Organised Crime Control and the Promise of Procedural Fairness: Condon v Pompano Pty Ltd

Posted on 22 July 2013 by Cheryl Saunders

By Laureate Professor Cheryl Saunders AO

Condon v Pompano Pty Ltd [2013] HCA 7 is the latest in a line of cases invoking the Kable principle to challenge atypical judicial processes mandated by State Parliaments for the purposes of crime control. In issue this time was the Criminal Organisation Act 2009 (Qld). The High Court challenge was brought by the Finks Motorcycle Club and Pompano Pty Ltd (said to be linked to the Finks’ Gold Coast ‘chapter’), bodies that the Queensland police claim are involved in organised crime.

In three of the earlier cases, organised crime control laws had been held to be incompatible with the maintenance of the integrity of State courts; a federal constitutional requirement since 1996, when the High Court struck down a statute permitting the NSW Supreme Court to order the continued detention of a particular soon-to-be-released prisoner, Geoffrey Wayne Kable (International Finance Trust Co Ltd v New South Wales Crime Commission [2009] HCA 49; South Australia v Totani [2010] HCA 39; Wainohu v New South Wales [2011] HCA 24).

In another two earlier cases the laws had been construed so as to preserve their validity (Gypsy Jokers Motorcycle Club Inc v Commissioner of Police [2008] HCA 4; K-Generation Pty Ltd v Liquor Licensing Court [2009] HCA 4). The result was a messy jurisprudence, in which different judges relied on different features of the challenged legislation to draw what sometimes appeared to be fine lines between what was acceptable and what was not.

In Pompano a High Court of six Justices unanimously upheld the validity of the Queensland Act, with some important variations in their reasons. The case offers some insights into the significance of procedural fairness as a defining characteristic of a court. For the moment, however, given differences in emphases amongst the six judges, the scope of the Kable principle remains as indeterminate as ever, exacerbating the inevitable difficulty of predicting its application in practice. Continue reading →

Unreasonable Refusal to Adjourn: Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Li

Posted on 17 July 2013 by Sara Dehm

By Sara Dehm and Cait Storr

Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Li Case Page

The administration of migration and asylum applications is one of the most politicised powers of the Commonwealth government. Not only are the administrative decisions of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship frequently on the front pages, but the processes of appeal — via the Refugee and Migration Review Tribunals through to the Federal and ultimately the High Court — can also expose the sometimes hazy character of the separation of powers in Australia.

Judicial review of administrative decisions on migration and refugee status is now one of the key drivers of Australian administrative law. For instance, the question of how much scope the courts have to review the decisions of the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Migration Review Tribunal, particularly in the exercise of their respective statutory discretions as delegated under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), has generated a significant line of High Court cases on procedural fairness and the fair hearing rule, from Eshetu through Miah to SZGUR. The legislature has made numerous attempts to limit the application of common law principles of procedural fairness to various delegated powers of the Migration Review Tribunal. Whether and to what extent common law principles of unreasonableness apply to such delegated decision-making has emerged as an area of key contention in these cases.

The decision in Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v Li [2013] HCA 18 adds to this small but growing body of law which serves to refine the principles, operation and scope of what is unreasonable conduct of decision-makers within the increasingly politicised statutory patchwork that the Migration Act 1958 has become. The UK case of Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation [1947] EWCA Civ 1 is frequently taken as the departure point for determining the standard of ‘unreasonableness’ for courts and tribunals. In Wednesbury, Lord Greene MR famously stated that the courts can intervene where a decision by a Minister or government body ‘is so unreasonable that no reasonable authority could ever have come to it’, a definition frequently critiqued as circular. Australian courts have seemed reluctant to either reject Wednesbury reasonableness because of this uncertainty or to expand its application. Continue reading →