The High Court will hear a constitutional matter on whether reg 26(3) of the Environment Protection (Industrial Waste Resource) Regulations 2009 (Vic) is contrary to the freedom of interstate trade and commerce protected by s 92 of the Australian Constitution and therefore invalid. Regulation 26(3) prohibits the interstate transport of certain kinds of industrial waste unless the interstate facility has better environmental protection standards than a facility licensed under the Environment Protection Act 1970 (Vic) or it is exempt from the licensing requirement. The plaintiffs are two waste management companies located in Victoria and South Australia. The second defendant, the Victorian Environmental Protection Authority, refused the first plaintiff’s application for approval to transport contaminate soil from Victoria to the second plaintiff’s waste treatment facility on the basis that the EPA was not satisfied that the environmental standards at that facility were better than a facility licensed under the Act to receive the waste, as required by reg 26(3). The plaintiffs now contend that the protectionist effect can be inferred from the discriminatory burden that reg 26(3) places on interstate trade, that in assessing whether the objects of the regulation are protectionist the Court must examine the actual motivating objects of the regulation (and not ex post facto justifications for it), and finally that it is inconsistent with s 92 for a State attempts to limit interstate transport of a good for the purpose of securing levies imposed by the State’s laws.