended results as a result of decisions of the High Court such as those in Maguire v. Simpson and in the Evans Deakin case.
Briefly, as I recall it, Maguire v. Simpson involved the Commonwealth Trading Bank trying to welsh on its requirements and hide behind some legal technicalities to dodge some procedural aspects of a law suit. I trust that I am not being too cruel in saying that about the Commonwealth Trading Bank. In the Evans Deakin case, in fact, a similar principle arose and the court held that section 64 of the Commonwealth Judiciary Act was clearly applicable to procedural rights between parties as distinct from substantive rights between the parties. To sum that up simply, section 64 of the Judiciary Act said that, even if it is the State or the Commonwealth who is the litigant, they operate under the same rules of procedure as would subject to subject in court.
Gradually, the situation got away from that. It became more confusing after Maguire v. Simpson and the Evans Deakin Industries case. Then we had the recent Bropho case in Western Australia over the Swan Brewery site. That again raised interesting aspects of Crown immunity and the interpretation the courts have to put on statutes which untidy legislatures have not insisted be explicit in whether they bind the Crown in right of the Crown or not.
The upshot is that I support the Bill before the house. I do observe, however, that there are a lot of old Acts still on the books, as Mr Connolly knows, and they may well create immunities for the Crown that are not deserved; they are no longer deserved, particularly for those commercial entities of the Crown - if you can still use that term - who can still hide behind some immunities or some procedural or substantive advantages in litigation.
I hope that that situation is going to be reviewed progressively and that all of the statutes will be brought out, particularly those that set up commercial-type entities in the Territory, to make it absolutely clear that our citizens, when they are involved in a lawsuit with those commercial trading entities, do so on equal ground, on an equal footing, and, except for matters in the public interest, Crown immunities and protections and procedural advantages do not flow.
MR STEFANIAK (3.51): Just very briefly, the Liberal Party has no problems with this Bill.
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