Peter Dombrovskis, ‘Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Southwest Tasmania’ (1983).

By Martin Clark

Commonwealth v Tasmania Case Page

On 1 July 1983, the High Court sat in Brisbane to hand down its decision in Commonwealth v Tasmania [1983] HCA 21. Popularly known as the Tasmanian Dam case, the decision is a landmark in Australian constitutional and environmental law. On 28 June 2013, 30 years after the decision was handed down, the Melbourne Law School hosted a symposium ‘Turning Points: Remembering Commonwealth v Tasmania (1983) 158 CLR 1’, to commemorate and reflect on the significance of the Tasmanian Dam case for Australian society, the environment and Australian law. The private symposium was convened by Dr Ann Genovese (Melbourne Law School). It brought together significant figures involved in the case, academic lawyers, historians and environmental activists, and the papers presented will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Griffith Law Review. For more on the Turning Points symposium, see here.

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