When first I was invited to participate in this colloquium, I was given the title of “Constitutional difficulties to the introduction of a system of administrative law,” which I take to imply a full administrative jurisdiction. That subject was, in a sense, not exciting, except as a challenge to produce legal difficulties, under a system such as our own, to doing anything at all. Difficulties undoubtedly do exist, but they exist in the realm of psychology, not of rules of law. Even so they are important. A constitution does not live by legal logic alone, and the positive changes in law which the introduction of such a system would involve run counter to received, but unexamined, notions or myths, particularly those relating to Parliament. Such notions have surprising strength. It would have been difficult to persuade the Pontifex Maximus to lead the other Pontiffs into proclaiming the inadequacy of their mythology, let alone to lead them into propounding the virtues of a rival. Yet under our cult of Parliament this is precisely what the Prime Minister or the alternative Pontifex Maximus has to do. This change is beyond the scope of those subtle shifts which we can achieve by stealth, in the way in which we transferred power from King to Ministers. While these difficulties are real and must be mentioned, I take it that in the form in which the subject is now posed it is broader and that I can treat of the constitutional advantages as well as, and rather more than, these political difficulties.

“yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible” (Milton)

The foreseeable consequences of spilling a large quantity of furnace oil from the ss. Wagon Mound into Sydney Harbour have been in dispute now in two separate appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The cases will go down to posterity as The Wagon Mound (No. 1) and The Wagon Mound (No. 2). What was certainly not foreseeable was the complex forensic tangle to which the decisions have led.

Over two centuries ago, in the first reported case of its kind, Lord Hardwicke held the “committee-men” or directors of the Charitable Corporation guilty of “breaches of trust,” for which they had to account to the corporation. The concept of the director as a trustee persists through the cases and the textbooks to this day, but its origin is ill-explained and its modern relevance imperfectly understood. Why is the director called a trustee? Is it because he once was a trustee in the full technical sense? In what respects does the position of a director resemble, and in what respects does it differ from that of a trustee? How far has the law acknowledged these differences? Is the law, in so far as it is based on trust principles, adequate to ensure the proper discharge by directors of their responsibilities?

When petrol rationing ended in 1950, the Anglo-American Oil Co. Ltd. (the predecessor of Esso Petroleum Co. Ltd.) introduced into Britain the “solus” or “tied garage” system of petrol supply, and by the end of 1951 all the principal suppliers of petrol had adopted this system. The solus agreement between supplier and retailer which is the foundation of the system differs in detail from one supplier to another, and some of the terms of an agreement may be negotiated between supplier and individual retailer, but essentially the agreement is couched in a standard contract of which the principal features are similar throughout the trade. In terms of this contract the retailer undertakes to sell the supplying company's brands of motor fuel exclusively for a fixed period, in consideration of a special rebate off the wholesale price of the motor fuels purchased. The retailer is required, in the event of sale or transfer of his business, to secure the acquirer's acceptance of the obligations under the solus contract (this is called the “continuity clause”), and the supplier sometimes reserves a right of pre-emption in the event of intended sale of the business. At the same time as a solus agreement is concluded there is commonly an advance of money by the supplier to the retailer which may be an advance of the solus rebate or a capital loan. The loan agreement may be made as a separate contract, or the loan and supply arrangements may be incorporated in a single document.