The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Tajjour v. New South Wales (2014) 254 CLR 508. See also Kruger v. Commonwealth (1997) 190 

CLR 1, 157 (Gummow J).

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358 

Rosalind Dixon and Gabrielle Appleby

explicitly contemplated by the federal structure of the Constitution. And in 

Kruger, where the issue was one of discrimination against Aboriginal and 

Torres Strait Islander Peoples as part of a policy of forced removal of chil-

dren from their families, the Court held that the text of the Constitution did 

not support the implication of any general principle of substantive equality. 

‘Whatever may be said of the policy which underlay the impugned provi-

sions’, Brennan CJ held, it was ‘impossible to derive a restriction of substan-

tive equality to control the legislative power conferred by section 122’: there 

is ‘nothing in the text and structure of the Constitution’ to support such a 

limitation.

65

 Justice Dawson likewise stressed that ‘a doctrine of equality in 

the operation of laws made under the Constitution [does not] appear from the 

Constitution’ itself, and that, in his view, it was impermissible for the Court 

‘to read into the fact of agreement any implications which do not appear from 

the document upon which agreement was reached’.

66

 Justice Gaudron held 

that there was ‘no room for any implication of a constitutional right to equality 

beyond that deriving from Chapter III’,

67

 and Gummow J that ‘in the absence 

of an anchor in the constitutional text it was [too] a large step to extract from 

the whole corpus of the common law a “general doctrine of legal equality” 

and treat it as constitutionally entrenched’.

68

Even in the context of ‘hybrid’ rights cases, that is, cases which involve poten-

tial limits on federal power in the name of individual rather than state rights, 

such as sections 51(xxvi) and 51(xxxi), the Court has been reluctant to iden-

tify any form of implied limitation on Commonwealth legislative power.

69

 In 

Kartinyeri, the Court was asked to consider the scope of the Commonwealth’s 

power, under section 51(xxvi), to make laws with respect to ‘the people of any 

race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’. The Court was 

urged to construe the power as limited to a power to pass laws for the ‘benefit’ 

of the Aboriginal race. Arguments to this effect were made both on the basis 

of evolving community standards on international human rights law, and the 

amendment to the Constitution in 1967, which aimed to expand the rights 

of Indigenous Australians by including them within the scope of the power, 

or deleting previous language in section 51(xxvi) providing that ‘race’ for this 

purpose was any race ‘other than the aboriginal race in any State’. Several 

members of the Court found it unnecessary to address this question, but of 

65 

(1997) 190 CLR 1, 44–5.

66 

Ibid.

, 67.

67 

Ibid.

, 113.

68 

Ibid.

, 154.

69 

See e.g., discussion in Erin Delaney, ‘Justifying Power: Federalism, Immigration, and “Foreign 

Affairs”’ (2013) 8 Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Policy 153.

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Constitutional Implications in Australia 

359

those justices who did consider the issue, a majority found that there was sim-

ply insufficient basis in the text of the Constitution for inferring such a limited 

view of the power.

70

 This was despite a very clear shift in other constitutional 

jurisdictions and internationally toward recognition of a principle of racial 

non-discrimination.

71

 It is also arguably one reason why debate continues in 

Australia over the need further to amend the Constitution to provide constitu-

tional recognition to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

72

 

12.3.  Explaining the Resistance

What explains this opposition by Australia’s High Court to the drawing of 

rights-based constitutional implications, when in a structural context so 

many aspects of the Australian constitutional order depend on constitutional 

implications?