The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Constitutional Implications in Australia 

349

 limitation on state legislative power in response to the extraordinary Commu-

nity Protection Act 1994 (NSW). The Act empowered the Supreme Court of 

New South Wales to issue a preventative detention order against Mr Kable, 

and no other person. Justices Toohey, Gaudron, McHugh and Gummow 

rejected the argument that fundamental common law rights would restrict 

the breadth of plenary state legislative power. However, they accepted  

that there was an implied limitation on state power that protected the exist-

ence and structural integrity of state courts in Chapter III of the Constitution.  

This was based on the integrated nature of the Australian judicial system, in 

which appeals are available from state Supreme Courts to the High Court 

under section 73(ii) and the provision in sections 71 and 77(iii) that state courts 

may be vested with federal judicial power.

20

 The Kable principle restricts  

state legislative power in two ways: state Parliaments cannot abolish their 

Supreme Court, so as to frustrate the integrated judicial system, and they  

cannot interfere with their courts so as to create ‘two grades or qualities of 

justice, depending on whether judicial power is exercised by State courts or 

federal courts created by the Parliament’.

21

 This second restriction was framed 

in terms of ‘incompatibility’ with the role of the state courts in the federal 

system as institutions capable of being vested with, and exercising, federal 

judicial power.

The establishment of the Kable principle gave rise to a number of chal-

lenges testing the scope of this new implied limit, including challenges to 

the preventative detention of serious sexual offenders,

22

 the appointment of 

acting judicial officers,

23

 and the remuneration arrangements of Magistrates.

24

 

The Court’s creation of the limitation undoubtedly resulted in more cautious 

state legislative drafting in relation to their courts.

25

 The High Court, however, 

would not be drawn to extend the principle outside the extraordinary facts of 

Kable itself until the 2009 case of International Finance Trust Co v. New South 

Wales Crime Commission,

26

 in which the Court struck down part of the New 

South Wales Criminal Assets Recovery Act 1990 (NSW) that relied on ex parte 

hearings. Up until this point, while the Court sometimes used the principle 

20 

Kable v. Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW) (1996) 189 CLR 51, 102 (Gaudron J).

21 

Ibid.

, 103.

22 

Fardon v. Attorney-General (Qld) (2004) 223 CLR 575.

23 

Forge v. Australian Securities and Investments Commission (2006) 228 CLR 45.

24 

North Australian Aboriginal Legal Service Inc v. Bradley (2004) 218 CLR 146.

25 

South Australia v. Totani (2010) 242 CLR 1, 95 [245] (Heydon J).

26 

(2009) 240 CLR 319. In this time the Queensland Court of Appeal did strike down a criminal 

confiscation statute using the principle: Re Criminal Proceeds Confiscation Act 2002 (Qld) 

[2003] QCA 249.

---

350 

Rosalind Dixon and Gabrielle Appleby

to construe state statutory schemes so as to mitigate their worst excesses, it was 

reluctant to deploy the principle to strike down legislation.

27

Since International Finance Trust Co, the High Court has upheld a number 

of  Kable challenges, which have in turn shaped important aspects of state 

law and order policy. Many of these challenges have arisen in the context of 

the states’ anti-organised crime policies, which the states have had to revise 

substantially following the decisions. In South Australia v. Totani, the Court 

struck down part of South Australia’s anti-organised crime control order 

regime that required the Magistrates Court to issue a control order against 

a member of a criminal organisation if that organisation had been declared 

such by the Attorney-General. In Wainohu, the Court struck down the New 

South Wales control order regime because of its inclusion of a provision that 

relieved judges of the duty to provide reasons for decisions to declare organisa-

tions criminal. In the subsequent decision of Condon v. Pompano, the Court 

upheld the validity of the Queensland control order regime, which has now 

largely been replicated in many states.

28

Since  Kable, the Court’s formulation of the limits of the principle has 

evolved, and the protections afforded to the institutional integrity of state 

courts are now framed by reference to maintaining the defining character-

istics of ‘courts’, as referred to in the Constitution.

29

 This represents a move 

to more closely ground the implied limits of the Kable principle in the text 

of the Constitution. Framed in this way, in Kirk, the Court struck down state 

legislation that removed the supervisory jurisdiction of the New South Wales 

Supreme Court, effectively extending the express constitutional protections 

of access to the courts in section 75(v) of the Constitution for review of the 

actions of Commonwealth officers to the state sphere.

30

 This has had funda-

mental implications for the use of privative clauses at the state level.

The Boilermakers’ and Kable principles are both implied structural limi-

tations on Commonwealth and state legislative power to interfere with the 

courts, judicial process and, at the federal level, the bestowal of judicial power 

on non-judicial bodies. While they may have had some beneficial effects for 

individual rights – such as in relation to due process accorded to individuals in 

judicial proceedings and protection from arbitrary executive detention – they 

have explicitly and repeatedly been framed as structural guarantees, with any 

rights-benefits being incidental and narrow.

27 

Such as in Gypsy Jokers Motorcycle Club Incorporated Inc v. Commissioner of Police (WA) 

(2008) 234 CLR 532; K-Generation Pty Ltd v. Liquor Licensing Court (2009) 237 CLR 501.

28