New ALRC President

On 10 July 2023, the Hon Justice Mordecai Bromberg commenced his five year term as President of the ALRC.

Justice Bromberg has been a judge of the Federal Court of Australia since December 2009. He has significant experience in the leadership of legal research and expertise across a broad range of practice areas, including industrial law, personal injuries, commercial law, product liability, constitutional law, administrative law, and trade practices. We look forward to working with Justice Bromberg as President.

We are grateful to the Hon Justice Mark Moshinsky for his service as Acting President and look forward to his continued involvement as a part-time Commissioner of the ALRC.

Seeking Submissions

The ALRC is seeking submissions from the public in response to the proposals and question raised in Financial Services Legislation: Interim Report C (ALRC Report 140).

Interim Report C contains proposals for restructuring and reframing financial services legislation to make it easier to navigate and understand. The Interim Report also contains a detailed outline of how the ALRC’s reforms may be implemented and the potential benefits of implementation. The ALRC anticipates the reform ideas in Interim Report C would benefit consumers, industry, and regulated entities by making the law easier to navigate and understand, in turn making the law easier and less costly to comply with and enforce.

Submissions close 26 July 2023.

WEBINAR

Maximising rights in religious educational institutions: International perspectives

24 August 2023, 5.00–6.00PM AEST

Countries around the world have grappled with the question of how anti-discrimination laws should apply to religious educational institutions. Different countries approach this task in different ways, leading to a range of legal frameworks informed by their own histories and institutional structures.

Join the ALRC, Wolters Kluwer, and leading international experts in human rights and equality law for a live webinar to discuss international perspectives on maximising the realisation of overlapping rights in religious educational institutions. Key questions for discussion include:

How can overlapping rights — including children’s rights, the rights to freedom of religion, non-discrimination, education, and privacy — be maximised?
How can a community of faith be fostered while respecting equality obligations in education?
How does institutional autonomy interact with individual religious freedom in the education context?
Speakers:

Professor Carolyn Evans (Moderator), Vice-Chancellor and President, Griffith University
Professor Lucy Vickers, Professor of Law, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Professor Heiner Bielefeldt, Professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Policy, University of Erlangen, Germany. Former UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief

Forthcoming: Background paper

In this forthcoming background paper, the ALRC examines the legal approaches taken in different countries to protections against discrimination in the context of religious educational institutions. The paper explores anti-discrimination laws, and exceptions to those laws for religious educational institutions, in several countries as important context for the Religious Discrimination and Anti-Discrimination Law Inquiry’s Final Report. Comparing different legislative approaches helps inform ways in which the policy objectives in the Inquiry Terms of Reference might be met.

Webinar Recording now available

Why does the structure and framing of legislation matter?

What are the problems with the current structure of Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act?

How can financial services legislation be made easier to navigate and understand?

On Monday 10 July 2023, the ALRC hosted a webinar to discuss Interim Report C and what it means for users of corporations and financial services legislation. Watch the recording to hear about the ALRC’s proposals for reforming Chapter 7 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and how they may be implemented.

Pressed for time?

Take a few minutes to read Ellie Filkin and Christopher Ash’s short article on Interim Report C:

‘The sense of dread when opening a messy cupboard is the same feeling that confronts many users of Chapter 7. Interim Report C is, fundamentally, about how the cupboard that is Chapter 7 could be better organised so that users can find what they need without having to go through every box of old CDs and cassette tapes.’

ALRC DataHub — Take a deeper dive

The ALRC DataHub offers insights into Australia’s statute book and reflects our commitment to identifying, analysing, and understanding complexity in legislation and the law more generally.

Currently the DataHub includes 16 data sets that can be analysed by researchers to generate novel insights into Australian law and legal history. These data sets cover all Commonwealth Acts and regulations ever made, as well as other forms of delegated legislation. The ALRC has published seven case studies to show how the data can be used, including on lawmaking during the COVID-19 pandemic, issues of Law, War, and Peace, and a history of the Australian statute book.

For another look at what’s possible when using legislation as data, check out the NSW Data Analytics Centre’s Legislation Twin. The Legislation Twin site ‘provides visualisations of cross references and definitions in NSW legislation, provides a keyword search of NSW legislation and shows the connections between members of parliament, ministers and department’.