This article shall examine a discrete, though somewhat overlooked, aspect of the relationship between the Commonwealth Parliament and the federal, or ‘Chapter III’, courts which emerges in the scenario where Parliament purports to amend the law that the courts are required to apply in pending cases. This is of particular significance where the Commonwealth is a party to the proceedings, given the obvious advantage to the Commonwealth, as litigant, provided by its power to legislate, and potentially to do so strategically to effect a desirable outcome. This raises the spectre of a significant separation of powers issue. This article will explore the extent to which this principle entrenched as law in the Australian Constitution has been able to limit Parliament's power to protect the independence of the federal courts to interpret and apply the law in an individual adjudication; that is, to protect their ‘decisional independence.’ Its success or otherwise is one measure of the extent to which the separation of powers, as a legal rule, is capable of protecting the independent adjudication of legal disputes by the courts from the vicissitudes of political power and influence.

In 1998 Australia's public employment service was replaced with a national network of public, private and community agencies—the Job Network—which compete for contracts to deliver services to unemployed people. This development represents the encroachment of competition policy and market ideology into one of the most fundamental areas of government responsibility—the welfare of citizens. The broader ramifications of the contracting out of employment services in terms of quality, efficiency, social costs and accountability are only beginning to be explored. This article examines the impact these changes have had upon one important feature of the social security system—the accessibility and effectiveness of external merits review.

Recently, the High Court of Australia has again concerned itself with the need for the common law to conform to the Constitution and with the manner in which, and extent to which, such conformity is ensured. In the 1990s, the Court considered the effect of the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech on defamation law and reached at length, in Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation, a common position on the influence of the Constitution on the common law which enjoys the support of the whole Court. The consensus thus reached has now been applied in John Pfeiffer v Rogerson to the area of choice-of-law in tort.

Choice of law is another area in which, during the Court's fin de siécle period in the late 1980s and 1990s, there was considerable disagreement among members of the Court. The well-known succession of cases started with Breavington v Godleman in 1988. Some members of the Court held that the applicable choice-of-law doctrine in intra-national cases was mandated by the terms of the Constitution and to be found by applying a command allegedly inherent in s 118 (possibly with the aid of other constitutional provisions).

The competition principles set out in the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) are based on an economic model of perfectly competitive markets responding to the market and producing only the goods and services required in the market. However, effective competition together with good market information may create a disincentive to markets innovating (market failure) because new developments may be rapidly copied without the recovery of the innovation's development costs (a free ride). According to this model, a patent under the Patents Act 1990 (Cth) compensates for the disincentive to innovate and justifies a limited period of exclusive rights during which the innovator may exclude others in order to recover the development costs (confounding the free riders) and contribute to beneficial innovation by investing in new developments (with the added benefit of disclosure of the innovation). Patents are therefore generally assumed to produce overall economic benefit while at the same time having minimal social costs. The social costs are higher prices, restricted outputs, subsidised foreign inventors and the administrative costs of the patenting scheme.

For more than fifty years, Australian governments used a variety of legal powers to harass revolutionary organisations, and in particular the Communist Party of Australia (the CPA). After an historical review of these policies, this article examines Commonwealth's attempt between 1921–29 and 1932–37, to use its power under the Customs Act to prohibit the importation of seditious literature.

Between 1920 and 1950, the Commonwealth passed a number of Acts and made several Regulations to deal with the threats apparently posed by the CPA and other revolutionary bodies. Amendments to the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth) in 1920 made the uttering and publication of seditious words a Commonwealth offence. (These activities were already offences under state law.) Proclamations under the Customs Act 1901 (Cth) had the effect of prohibiting the importation of revolutionary literature. In 1926 and 1932, the Crimes Act was further amended. Bodies that advocated violent revolution became unlawful associations, and criminal sanctions were attached to a variety of acts by and on behalf of unlawful associations.