Shuaiqi/CLSum huggingface dataset:
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 31 August 2005 MOHAMMAD ARIF RUHANI v DIRECTOR OF POLICE (THROUGH THE SECRETARY OF JUSTICE AS DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTOR) The High Court of Australia today published its reasons for holding that it has the jurisdiction to hear appeals from the Supreme Court of Nauru. Mr Ruhani was one of a number of asylum seekers brought to Nauru by Australian sea transport on 21 December 2001 and housed in two camps, Topside and Former State House. Mr Ruhani instituted habeus corpus proceedings in the Supreme Court of Nauru in April 2004, alleging he was held at Topside against his will by or on behalf of the Director of Police, but was unsuccessful. Mr Ruhani appealed to the High Court of Australia. As a preliminary issue, the Director of Police contended that the High Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the appeal because the Nauru (High Court Appeals) Act is not a valid law of the Commonwealth. The High Court, by a 5-2 majority, disallowed the Director’s objection to competency last December and today released its written reasons. From 1965 until Nauru became independent in 1968 the High Court, by leave, heard appeals from Nauru. In 1976 the governments of Nauru and Australia agreed that the High Court would again hear certain appeals from the Supreme Court of Nauru in respect of both the Supreme Court’s original and appellate jurisdiction and the Commonwealth Parliament passed the Nauru (High Court Appeals) Act. Mr Ruhani submitted that the provisions of the Act are laws made by the Parliament in exercise of its authority under section 76(ii) of the Constitution to make laws conferring original jurisdiction on the High Court in any matter arising under any laws made by the Parliament. He also submitted that the Act is also an exercise of Parliament’s powers to make laws with respect to external affairs (section 51(xxix)) and the relations of the Commonwealth with Pacific islands (section 51(xxx)). The majority of the High Court accepted that the Commonwealth legislation was constitutionally valid.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 12 November, 2003 PALIFLEX PTY LTD v CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF STATE REVENUE SOUTH SYDNEY CITY COUNCIL v PALIFLEX PTY LTD Land formerly owned by the Commonwealth became subject to New South Wales land tax and to council rates after its sale to Paliflex in 1998, the High Court of Australia unanimously held today. Paliflex bought the property in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Elizabeth Bay for $9 million. Paliflex challenged the charging of land tax and rates on the basis of section 52(i), which states that Federal Parliament has exclusive powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to places acquired by the Commonwealth for public purposes. Objections to two assessments for land tax were disallowed and the Supreme Court and a unanimous Court of Appeal dismissed Paliflex’s appeals. Paliflex appealed to the High Court. The Court unanimously dismissed Paliflex’s appeal. It held that the land ceased to have the character of a place acquired by the Commonwealth for public purposes on the registration of the transfer of title to Paliflex in 1998. In their application to the land on the dates of land tax imposition, the NSW Land Tax Act and Land Tax Management Act were not laws with respect to a place acquired by the Commonwealth for public purposes. In a related judgment, the High Court also unanimously held that the Local Government Act did not operate with respect to the land while it was a Commonwealth place. There was no invalidity when rates and waste management charges were imposed by the Council after Paliflex acquired the land.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 14 August 2013 CONSTRUCTION FORESTRY MINING & ENERGY UNION v MAMMOET AUSTRALIA PTY LTD [2013] HCA 36 Today the High Court unanimously allowed an appeal from a decision of the Federal Court of Australia, which held that the provision of accommodation to employees during a period of "protected industrial action" would have constituted a "payment" by their employer that was prohibited by s 470(1) of the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) ("the Act"). The appellant represents the industrial interests of a number of the respondent's employees, who worked on construction at the Woodside Pluto Liquefied Natural Gas Project on the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia. The employees worked on a "fly in/fly out" basis. Under the terms of an enterprise agreement ("the Agreement"), the respondent was required to provide its employees with suitable accommodation or to pay them a living away from home allowance, while they were on location. The respondent elected to provide the former. On 21 April 2010, the respondent was notified that some of its employees intended to take "protected industrial action" for a period of 28 days as part of the process of negotiating a new enterprise agreement. The respondent informed the employees that for the duration of that period it would cease to pay for their accommodation. The appellant applied to the Federal Magistrates Court, seeking relief on the basis that the respondent's refusal to provide accommodation breached the terms of the Agreement and constituted "adverse action" contrary to s 340(1) of the Act. The respondent argued that it was obliged to cease providing accommodation pursuant to s 470(1) of the Act, which provides that if an employee engages in "protected industrial action ... the employer must not make a payment to an employee in relation to the total duration of the industrial action on that day." The respondent's contention was accepted in the Federal Magistrates Court and on appeal to the Federal Court. The High Court unanimously held that the provision of accommodation would not have constituted a "payment ... in relation to the total duration of the industrial action." It held that when s 470(1) speaks of "payment" it means a payment in money and not simply the transfer of any economic benefit by an employer to an employee. The Court held that the section was principally concerned to prohibit the payment of "strike pay". The Court also dismissed the respondent's argument that because the employees were not ready, willing and available to work, they were not entitled to accommodation under the terms of the Agreement. In the absence of an express or implied term to the contrary, the Court held that the employees' entitlement to accommodation was dependent only upon the continuation of the employer-employee relationship and the presence of the employees on location at the respondent's direction. The Court ordered that the application should be remitted to the Federal Circuit Court to be heard and determined according to law.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 13 December 2007 CHANNEL SEVEN ADELAIDE PTY LTD v DR COLIN MANOCK The High Court of Australia today ruled against a defence of fair comment on a matter of public interest which Channel Seven sought to raise in a defamation action. Dr Manock is a forensic pathologist who gave evidence for the prosecution in the trial and retrial of Henry Vincent Keogh for the murder of his fiancé Anna-Jane Cheney in 1994. Mr Keogh was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment, with a 25-year non-parole period. He has brought an appeal to the South Australian Court of Criminal Appeal, brought two applications for special leave to appeal to the High Court (in October 1997 and November 2007), and two petitions to the SA Governor for mercy, all without success. On 5 March 2004, during Seven’s Today Tonight program, a promotion ran for an upcoming edition of the program. The promotion said in part: “The new Keogh facts. The evidence they kept to themselves. The data, dates and documents that don’t add up. The evidence changed from one Court to the next.” While these words were said, a picture of Dr Manock was displayed in the background. On 22 March 2004, Dr Manock began proceedings in the SA District Court for defamation. The case is yet to go to trial. He alleged that the promotion imputed that he had deliberately concealed evidence. Channel Seven pleaded a number of defences including fair comment on a matter of public interest. The particulars of the fair comment defence alleged he had conducted an inadequate investigation and given inaccurate evidence. Dr Manock sought to have paragraphs 3.18 to 3.39 of the fair comment defence struck out. His application to Judge Geoffrey Muecke was partly successful. Dr Manock appealed to the Supreme Court and the Full Court ordered that all of paragraphs 3.18 to 3.39 be struck out. Seven appealed to the High Court seeking to have the paragraphs reinstated. The High Court unanimously dismissed the appeal, granted special leave to Dr Manock to cross- appeal and allowed the cross-appeal. It held that statements in the promotion, taken separately or together, were presented as fact and not recognisable as comment. The alleged comment was also not based on facts which were either expressly stated, sufficiently referred to or notorious. The Court held that the fair comment defence should be struck out.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 13 June 2006 XYZ v THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Laws prohibiting Australians from engaging in sexual activity with children in other countries were constitutionally valid, the High Court of Australia held today. A Melbourne man, now 62, known as XYZ, was arrested by the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne in 2002 in relation to offences said to have been committed in Thailand in 2001. He was charged with engaging in sexual intercourse, attempting to engage in sexual intercourse and committing an act of indecency with a child under 16, contrary to sections 50BA and 50BC of the Crimes Act. The child was not a citizen or resident of Australia. Before his trial in the Victorian County Court was to due to be heard, XYZ instituted an action in the High Court seeking a declaration that sections 50BA and 50BC are not valid laws of the Commonwealth. At the conclusion of a hearing on 17 November 2005, the Court held that both sections are laws with respect to external affairs, within section 51(xxix) of the Constitution. The Court handed down its written reasons today for the decision by a 5-2 majority. XYZ’s trial is now due to start in July. The Court held that sections 50BA and 50BC, which relate to conduct outside Australia but are limited in operation to the conduct of Australian citizens or residents, were within the legislative competence of the Commonwealth Parliament as being laws for the peace, order and good government of Australia with respect to external affairs. XYZ had argued that Parliament’s power to make laws with respect to external affairs is limited to making laws with respect to relations between Australia and other countries. The Court held that to do this it would have to depart from its 1991 decision in Polyukhovich v The Commonwealth which held that the War Crimes Amendment Act was a valid law. (Ivan Polyukhovich was charged in 1990 with war crimes committed in Nazi-occupied Ukraine during World War II. He moved to Australia in 1949 and in 1958 became a citizen.) In Polyukhovich, the Court held that the external affairs power was not limited to Australia’s relations with other countries but includes a power to make laws with respect to places, persons, matters or things outside Australia’s geographical limits. This Court declined to depart from the decision in Polyukhovich which was now established doctrine on the scope of the external affairs power. The conduct prohibited under sections 50BA and 50BC involved places, persons, matters or things outside Australia so fell within the meaning of “external affairs”.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 6 August 2004 MAHRAN BEHROOZ v SECRETARY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL AND INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS, ATTORNEY-GENERAL FOR THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA, AUSTRALASIAN CORRECTIONAL MANAGEMENT PTY LTD AND AUSTRALASIAN CORRECTIONAL SERVICES PTY LTD Harsh conditions of detention did not provide a defence to a charge of escaping from immigration detention, the High Court of Australia held today. Mr Behrooz, Mahmood Gholani Moggaddam and Davood Amiri were among six detainees who allegedly escaped from the Woomera Detention Centre in South Australia on 18 November 2001. Since the three men were granted special leave to appeal last August Mr Moggaddam and Mr Amiri have been deported and the criminal charges against them dropped, so the Court rescinded their leave to appeal. Mr Behrooz, an Iranian national, remained the sole appellant. In Port Augusta Magistrates Court the three men were charged with escaping from immigration detention contrary to section 197A of the Migration Act. They argued that conditions at Woomera were such that detention was punitive and not a form of detention authorised by the Migration Act, therefore escape did not contravene section 197A. The magistrate granted their application to have summonses issued seeking material dating back to December 1999 about conditions at Woomera, which has since closed. The respondents unsuccessfully sought to have the summonses set aside on the ground that they were an abuse of process because the material had no evidentiary value. The respondents appealed to the SA Supreme Court which upheld the appeal and set aside the summonses. The Full Court of the Supreme Court, by majority, refused leave to appeal, concluding that even if the documents were to show that conditions at Woomera were harsh, this was no defence to charges under section 197A. The three men then appealed to the High Court. The Court held that Mr Behrooz had no right to escape from Woomera, even if he could show that conditions of detention were harsh. The Court held that Mr Behrooz would be entitled to seek legal redress for any civil wrong or criminal offence committed against him. The information yielded by the summonses may have assisted Mr Behrooz to demonstrate that his conditions of detention gave him a case for such redress, but it would not assist his argument that he was not in immigration detention, or that he was entitled to escape. Therefore the summonses did not have a legitimate forensic purpose. The Court, by a 6-1 majority, dismissed the appeal with costs.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA Public Information Officer 1 May, 2003 TRUST COMPANY OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED v COMMISSIONER OF STATE REVENUE The High Court of Australia today allowed an appeal against the double imposition of stamp duty on the acquisition of a parcel of Brisbane riverside land for a managed investment scheme. Stamp duty of $654,475 was charged twice – on a contract for sale for $17.5 million of the land on Coronation Drive, Milton, and on the transfer to Trust Company of Australia of the land. Under Commonwealth law, such schemes require the appointment of an independent party to acquire and hold scheme property. The contract was between three parties: the vendor, the scheme investment manager Cromwell Property Securities Ltd to act as custodian of the scheme’s assets, and TCA. TCA held the registered title to the land on trust for Cromwell which in turn was trustee for the syndicate of investors whose money funded the purchase of the land. The Commissioner assessed stamp duty on the basis that Cromwell, not TCA, was the purchaser under the contract but the transfer was to TCA. The question was whether the transfer to TCA was a transfer to the purchaser within the meaning of section 54(6) of the Queensland Stamp Act. If so, only one amount of stamp duty was payable; if not, then stamp duty was payable on both the purchase and the transfer. The Queensland Court of Appeal agreed with the Commissioner, holding that TCA was not the purchaser for the purposes of the Stamp Act. The High Court, by a 4-1 majority, allowed the appeal and held that for the purposes of the Stamp Act the transfer was to the purchaser.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 10 December 2003 BARRY THOMAS BLUNDEN v COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA The High Court of Australia today unanimously held that an action arising from the Voyager disaster was subject to a limitation regime, in this case the provisions of the ACT Limitation Act. On the night of 10 February 1964, aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne and the destroyer HMAS Voyager collided during exercises about 30km off Jervis Bay. The Voyager sank, with 82 lives lost. Mr Blunden was serving as an able seaman on the Melbourne. In 1998 he instituted proceedings in the ACT Supreme Court – exercising federal jurisdiction – against the Commonwealth for negligence, seeking damages for injuries including post-traumatic stress disorder, severe depression and alcohol abuse. In March 2003 the part of his action concerning time limits was removed into the High Court for identification of the applicable statute of limitation, if any. The Commonwealth claimed Mr Blunden’s action was barred, extinguished or not maintainable. Mr Blunden argued that the common law, without modification by the ACT Limitation Act, applied to his case. The High Court held that the ACT Limitation Act applied. The Act provides for a six-year limitation period, but section 36 empowers the Supreme Court to order extensions. The Supreme Court initially declined to grant an extension. However, an appeal to the Full Court of the Federal Court from that refusal was allowed, although that court is yet to finalise orders flowing from Mr Blunden’s successful appeal. In the meantime the High Court has established that the ACT Limitation Act is applicable to his action.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 15 August 2018 CHETAN SHRESTHA v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND BORDER PROTECTION & ANOR; BISHAL GHIMIRE v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND BORDER PROTECTION & ANOR; SHIVA PRASAD ACHARYA v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND BORDER PROTECTION & ANOR [2018] HCA 35 Today the High Court unanimously dismissed three appeals from a judgment of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia which rejected the appellants' respective challenges to decisions of the Migration Review Tribunal. In each case, the Tribunal affirmed a decision of a delegate of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to cancel the visa holder's student visa pursuant to s 116(1)(a) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). Section 116(1)(a) provided that "the Minister may cancel a visa if he or she is satisfied that ... any circumstances which permitted the grant of the visa no longer exist". Each appellant was granted a student visa on the basis that they satisfied the definition of an "eligible higher degree student" under the Migration Regulations 1994 (Cth). That definition required that, if the applicant proposed to undertake a preliminary course of study before and for the purposes of a principal course of study, the applicant had to be enrolled in that preliminary course of study. In each case, the Tribunal found that the visa holder had been enrolled in a preliminary course of study at the time that person was granted a student visa, but was no longer enrolled in that course of study. The Tribunal concluded that the visa holder therefore no longer met the definition of an "eligible higher degree student" and that a "circumstance" within the meaning of s 116(1)(a) no longer existed. The Tribunal in each case decided to cancel the visa holder's visa. Each visa holder applied to the Federal Circuit Court of Australia for judicial review of the Tribunal's decision. In each case, the Federal Circuit Court dismissed the application. Each visa holder appealed to the Federal Court, where their appeals were heard together. The Full Court of the Federal Court held, by majority, that the word "circumstances" in s 116(1)(a) referred to a state of affairs rather than a legal characterisation of a state of affairs, and that in each case the Tribunal had made a legal error by focusing on whether the visa holder met the definition of an "eligible higher degree student" instead of whether the visa holder remained enrolled in that course of study. The majority held that the error was jurisdictional in nature, but that the Tribunal's decisions should not be set aside because the error could have had no impact on the decisions. By special leave, the visa holders appealed to the High Court. A plurality of the Court held that the appeals should be dismissed on the basis that, even if the Tribunal had in each case made the alleged error, that error could have had no impact on the Tribunal's decisions because at most the error caused the Tribunal to ask a superfluous question. Accordingly, the alleged error was not jurisdictional in nature and could not invalidate the Tribunal's decisions.
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA 7 October 2004 WACB v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND MULTICULTURAL AND INDIGENOUS AFFAIRS An asylum seeker was not notified that his application for a protection visa had been rejected until he physically received the written decision, pursuant to section 430 of the Migration Act, the High Court of Australia held today. His 28 days in which to lodge an appeal had therefore not started running until he was given this document. WACB claimed he was born in Afghanistan in about 1985 and was of Hazara ethnicity. He had no education apart from lessons in the Koran at his local mosque and spent his life tending sheep. His father, who had supported an anti-Taliban group, had disappeared. His mother arranged with a people smuggler for WACB to escape Afghanistan to avoid either the same fate or being drafted to fight for the Taliban. He arrived in Australia by boat in December 2000 and applied for a protection visa. The Immigration Department and the Refugee Review Tribunal refused the application. On 16 March 2001, the RRT faxed its 14-page decision to the Curtin detention centre in Western Australia where WACB was being held. A covering letter explained he had 28 days to seek judicial review by the Federal Court, pursuant to section 478 of the Migration Act. The Curtin manager told him through an interpreter of the refusal and the 28-day appeal period. A Dari-speaking counsellor explained that the RRT did not believe he was an Afghan. According to WACB, she held on to the document until he asked for it weeks later. He filed his application to the Federal Court on 3 May 2001 for judicial review but the Court held that it was out of time. The Full Court of the Federal Court agreed. WACB then appealed to the High Court. The Migration Act provides five methods by which applicants may be notified of decisions, depending on whether they are in immigration detention and whether they have a representative. Where an applicant is in detention, as in WACB’s case, the RRT must give the applicant and the Department Secretary a copy of the written statement within 14 days of the decision. The High Court held that notification of the decision did not occur until the counsellor gave WACB the written statement. Telling the applicant that the document had arrived or communicating the gist of the document or reading the document to the applicant is insufficient. The written statement must be physically given to the applicant. Only then does the 28-day appeal period begin to run. The Court, by a 4-1 majority, allowed the appeal, and WACB’s substantive application for review can now proceed for hearing and determination.