Monthly Archives: November 2016

News: Congratulations James Edelman, new High Court Judge

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I was particularly delighted to hear of James Edelman’s recent appointment to the High Court of Australia, as he is a friend and former academic colleague. Indeed, his book based on his PhD thesis, Gain-Based Damages: Contract, Tort, Equity and Intellectual Property was the inspiration for my own PhD thesis.

Edelman J’s list of achievements are impressive: degrees in law, economics and commerce, a Rhodes Scholarship, a BCL and a DPhil from Oxford, a Professorship at Keble College, Oxford, followed by an appointment to the Supreme Court of Western Australia in 2011 and an appointment to the Federal Court in Queensland in 2015. He has numerous publications in the area of private law, and a keen interest in theoretical scholarship.

We extend our warmest congratulations to him and to our new Chief Justice, Susan Kiefel.

News: The Kiefel Court

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Today’s news, as welcome as it is unsurprising, officially confirms that the next High Court will be the Kiefel Court. Here are some features of the new Court that will commence on 30th January 2017:

  • Susan Kiefel, age 63, appointed by Howard government until 17th January 2024
  • Virginia Bell, age 65, appointed by Rudd government until 7th March 2021
  • Stephen Gageler, age 58, appointed by Gillard government until 5th July 2028
  • Patrick Keane, age 64, appointed by Gillard government until 26th October 2022
  • Geoffrey Nettle, age 66, appointed by Abbott government until 2nd December 2020
  • Michelle Gordon age 52, appointed by Abbott government until 19th November 2034
  • James Edelman, age 43, appointed by Turnbull government until 9th January 2044

With Edelman J ( a Supreme Court judge later Federal Court judge, from WA) replacing French CJ (previously a Federal Court judge from WA, appointed by the Howard government), the Court’s diversity in appointing party, gender, geography (alas for South Australia) and prior positions remains unchanged. However, Edelman J is the Court’s first appointee born in the 1970s, just as Gordon J before him was the Court’s first appointee born in the 1960s.

Assuming no early resignations, these are the last new appointments to the High Court for four years. The next (or so) Prime Minister  will then have the opportunity to replace Nettle J and Bell J in quick succession in 2020/1, followed by Keane J in 2022. If Kiefel CJ stays for her full term, then the next most senior judges will be Gageler J, Gordon J and Edelman J. As  Gageler J will have only four years remaining on the Court (although Brennan CJ was appointed in similar circumstances), a Gordon Court from 2024-2034 and an Edelman Court from 2034-2044 would be a solid bet.

News: Bell Group case led to Attorney-General and Solicitor-General rift

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It is no secret that relations between Attorney-General George Brandis and Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson were “irretrievably broken” when Gleeson resigned as Solicitor-General in October this year. However, it has now been revealed that there may have been a High Court connection to the rift: it has been reported today that the ever-sprawling, never-ending Bell Group case may have led to the difficulties between the pair.

As I noted earlier this year, the Bell Group case looked to have settled in 2013, but the Western Australian government’s attempt to distribute the settlement funds via a statutory scheme was struck down by the High Court in May in Bell Group N.V. (in liquidation) v Western Australia [2016] HCA 21. The ATO was a major creditor who would have lost out had the Western Australian legislation been held to be valid.

The West Australian reports that Brandis had apparently made a deal with the Western Australian government that the legislation would not be challenged, and that Brandis instructed Gleeson not to run a particular argument in the May case. It was reportedly Gleeson’s refusal to comply with this which led to the rift. Continue reading →

News: Ten new grants of special leave

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Senators’ queries and qualifications aside, the High Court is having a quiet month, perhaps in part because some pending matters have been shifted to February when the Court will again have seven functioning judges. The Court finished off all of this month’s full court hearings in a single week and also announced orders settling or partly settling matters where special leave had been granted (in cases concerning migration, sentencing and advocates’ immunity.) At the same time, there has been a bumper crop of special leave grants this month, two on the papers last week, a spectacular five out of six applications granted in Wednesday’s oral hearing and three at today’s oral hearing.

All up, ten new cases will eventually be heard on appeal: Continue reading →

News: Senator Culleton says he will not attend Court of Disputed Returns hearing

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A week ago, the High Court published notices on its webpage that it will sit as the Court of Disputed Returns in relation to Senators Bob Day and Rob Culleton. The notices state:

Any person who desires to place any evidence before or make any submission to the Court should apply to the Court by email addressed to Senate.Reference.[Day/Culleton]@hcourt.gov.au by 12:00noon (AEDT) on Thursday 17 November 2016 setting out the reasons why they should be granted leave to appear before the Court. The Court may determine such application on the papers or invite the person to appear and make oral submissions to the Court in Canberra (or by video-link if required) at 11:30am (AEDT) on Monday 21 November 2016.

The apparent purpose of this hearing is to determine who will be a party to the Senate’s reference of these matters, in accordance with s378 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act:

The Court of Disputed Returns may allow any person who in the opinion of the Court is interested in the determination of any question referred to it under this Part to be heard on the hearing of the reference, or may direct notice of the reference to be served on any person, and any person so allowed to be heard or so directed to be served shall be deemed to be a party to the reference.

However, The Guardian reports that Senator Culleton will not attend, physically at least:

On Wednesday Culleton told Guardian Australia he did not intend to appear, nor to send a legal representative, but he would represent himself “in spirit” at the directions hearing.

Presumably, though, the Court of Disputed Returns will ‘direct notice of the reference to be served on’ Senator Culleton, who will then be deemed to be a party.

Senator Culleton lists several reasons for not attending on Monday. Continue reading →

Bywater Investments Ltd v Commissioner of Taxation; Hua Wang Bank Berhad v Commissioner of Taxation

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The High Court has heard two appeal against a decision of the Full Federal Court on corporate residency for the purposes of tax assessments. Section 6(1) of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (Cth) provides that a company is resident in Australia for tax purposes if it is either incorporated in Australia or if it carries on business in Australia and has either its central management and control in Australia or its voting power controlled by shareholders who are Australian residents. The appellant companies were all incorporated outside of Australia and ultimately owned by two Cayman Islands companies. Borgas, a businessman based in Switzerland, was the sole shareholder in the Cayman Islands holding companies and a director of each of the appellant companies, and was presented as the owner of the companies. The Commissioner challenged the companies’ claims that they were not residents in Australia for tax purposes. The primary judge found that Gould, a Sydney-based accountant, was the true owner of one of the Cayman Island companies and its appointor, holding the power to appoint Continue reading →

Castle v The Queen; Bucca v The Queen

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The High Court has allowed an appeal from the Full Court of the South Australian Supreme Court on admissions and discreditable conduct evidence. Castle and Bucca were convicted by a jury of murdering McDonald, Castle’s former partner, who was shot while sitting in a car driven by Castle. The prosecution’s case was that Castle and Bucca arranged the shooting, with Bucca hiding in the back seat. The defence for Castle contended that the shooter was another person, Gange, who had crept into the car through the car boot, unbeknownst to Castle, and shot McDonald. At trial Pascoe, an associate of Castle and Bucca, gave evidence that Bucca had shown handguns to her father months before the shooting, and that Bucca had said to her father after the shooting that ‘he didn’t mean to do it’. M gave evidence of a conversation between Castle and Bucca on the night of the shooting planning to meet and confront McDonald, and that while Gange had left that night he returned home before before the shooting occurred. Telephone tower records suggest that Bucca and Castle were at the scene of the shooting, Continue reading →

Van Ryn v The Queen

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The High Court has made orders by consent between the parties, allowing an appeal against a decision of the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on the sentencing of paedophiles. The defendant pled guilty to a series of child sexual assaults committed between 2004 and 2014, and was sentenced in the New South Wales District Court to an aggregate term of 13 years imprisonment. The Crown appealed against the sentence, contending that it was manifestly inadequate, as demonstrated by errors in the judge’s assessment of the sentence. The NSWCCA allowed the Crown’s appeal, concluding that the sentencing judge did make a number of errors that may reflect the inadequacy, specifically in making no finding on the objective seriousness of the offending, and not properly appreciating the importance of deterrence, making the sentence inadequate. The NSWCCA also noted that even if those errors did not ’cause’ the inadequacy, the sentence was plainly unjust, Continue reading →

AAR15 v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection

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The High Court has made orders by consent between the parties, allowing an appeal against a decision of the Federal Court on fact findings on the current status of ethnic conflicts. The applicant, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, sought refugee protection on the basis of his membership of the Kasai-Luba ethnic group, which he alleged was subject to persecution by the Katangan-Lunda group. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal concluded that on the country information before it the applicant did not face a real chance of serious harm due to his ethnicity, but cited only a 2006 International Crisis Group report which referred only to ‘tensions’, and did not cite or refer to a number of later reports from various bodies which illustrated risks of genocide, war crimes and ongoing ethnic conflict. A single-judge Federal Court rejected the Continue reading →

Timbercorp Finance Pty Ltd (in liq) v Collins; Timbercorp Finance Pty Ltd (in liq) v Tomes

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The High Court has dismissed two appeals against a decision of the Victorian Court of Appeal on the operation of Anshun estoppels — which prevents a party asserting a claim or raising an issue of fact or law if that claim/issue was so connected to the subject matter of an earlier proceeding that it was unreasonable in the context of that first proceeding to not have raised it then — in the context of individual members of an unsuccessful group proceeding. (On the statutory scheme for group proceedings see Supreme Court Act 1986 (Vic) pt 4A.) The appellants are liquidators of companies that were part of the Timbercorp Group and were incorporated to provide loans to investors in forestry projects. The respondents applied for these loans between in 2008, became part of a group proceeding brought by investors after Timbercorp collapsed in 2009. When the group proceeding was rejected, Continue reading →

Comcare v Martin

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The High Court has allowed an appeal against a decision of the Full Federal Court on worker’s compensation for the aggravation of a mental condition as a result of reasonable administrative action. After the applicant was bullied and harassed by her supervisor and later denied a permanent position under a different supervisor by a panel that included her current and prospective supervisor, she was diagnosed with an ‘adjustment disorder’ that rendered her unfit for work. Sections 5A and 5B of the Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth) provide that Continue reading →

Blank v Commissioner of Taxation

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The High Court has dismissed an appeal from a judgment of the Full Federal Court on the taxation of income from employee profit participation arrangements. The appellant, a senior executive at a commodities firm, received a salary package that included a profit participation arrangement which paid him a lump sum of $160mil payable in several instalments, payable after he left his role (the Incentive Profit Participation Plan or ‘IPPA’). The international holding company was incorporated in Switzerland, and the IPPA operated in the form of a Genussscheine or ‘profit sharing certificate’. The central issue was whether this amount was ordinary income and thus part of the appellant’s assessable income under s 6-5 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth). A majority of the FCAFC held that it was, and rejected the appellant’s claims that the rights under the IPPAs were a Continue reading →

News: Delay anticipated in High Court challenge to Senators

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Eagle eyed readers of the UK Supreme Court’s twitter page will notice a couple of contrasts to the High Court of Australia:

 

First, the United Kingdom’s apex court is on Twitter; Australia’s High Court is yet to enter the modern world of social media. Second, the Court’s twitter stream actually replies to public queries, including confirming @aforlonehope’s query that the coming 11-judge Brexit hearing will make UK procedural history. Third, up until now, the UK’s apex court has never held a hearing that involves all of the courts’ judges.

While most major hearings in Australia’s High Court involve five of the Court’s seven judges, the Court typically sits ‘en banc’ – i.e. with all of its seven judges – for all constitutional cases and occasionally for other significant cases. Continue reading →

News: Senator Culleton’s ‘dark cloud hanging over the High Court’

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Those interested in federal politics have spent the past couple of days pondering the possibility that two senators elected at the recent election were disqualified on various grounds and the possible outcomes of proceedings in the High Court potentially raising those matters. One of those senators, One Nation’s Ron Culleton, gave an interview yesterday, which reportedly included the following statement:

Under Section 33 of the constitution, writs need to be named in the name of the Queen and that clearly hasn’t been happening. So when the media jumps on this and say there’s a dark cloud myself, I would say there is a dark cloud hanging over the High Court. Until the answer comes back (advice from the Senate), I’m not sure I’m going to participate in any High Court jurisdiction. If I do, I will represent myself.

Those following up on this statement would soon discover that s. 33 of the Constitution refers to writs, but not ones from the High Court:

Whenever a vacancy happens in the House of Representatives, the Speaker shall issue his writ for the election of a new member, or if there is no Speaker or if he is absent from the Commonwealth the Governor-General in Council may issue the writ.

Section 33 is actually concerned with casual vacancies in the House of Representatives (which are resolved by by-election.) Vacancies in Senator Culleton’s upper house are dealt with by s. 15 of the Constitution, which makes no mention of writs (as such vacancies are filled by state parliaments.) Neither constitutional provision includes any requirement that process should be in the name of the Queen.

However, it is likely that Senator Culleton was actually referring to s. 33, not of the Constitution, but of the High Court of Australia Act 1979:

All writs, commissions and process issued from the High Court shall be:
(a) in the name of the Queen;
(b) under the seal of the Court…; and
(c) signed by… the Chief Executive and Principal Registrar…

In fact, Senator Culleton’s first parliamentary question, a week after an action was filed against him, concerned this very section: Continue reading →