The High Court has now released its business list for its sitting in the middle two weeks of October.The delayed publication is likely due to the recent vacation of a hearing date for a trust dispute involving Gina Rinehart and the settlement of the constitutional challenge to the Murray/Darling Royal Commission, both cases that had previously been scheduled for hearing during those two weeks. Although there are eight matters listed, in reality there are only three the Court now says it plans to hear:

• Clubb v Edwards; Preston v Avery are two criminal appeals raising constitutional challenges to laws in the ACT and Victoria creating ‘zones’ around abortion providers that bar some sorts of behaviour. The cases are high profile ones with seven Attorneys-General intervening and four further parties recently given leave to act as friends of the court.
• Grajewski v DPP (NSW) likewise concerns the law about protesting, but here it is the statutory interpretation issue of whether the action of a person suspending himself from machinery counts as the offence of damaging property.
• ASIC v Lewski; ASIC v Wooldridge; ASIC v Butler; ASIC v Jaques; ASIC v Clarke are civil penalty proceedings against five directors of a failed aged care and retirement trust concerning whether they breached their duties when they amended the trust’s constitution.

The recent changes mean that one constitutional case has been replaced by another, and Grajewski has replaced Rinehart, leaving the scheduled workload unchanged at three cases. While three matters in a sitting is notably fewer than usual, it does happen occasionally. Indeed, it happened last October, when the Court spent its first sitting week hearing the Citizenship 7 case, and its second hearing two quite short matters.

The scheduling of the coming October sitting is more unusual, however. Continue reading →