Protections from statutory encroachment

Australian Constitution

18.7       The Australian Constitution gives important powers of judicial review to the High Court which cannot be taken away by statute. Section 75(v) of the Constitution provides that the High Court shall have original jurisdiction in all matters ‘in which a writ of Mandamus or prohibition or an injunction is sought against an officer of the Commonwealth’.^[7] Chief Justice Gleeson said that this provision ‘secures a basic element of the rule of law’:

The jurisdiction of the Court to require officers of the Commonwealth to act within the law cannot be taken away by Parliament. Within the limits of its legislative capacity, which are themselves set by the Constitution, Parliament may enact the law to which officers of the Commonwealth must conform. If the law imposes a duty, mandamus may issue to compel performance of that duty. If the law confers power or jurisdiction, prohibition may issue to prevent excess of power or jurisdiction. An injunction may issue to restrain unlawful behaviour. Parliament may create, and define, the duty, or the power, or the jurisdiction, and determine the content of the law to be obeyed. But it cannot deprive this Court of its constitutional jurisdiction to enforce the law so enacted.^[8]

18.8       In light of this Constitutional power, courts may give privative clauses a much narrower interpretation than the text of the provision suggests. So much narrower, in fact, that such clauses may sometimes be largely or even entirely deprived of effect.

Principle of legality

18.9       The principle of legality provides further protection to judicial review.^[9] When interpreting a statute, courts will presume that Parliament did not intend to restrict access to the courts, unless this intention was made unambiguously clear.^[10] For example, in Magrath v Goldsborough Mort & Co Ltd (1932), Dixon J said:

The general rule is that statutes are not to be interpreted as depriving superior Courts of power to prevent an unauthorized assumption of jurisdiction unless an intention to do so appears clearly and unmistakably.^[11]

18.10   In Public Service Association (SA) v Federated Clerks’ Union (1991), Dawson and Gaudron JJ said:

Privative clauses … are construed by reference to a presumption that the legislature does not intend to deprive the citizen of access to the courts, other than to the extent expressly stated or necessarily to be implied.^[12]

18.11   Dawson and Gaudron JJ went on to say:

Thus, a clause which is expressed only in general terms may be construed so as to preserve the ordinary jurisdiction of a superior court to grant relief by way of the prerogative writs of mandamus or prohibition in the case of jurisdictional error constituted by failure to exercise jurisdiction or by an act in excess of jurisdiction.^[13]

18.12   Hockey v Yelland (1984) also concerned a privative clause—specifically, a Queensland statute that provided that determinations by a medical board ‘shall be final and conclusive’ and the claimant ‘shall have no right to have any of those matters heard and determined by an Industrial Magistrate, or, by way of appeal or otherwise, by any Court or judicial tribunal whatsoever’.^[14] Gibbs CJ said that this provision did not ‘oust the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to issue writs of certiorari’:

It is a well recognized principle that the subject’s right of recourse to the courts is not to be taken away except by clear words…. The provision that the board’s determination shall be final and conclusive is not enough to exclude certiorari… The words of the further provision… are in my opinion quite inapt to take away from the Court its power to issue certiorari for error of law on the face of the record. ^[15]