Brownlie v Environment Protection Authority of New South Wales
[1993] HCATrans 269
~
~ ',;-.,'r
IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA
Office of the Registry
Sydney No S82 of 1992 B e t w e e n -
GEOFFREY ROBERT BROWNLIE
Applicant
and
ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION
AUTHORITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
Respondent
Application for special leave
to appeal
MASON CJ
BRENNAN J
DEANE J
DAWSON J
TOOHEY J
GAUDRON J
McHUGH J
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
AT CANBERRA.ON FRIDAY, 10 SEPTEMBER 1993, AT 10.20 AM
Copyright in the High Court of Australia
| Brownlie | 1 | 10/9/93 |
| MR B.W. WALKER: | May it please Your Honours, I appear with |
my learned friend, MR P.W. LARKIN, for the
applicant. (instructed by Cowl~y Hearne)
MR K. MASON, QC, Solicitor-General for the State of New
South Wales: I appear with my learned friend, MS H.G. MURRELL, for the respondent. (instructed
by the Crown Solicitor for New South Wales)
MR H. BURMESTER: If it please the Court, I appear for the
Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, to support
the application by the Environment Protection
Authority of New South Wales. (instructed by the Australian Government Solicitor)
MR D. GRAHAM, QC, Solicitor-General for the State of
Victoria: May it please the Court, I appear with my learned friend, MR M.D. MURPHY, for the
Attorney-General of the State of Victoria,
intervening in support of the respondent.
(instructed by the Victorian Government Solicitor)
| MR B.M. SELWAY: | If it please the Court, I appear with my |
friend, MS G.L. EBBECK, for the Attorneys-General
of the States of South Australia and Tasmania,intervening in support of the respondent.
(instructed by the Crown Solicitors for South
Australia and Tasmania)
MASON CJ: Yes, Mr Walker.
| MR WALKER: | If it please Your Honours, this Court in Port |
MacDonnell, 168 CLR 374, noted what it described as
the problem, which was not presented by that case,
of what it described as competing State laws
enacted by States both of which had what was
described as a real connection with the matter in
hand.
This case, as described by the Court of present an example of the laws of two States,
Criminal Appeal in New South Wales, does, we say,
Queensland and New South Wales, which by their
terms and in their operation, that is, on the Court
of Criminal Appeal's view of the New South Wales
laws operation, affect the same person, namely,
Mr Brownlie, and the same transaction, namely, his
conduct in applying insecticide to his cotton crop
in Queensland.
It is our submission that this case presents
for this Court the possibility to consider the
problem referred to in Port MacDonnell in the
particular, and we say sharp focus, of competing
criminal statutes. Statutes which, in our
submission, are properly characterized as laws
| Brownlie | 10/9/93 |
which render certain conduct punishable as the most
direct and coercive means by which civilized
governments, according to the rule of law, seek to
guide or regulate conduct within their reach.
We say that the approach taken by New South
Wales in its legislation, that is, by
characterizing its legislation as a law which may
properly punish Mr Brownlie's conduct in
Queensland, adds a gloss to the maxim, which we
submit still has real force and vigor, all crime is
local. We say it does so by relying on a supposed doctrine of State interest, which we submit this
Court should reject in the form proposed by NewSouth Wales, as one which may permit, according to
circumstances, some crime to be more or less local
than other crime or, in the particular context ofthe legislative competence of the States, would
permit some States' legislation, by way of criminal
statute, to be more or less locally confined
according to circumstances.
For the reasons we would seek to develop,
those are arguments which, in our submission, are
anti-federal in their nature, that is, both their
expression and their consequence.
There are three arguments for which we seek
leave to appeal so as to challenge the decision of
the Court of Criminal Appeal. The first argumentis in two forms but in both forms it advances the
following proposition that, as a matter of
legislative competence by reason of Federation and
overreached itself in this case by claiming to render conduct of the kind carried out by
in particular sections 106, 107 and 108 of the
Mr Brownlie in Queensland punishable in New South
Wales.
There are two forms to the argument. The
broader form is that the New South Wales Parliament
regardless of whether Queensland has enacted laws lacks the power to enact a law with such a reach, which cover the same conduct. The second form is that the power of New South Wales to enact a law with this extraterritorial effect is subject to and must yield to the superior power of Queensland
which it has exercised to enact laws withintra-territorial effect covering the same conduct.
| McHUGH J: | What do you mean by extraterritorial effect? The |
pollution takes place in New South Wales.
| MR WALKER: | For reasons which we will develop in a very |
short time, it is not at all clear that it may
confidently be stated that the pollution as defined
| Brownlie | 3 | 10/9/93 |
by the New South Wales statute takes place in New
South Wales. For reasons which we will develop, it
also takes place in Queensland.
But, the extraterritoriality which we
attribute to this law has, of course, nothing to do
with a choice of law problem, or the question ofwhat law the New South Wales statute should apply,
that is not an extraterritorial effect. The
extraterritoriality is, with respect, to the
legislative reach to regulate conduct outside the
State, by a general criminal statute as opposed to
a purely intra-territorial law that is obviously
within the legislative competence of New South
Wales to enact, to regulate the private adjustments
of rights and obligations, or to regulate the
procedure for dispute resolution by reference,
amongst other things, to out of State elements.
| McHUGH J: | Does that mean if somebody is standing in |
Queensland shot somebody dead in New South Wales,
that New South Wales could not charge that person
with murder?
| MR WALKER: | No. | We distinguish this case, and cases which |
would be similar to it, from cases of that kind by
drawing what might be called, Your Honour, a grim
analogy with an American approach in civil law. In the American jurisprudence on full faith and credit, as well as on due process, the 14th Amendment, one finds justification for the subjection of out of State actors to a State's laws by factors including their voluntary entering into the stream of influence of that State, the obvious
example being someone who, from out of State, seeks
to trade into a State, or in a State.
The grim analogy is that somebody who, with
the requisite intent necessary for the offence,
fires a projectile across a border plainly intends
to be having the sole effect in the other State.
Such cases are clearly cases where dividing lines,
having no breadth, must still be given meaning in law and, we say, clearly it is in the interest and
proper scope of the State where the person is
killed, having been struck by the bullet, to
legislate so as to render criminal what might
otherwise be called "conduct" in another State,
because in that case the conduct has been done with
the intention, and with the practically inevitable result, of having its sole effect, or at least its major intended effect, in the other State.
So that cases where it can be said that the out of State actor has subjected themselves
according to a rule of, or a notion of,
argumentative fairness to control of the conduct by
| Brownlie | 10/9/93 |
the State in which that conduct's intended effect
happens is to be distinguished from cases of the
present kind where it would be absurd for anyone to
suggest that Mr Brownlie intended to spend money on
endosulfan in order to kill fish in Queensland
where, in fact, his intentions have been defeated
by it being washed off his crop and into New South
Wales eventually.
BRENNAN J: | Mr Walker, you speak of conduct but if you are analysing conduct which is incriminated, are you |
| speaking of the physical act, the circumstances | |
| attended upon the doing of the physical act, or the result achieved by the doing of the physical act in the circumstances? | |
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour, for the purposes of our argument |
when we use the expression "conduct", and I am
grateful to Your Honour for reminding me to define
it, we are referring to the physical act
acknowledging that in the case of omissions that is
physical in a slightly different sense.
BRENNAN J: | Then what you are saying is that irrespective of the result effected by a physical act, the |
| legislative competence is limited to the | |
| proscribing of the physical act. |
| MR WALKER: | No, no. | Our argument says nothing about the |
propriety of enacting laws in the familiar and time
honoured form which attaches criminal liability to
acts with certain consequences.
BRENNAN J: But you are speaking in terms of murder and
using the term "intent" as the distinguishing
feature?
| MR WALKER: | Yes. |
| BRENNAN J: | So you are looking at an intended result as |
enlivening power but not an unintended result?
| MR WALKER: | That is one of the distinctions we draw. | We |
also - for the purpose of the rifle shot across a border or the letter bomb posted in Brisbane with an address for delivery in Sydney or a conspiracy in premises in Queensland to cheat people in
New South Wales. It is not only the intended
location of the effect upon which rely to justify
what would be the ordinary expectation of
legislative competence in New South Wales to punish
such acts but it is also, in the case of those acts
with a physical connection, the fact that for all
practical purposes that result is inevitably going
to happen in the other State. In other words, if the intention is achieved, the result must, in the
ordinary course, happen in the other State.
| Brownlie | 5 | 10/9/93 |
| BRENNAN J: | Does your argument come to this: | legislative |
scope depends upon probability of result and
intention?
| MR WALKER: | No, Your Honour. | Probability is too weak a word |
for the quality that we describe as practical
inevitability. Probability would permit, we say, a
tenuous nexus between the actor and the
psychological state, whether it be intention or carelessness does not matter for the purpose of
this argument, which is discordant with the notion
of criminal liability at great territorial removes.
For example, probability may well render, on
the argument upon which New South Wales succeeded
below, a downstream territory, such as in this
case, South Australia, the dominant legislature for
controlling certain conduct in a watershed.
Australia has huge watersheds. The watershed of rivers which are vital to the well-being of
South Australia, in which South Australia has the
clearest and most obvious political interest, will
extend far beyond South Australia to Victoria, New
South Wales and Queensland.
We say that if mere probability, let alone
possibility, were a test by which South Australia
could justify the criminalizing of agricultural
practices in Queensland, which are permitted by
Queensland's legislature, then there would have
been, as I say, the assertion of, in that case
literally but in other cases figuratively, a
downstream dominance which grants more power in
territorial reach the further away, either
literally or figuratively, a legislature finds
itself from the location of the original act. Itis for that reason that examples which immediately
spring to mind, such as the rifle shot across a
border or a letter bomb in a mail system which
usually delivers, is different from the
possibilities which may arise with pollution
offences, for example, where multifarious natural and human influences may intervene between the
original act and omission and the ramifications of
its effects in many different places thereafter. e We submit to Your Honours that intention is a
useful distinction because it is at the heartland
of a traditional concern in criminal law,
notwithstanding offences of strict liability, a
regard for intention and its effect on thecriminality of conduct is at the heart of the moral
purpose of criminal law, and we say that in terms
of a realistic nexus with effects, something
relatively intimate, which we chose to describe as
practical inevitability of effect, is one which
properly recognizes that people ought not to be
| Brownlie | 6 | 10/9/93 |
punished criminally for things which, for example,
would be regarded as far too remote to attract tort
liability because of the multifarious causal links
and ramifications necessary to be achieved in order
to link causally the act with the proscribed
effect. For those reasons, Your Honour, we do not
characterize the distinction we advance as turning
on probability.
Your Honours, could I move then to the second
argument - - -
DEANE J: If you bring in a reference to tort liability,
what would you say the position would be if your
client's activity had caused damage to A's property
in Queensland and B's property in New South Wales
and each had brought proceedings in negligence, A
under the law of Queensland, B under the law of New
South Wales?
MR WALKER: | Subject only to choice of law rules which, almost certainly in such an example, would have no |
| difference and would play no part in the argument, | |
| Mr Brownlie would be liable. | |
| DEANE J: | What is the difference, because there you have the |
tort law of Queensland saying that his act is
tortious and unlawful; you have the tort law of New
South Wales applying to his physical act and saying
it is tortious and unlawful by reason of the result
it produces in New South Wales?
| MR WALKER: | The difference, Your Honour, lies in the nature of criminal law and the governmental function of |
| DEANE J: | I follow that. | I was just querying your calling |
in aid a tort analogy, which you also did with
reference to the American cases.
MR WALKER: | Yes, and I should make it clear, though disavowal may not suffice, that we do not call in | aid the American cases which we have cited in our |
| written submissions, or those which we may refer to | ||
| in address or tort law generally, as being in any way directly applicable to our argument. In the course of the reasoning by which the results have | ||
| been reached in the various decisions to which we | ||
| refer and in the commentary about them, there are, | ||
| however, observations concerning the proper sphere of influence of legislation upon which we draw for | ||
| a completely distinct purpose, and we disavow any | ||
| in principle similarity between the tort adjustment of private rights and obligations, particularly at common law, though at statute in principle the |
| Brownlie | 10/9/93 |
same, and the criminal legislative competence which
is the subject of our argument.
McHUGH J: Supposing this particular statute had given a
private cause of action to a person who was
affected by pollution, would that person be
entitled to enforce the statute against yourclient?
| MR WALKER: | Yes, for the private tort. |
McHUGH J: But I thought the theory was that the duty that
the statutory cause of action proceeds on the basis that the duty is defined by the criminal liability.
MR WALKER: | No, Your Honour, we are not saying that the criminal statute of Queensland defines for all | |
| purposes that which is capable of judicial | ||
| adjudication and that which is not capable of judicial adjudication in Queensland or in other | ||
| ||
| liability, and we say that criminal statutes have | ||
| an intimate relation to the essence of a self-governing territory, and it is for those | ||
| reasons that we speak in terms of legislative | ||
| competence to control conduct in another State's | ||
| territory. |
McHUGH J: But the point I was making to you is: if there
is no criminal liability, there can be no private
right of action on the statute.
| MR WALKER: | We do not say that. | If the Queensland |
legislature had said nothing and in the case which
is this case, namely it has proscribed certain
conduct on certain terms, but a New South Wales
resident wished to sue at common law for damage
supposedly caused by conduct in Queensland, the
content of that criminal law, either the silence or
the enactment, in Queensland would have nothing to
say about the topic at all.
Similarly, if a New South Wales statute
provided a cause of action to persons whose
property in New South Wales was damaged and, on its
proper interpretation, that applied to damage
caused by out of State events, an interpretation
which we would respectfully submit is unsurprisingand very likely, then that too, we would say, has
nothing to do with and is not affected by anything
said by the legislature of Queensland by way of
regulating conduct with criminal sanctions.
What we say about the regulation of conduct by
criminal sanctions is that it is at the very heart
of the governmental function of a legislature
responsible to its electors for conduct, that which
| Brownlie | 10/9/93 |
is right and wrong conduct, in its territory in
order to control or guide conduct generally, as
opposed to those elements, be they facts or legal
rights and liabilities, which may as between
individuals on the facts of any particular case
give rise to rights to compensation or other
judicial relief. We say they are two entirely different spheres of governmental concern. Our target in our argument is the New South Wales Court
of Criminal Appeal's implicit assertion that New
South Wales' interest extends to governing conduct
in Queensland by criminal sanction in exactly the
same way as Queensland clearly has an interest in
governing conduct in its own territory by criminal
sanction.
| McHUGH J: | How do you deal with the illustration of a |
conspiracy in Queensland to import drugs into New
South Wales? There is no inevitability about that.
| MR WALKER: | I had hoped, Your Honour, to have dealt with it |
by the distinction I raised earlier, namely
intention and, for all practical purposes,
inevitability.
| McHUGH J: There is no inevitability. | The conduct may never |
be carried out.
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour may recall that I used the |
inevitability for those examples with what might be
called a physical connection. With conspiracy, the
analogy with the US civil cases of somebody being
bound by a legislature's commands and punishments
because of the entry into that legislature's
territory is very close. So, the nefarious
business intended by the conspiracy bears a very
close analogy, indeed perhaps a complete one, with
the out of State manufacturer who seeks to trade in
the State which legislates to impose liability andwe deal, therefore, with that case, very much by
reference to intention. In the sense that that
intention, not because of some magic quality of
that psychological State, but because that intention renders it appropriate that the person be
judged, be dealt with, according to the law
governing outcomes, where his outcome is intended.
In other words, there would be a total asymmetry for a person who intends to cheat
residents of Sydney to say that he ought to be
judged by the law governing the cheating of
residents of Brisbane.
McHUGH J: Could I ask you one final question: would your
client be guilty, on your theory of legislative
competence, if he had intended to pollute the New
South Wales river?
| Brownlie | 9 | 10/9/93 |
| MR WALKER: | Probably yes, depending upon the way in which |
the statute was framed.
| McHUGH J: | Even if it is a strict liability offence? |
MR WALKER: That is why I added the qualification.
Your Honour's question, in one sense - and I hope
Your Honour takes no disrespect from what I amabout to say - has nothing to do with the present
statute because this case has been run on the basis
that it is strict liability.
| McHUGH J: | I am assuming that, but what I putting to you is |
that - - -
| MR WALKER: | Yes, if the statute were a statute which |
punished the intentional launching of pollution
into New South Wales, then, for precisely the same
reasons as we seek to deal with rifle shots and
letter bombs and conspiracies for interstate fraud,
we would not merely concede but assert, for exactly
the same reasons and principles of a State's
governmental interest in regulating conduct and
outcomes in its own Territory, that that would be
covered, that would be competent.
| McHUGH J: | But it seems a strange doctrine that a State can |
protect itself against a result only when a State
decides to make the intention of the wrongdoer part
of the offence.
MR WALKER: | Your Honour, it is not a strange doctrine once one accepts the appropriateness of subjecting |
| people to laws of places where they intend either | |
| to take advantage of conditions in that place or to affect people in that place. That, of course, is a familiar form of argument in different but related | |
| areas. |
BRENNAN J: But your argument comes to this, does it, that
the distinction between power and no power depends
upon the distinction between intention to produce a
result and non-accidental production of a result?
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour, "non-accidental" does not have the |
same - - -
BRENNAN J: | I appreciate that, but it is the criminal standard, is it not? |
| MR WALKER: | Yes, Your Honour. |
BRENNAN J: | So that, in this case it is a non-accidental production of the result. |
MR WALKER: | We would not concede that of this case, but the issues which we bring to this Court - - - |
| Brownlie | 10 | 10/9/93 |
BRENNAN J: Under this Statute?
MR WALKER: Under this Statute.
| BRENNAN J: | The liability is for non-accidental pollution. right. This case was not being conducted in such a |
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour, that may with respect, not be |
all. It is possible that section 16 does, in
effect, impose criminal liability for what laymen
would call, accidental effects; though, of course,
non-accidental conduct.
BRENNAN J: Non-accidental conduct is - - -
MR WALKER: It is clearly non-accidental conduct.
| BRENNAN J: | Do you suggest it is an offense of absolute |
liability?
| MR WALKER: | Yes. |
BRENNAN J: That may be so.
| MR WALKER: | We certainly would not say that section 16, on |
its proper construction, punishes only non-
accidental effects. In our submission - - -
BRENNAN J: It just seems to me that the criterion that you
are looking for is one that is elusive, to put it
at its lowest. If we are looking at certainty or
inevitability of result, intention; going down the
scale, accidental, non-accidental; it just seems to
me that it is a very curious kind of criterion to
look for.
| MR WALKER: | What Your Honour describes as a criterion is |
what we would put as the nature of a law within legislative competence to control, by a general
criminal command, the conduct of persons outside
the legislative territory. We accept the extraterritorial legislative competence of the Australian States. Whether the criterion or
qualities by which we seek to distinguish between
an incompetent and competent law of that kind are
elusive, is a matter for Your Honour's judgment.
However, we say the answering argument, that
espoused by New South Wales, presents even greater
elusiveness in a manner in which I would seek to
elaborate in a while, and introduces invidious
questions which operate far more greatly to thepolitical and personal detriment of residents of
particular States than do what might be called the
novelty of the argument that we present.
| Brownlie | 11 | 10/9/93 |
In our submission, what Your Honour describes
as illusiveness is really a consequence of the
relative novelty of what we advance and that, if
accepted, the standard which we propose would not
be illusive or difficult in practice, particularly
by comparison with the contest of legislative competences to be decided, as it were, in the
kitchen of every Queensland farmhouse before the
spraying commences, as to which law prevailed or as
to how many laws apply and which ought rationally
be obeyed for fear of the greatest punishment.
Your Honours, the second argument of the three
we wish to advance is that the power of New South
Wales to enact a law, with this kind of territorial
effect, is subject to and must yield to the
superior power of Queensland which Queensland hasexercised to enact laws with intra-territorial
effect governing the same conduct. That is the
second way in which we wish to put our first
argument about legislative competence which rests
on a federal principle in sections 106 and 107 of
the Constitution.Our second argument relies on section 118 of
the Constitution and it is that the stronger claims
of Queensland to regulate Mr Brownlie's conduct,
that is, by comparison with the claims of New South
Wales, require legislative reticence on the part of
New South Wales so as to give "full faith and
credit" to Queensland's laws and public act, which
cover his conduct.
The third argument is not constitutional at
all, and that is that the difficulties of State
legislative clashes, which we submit may be
resolved by the two constitutional arguments, are
also overcome by section 12 of the New South WalesInterpretation Act 1987, which imposes a
territorial limitation which, we submit, has been
wrongly applied and construed by the Court of
Criminal Appeal.
The first two arguments, the constitutional
arguments, go beyond any specific authority of this
Court, though, we say, is contrary to none of them.
The arguments concern what we submit is the
essential character of the Federation and the
serious question whether the Constitution providesthe means to prevent deleterious clashes of
legislative powers between States, while preserving
the freedom of the people of every State, to use
the expression of covering clause 5, to be governed
by the two Parliaments, Federal and State, which,
as residents of a State, they have a right to
elect.
| Brownlie | 12 | 10/9/93 |
Our constitutional arguments are directed to
legislative competence. We do not challenge the principle of extraterritorial legislative
competence of State parliaments. We do not invoke
section 118 in the context of choice of law. This
case does not concern choice of law rules at all inthe sense they were considered by the Court in
Breavington, McKain and Stevens. We do not, of course, challenge any part of the binding judgments
or decisions in those cases.
Our thesis is, overall, that the local
sovereignty of Queensland's Parliament in
Queensland, particularly with respect to crime,
ought to be the key to the resolution of the
problem. Our argument does not require any wider theory of a national legal system. We do not seek to confine all the legal consequences of for the reasons I have offered in answer to
Your Honours' various questions, for example,
success in this appeal on any of the grounds we
advance would, we say, have nothing to do with any
tortious liabilities for acts or omissions having
an effect across State borders.
Our arguments are directed to the mutual
limits of legislative power of the States and looks
to the fact that the States are members of one federal nation. We are not concerned with the
common law rules of private international law used
to regulate dispute resolution between individuals
or private litigants.Your Honours, the facts are in narrow compass and are clearly set out in the application book,
but the following are the matters upon which we rely in particular to point up the arguments of principle we seek to advance. At the end of 1988
Mr Brownlie had endosulfan applied to his cotton
crop growing on his property in Queensland. As Your Honours have learned, endosulfan is an insecticide. It has replaced DDT, of notorious familiarity, in cotton growing operations.
Unfortunately, as well as being fatal to insects,
it is also deadly to fish but it has a low water
solubility. Obviously Mr Brownlie used the poison
to help him grow cotton and not for the disastrous
purpose of killing fish.
After he had had it applied, a rainstorm
broke. That washed some of the endosulfan off the
crop where it was intended to stay. The trial judge found that the run-off containing this
endosulfan flowed through a gully after leaving
Mr Brownlie's property and eventually into the
Barwon River. As Your Honours know, some days
| Brownlie | 13 | 10/9/93 |
later dead fish were discovered at Mungindi, some
10 to 20 kilometres downstream. The Barwon River
flows through Mungindi and the border 'between
Queensland and New South Wales is in the centre of
the stream. The trial judge found that the fish had been killed by the endosulfan which had
originally been applied to Mr Brownlie's crop.
It may or may not be critical to our argument
to observe the following. Mr Brownlie's conduct may or may not have been punishable under
Queensland statute law. Under subsection 23(1) of the Clean Waters Act, Queensland, 1971, an occupier
of land without a requisite licence who discharges
wastes indirectly to any waters commits an offence.
The maximum penalty at that time was $10,000,
section 48. But subsection 23(1) was itself
subject to subsection 23(2) which prevented the
application of the offence-creating section tocases of storm water run-off from agricultural
lands if the operation complied with certain
administrative requirements of what is known as the
Water Quality Council of Queensland.
In the proceedings in the New South Wales Land
and Environment Court there was insufficient
investigation of the facts to allow it to be found
now whether or not there would have been an offence
committed against this Queensland statute. If the
onus lay on the prosecution in Queensland, forexample, to show non-compliance with council
requirements, then the onus was not discharged on
the basis of any evidence which was before the New
South Wales court.
In fact, he was prosecuted under the Clean
Waters Act of New South Wales on two counts, both of which are summary. Your Honours have seen the relevant provisions and they are reproduced at
pages 30 and 31 of the application book. The elements to which I draw Your Honours' attention in
particular relate to Mr Justice McHugh's earlier
question concerning the location of the pollution, as His Honour put it, in New South Wales. The structure is that under subsection (1) a tolerably
simple statement is made that:
A person shall not pollute any waters.
But in subsection (2), which was beyond any
question relied on by the prosecution, there is a
deeming definition of pollution. The deeming definitions which were used in this case, as the
Chief Justice Mr Justice Gleeson has observed, are both items (i) and (ii) in paragraph (a), that is,
Mr Brownlie placed matter in a position where:
(1) it was washed "into any waters";
| Brownlie | 14 | 10/9/93 |
(2) Mr Brownlie placed matter in a position where
it was likely to be washed "into any waters".
For the purposes of the section 12 argument and in order to make out the offence, it was
conceded, and we understand this concession will
not be withdrawn, that "waters" in the expression
judgment and in the Court of Criminal Appeal judgments the contretemps that happened at the trial and was argued on appeal concerning the form
"into any waters" must mean New South Wales waters.
of the informations concerning location.
We say, for the purposes of our section 12
argument, but I will observe it now while looking
at the statute, that just as "waters" in that
expression is properly conceded to be New South
Wales waters, so must the "dry bed" which follows,
the "drain", the "channel" and the "gutter". All
of those must be in New South Wales by parity ofreasoning with "waters".
Your Honours will note that, as well, it is
clear that the "position" referred to in
paragraph 16(2)(a) is different from "the waters"
themselves, and that appears from the last lines of
subsection (2) because it is there pointed out that
it is necessary for an offence using that deeming
definition to show that the matter would, had it
been placed in any waters, have polluted or been
likely to pollute those waters.
Subsection (3) is an offence creating
provision under which my client was also convicted.
Its relation with subsection (1) is obscure as
referred to by the Chief Justice. That is not an
obscurity with which we will trouble Your Honours.
It suffices to note, for the purposes of our
legislative competence argument, that
subsection (3) would appear, if it has
extraterritorial reach, to be referring to actions
in Queensland in this case for the conviction to have been proper. Accordingly, on New South Wales'
argument, subsection (3) reaches directly into
Queensland by punishing conduct entirely in
Queensland.
Your Honours will note subsection (4) which, perhaps, adds to the obscurity referred to by the
Chief Justice, but is of no moment for our
argument. Subsection (6) has this relevance: that
it provides non-application of the offence creating
provisions for those who have a licence, and who do
not contravene the conditions of a licence. That
licence, of course, is from a New South Wales
authority. That licence, therefore, would appear,
| Brownlie | 15 | 10/9/93 |
on the argument New South Wales advances, to be a
licence which Mr Brownlie, realistically, could
never have been expected to be seeking.
In subsection (7) the then maximum penalty was
$20,000, a disparity of outcome with the Queensland
provision where the then maximum was $10,000. Of interest to note is that that disparity has been
increased. The maximum is now $60,000 under the
Environmental Offences and Penalties Act 1989 in
the case of unintentional conduct.
The deeming definition to which I have taken
Your Honours, as the Chief Justice observed -
application book 32 to 33 - meant that Mr Brownlie
was guilty at two temporal stages, that is, the
offence was committed at two temporal stages.
Those temporal stages coincide with physical
location. First, he was guilty when he sprayed his
land because when he did so he placed the
endosulfan in the position where it was likely to
be washed into the Barwon. Following the rain,
when the contaminated run-off had flowed into, down
and across the Barwon, he was again guilty for
having placed the endosulfan in a position where it
was washed into New South Wales waters.
It is clear, then, that the reach of this
statute is to proscribe and punish not merely
consequences in New South Wales of conduct in
Queensland, but also a consequential State, namely
a likelihood, fully achieved in Queensland. The result is that he has been convicted and fined on
the basis of a statute as a result of a prosecution case, part of which relied on the likelihood of the
endosulfan being washed into the Barwon River, an
argument which succeeded as soon as facts were
proved concerning his conduct in Queensland and the
nature of the watershed from his property to the
Barwon.
He was fined $12,000, that is, in excess of the Queensland maximum.
He was fined $12,000 on
the conviction under section 16(1) and he was fined
$1 on his conviction of the offence under section
16(3). We, none the less, challenge both convictions for the reasons of principle, or seek
to challenge both convictions.
Could I then move, Your Honours, to the
reasons why, in our submission, sections 106, 107
and 108 and the act and fact of Federation deprived
New South Wales of the competence to enact
legislation in that form.
Your Honours, a defining characteristic of any
self-governing political entity is that its
| Brownlie | 16 | 10/9/93 |
legislature governs in its territory, thus self-
governing. The essence of government is the exertion of State power, the civil power as it has
been called, to effect control and regulate conduct
and conditions in its territory, the government's
territory. The essence of democratic government, we say, is the right of the people to oversee and
ultimately direct their own government byexpressing approval or disapproval of their
representative's actions in government by their
periodic votes.
| MASON CJ: | Mr Walker, you are, of course, presenting an |
application for special leave. You ought to confine your submissions within that framework.
| MR WALKER: | May it please Your Honour. | Your Honours, we say |
that the Court of Criminal Appeal has overlooked an
essential element of the federal respect for the
States as self-governing legislatures. When we say federal, we mean the provisions of sections 106,
107 and 108 inserted by the peoples of the colonies
to govern their relations as peoples of the States
thereafter.
While extraterritorial legislative competence
obviously follows from the nature of self-
government, because interests of a State may
require attendance to elements out of State, there
is an essential difference, we say, that the
Court of Criminal Appeal did not regard between the
position obtaining, with respect, to independent
nation States, one against the other, and the
position between the States of the Federation.
Between nation States it is only comity, and
that not compulsorily, which restrains the exercise
of legislative power to encompass control by
criminal sanction of conduct outside the territory.
Nation States, of course, are free to go to war
against each other. More to the point, nation States do not, by their existence as nations,
individually undertake to preserve the existence of other nations let alone the maintenance of the
civil power in other nations.
We say the Court of Criminal Appeal paid no
regard, or inadequate regard, to the fact that the
argument under sections 106, 107 and 108,
particularly 107 with respect to the powers of the
parliaments of the States, involves a compactbetween the peoples of the States, and that means on a political legislative level, something which
binds the States, to ensure that the powers of the other States are not prevented from continuing, to use the word of section 107.
| Brownlie | 17 | 10/9/93 |
If section 107 were given a literal, or what
the Americans might call an automatic, effect, then
a similar absurdity might flow from some arguments,
which have been rejected and which no member of
this Court has espoused, under section 118; that
is, it would be absurd if regard for the powers of
a neighbouring Parliament's extraterritorial
legislative competence meant that another State had
to accept the dictate of that neighbouring State's
legislation in its own territory. That would be
absurd.
In order to avoid that absurdity and to serve
the federal principle of one nation, in our
submission, 107 ought to be construed to as to
require the power of the respective parliaments to
be preserved in continuance by each of those
parliaments by refraining from legislating wherethere is no doubt but that the neighbouring State
has a prior claim. We say there can be no argument but that control by threat of general criminal
sanction on conduct inside a State is a prior
claim.One need only contemplate this consequence of New South Wales' argument with respect to land use
regulation generally. If New South Wales be right,
the interest of New South Wales to improve the use
of its land must involve a power to affect by
direct legislative control, civil or criminal, the
use of neighbouring land because adjacent lands
clearly affect the ability properly to use land
next door.
This is even more obvious in the case of
rivers which, far from dividing, both physically
and in economic terms, link people on either side.
The watersheds come from both sides of a stream.
Land use which refers to land use regulation
concerned with regulation of water use or of water
purity plainly therefore, on New South Wales'
argument, gives to each State on either side power
to punish by criminal sanction conduct one in the other. In our submission, the Court of Criminal Appeal has given insufficient regard to the fact that in a country like Australia, it necessarily
follows that more than two States may compete for
that control because watersheds affect more than
two States. If conduct in the watershed, as New
South Wales must be asserting, is sufficient to
provide the territorial nexus, the State interest
which justifies this extraterritorial reach, then
the further upstream one is, the greater number of
legislatures may govern your conduct by criminal
sanction.
| Brownlie | 18 | 10/9/93 |
In our submission, no decision of this Court has yet addressed whether that is a proper federal
outcome, particularly in light of section 107. No
decision of this Court has addressed whether the
powers of the Parliament in section 107 ought, forexample, be construed in light of the belief in the
1890s, made manifest in MacLeod's case, of course,
that those colonial legislatures had severely
circumscribed extraterritorial legislative powers
indeed. But even if ahistorically one were to assume that section 107 was inserted by persons who
were completely accepting of the extraterritorial
legislative competence, found by this Court in
Union Steamship, then the fact would remain that
section 107 bound the States and the people of the
States so to use their respective parliamentary
powers as not to prevent the continuance of the
powers of other parliaments. Purposefully, and not
absurdly, that requires mutual restraint from areas
of intraterritorial criminal control.Your Honours, the argument, in our submission, which has not been considered by this Court in any other case and in particular has not been
considered with respect to the intimately
governmental interest in criminal statutes, just as
in judicial systems and in procedures of courts,
concludes with the proposition that when the people
of the colonies agreed by agreeing to sections 106,
107 and 108, particularly section 107, that upon
statehood in the:
one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth -
referred to in the preamble, "the civil power of
each of them should continue'', to use section 107's
words, and that the laws of the Colony which became
a State should continue in force in the State. The
preposition "in'', in our submission, accords with
the basically territorial sovereignty of the
understanding then and now of self-governing
legislatures.
Your Honours, it may be that the fallacy which
informed the reasons in MacLeod's case help explain
why there is no equivalent of section 109. The argument we seek to put is that section 107 fulfills any deficiency which may be thought thus
to have arisen. The consequence in this case we wish to argue is that if there was ever power in
New South Wales to render conduct in Queensland
criminal, as extraterritorial legislative
competence may well otherwise suggest, then a
literal or automatic operation of section 107 would
be a self-defeating absurdity; an exercise in
fruitless cancelling out, one by the other
Parliament. That cancelling out whereby each
| Brownlie | 19 | 10/9/93 |
Parliament, Queensland and New South Wales claim to
have competence to regulate by criminal sanction
conduct in the other territory, does not continue
power; in our submission, it renders it a nullity
in both places.
Section 107, we say, does not command each
State to bow to the power of other States to
legislate extraterritorially so as to see defective
control over its own territory to the possibly
multifarious, and therefore discordant effect, of
other States' criminal legislation.
| TOOHEY J: | Mr Walker, is this an argument that depends upon |
the prior existence of Queensland legislation
relating to pollution, or does it derive from thesubject-matter of the New South Wales legislation?
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour, the argument at its highest does |
not depend upon the prior, or any existence, of
Queensland criminal statute, but in its alternative
form, does. It certainly requires consideration of
the form of the particular statute because,
depending upon the kind of considerations we
referred to earlier, a criminal statute which pays
regard to extraterritorial elements need not be, on
the arguments we wish to put, beyond the competence
of New South Wales, far from it. So, yes, the
terms of the New South Wales statute and its
subject-matter are important to our argument. The prior existence of Queensland legislation is critical to our alternative argument, but is not
critical to the first way we put it, because thefirst way we put it says that it is an exercise of
power by the Parliament of Queensland to stay its
hand, as well as to speak, with respect to criminal
sanction. That parliaments exercise power by not enacting prohibitory or criminal sanction as much
as by enacting them, that is the first way we put
it.
Alternatively, if it is natural to describe the power of a parliament, bearing in mind what
parliaments do, as the power to enact legislation,
then it would at least follow that the power to
enact its own Clean Waters Act, with effectivecontrol by criminal sanction in its own territory,
is the power which cannot be truncated by New South
Wales' exercise of extraterritorial reach.
In our submission it is significant that an
unstoppable consequence of New South Wales'
argument is that one can never be assured that it
will only be two States on either side of the
river, or on either side of the border, who are in
conflict as to which set of criminal sanctions will
guide the conduct of rational persons. In other
| Brownlie | 20 | 10/9/93 |
words, if people rationally respond by obeying that
law which threatens the worst consequence to them,
it is clear from New South Wales' State interest
argument that this must permit more than one State
to provide its threat, its sanction, so as to guide
conduct in one place, and the example we have
already given of South Australia's obvious interest
in the purity of what eventually becomes the
Murray, is just one example.
The State interest argument - may it please
Your Honours, I will leave that to matters of
reply.
Consequences of the Court of Criminal Appeal's
assertion that New South Wales' interest was
entirely sufficient to justify the enactment of
this statute include the important matter for
personal liberty of the doctrine of autrefois,
convict or acquit. If such statutes are enacted
which require an effect, deemed or actual, in theterritory of the enacting States by reason of
conduct in some out-of-State location, then it will
not follow, of course, that the evidence necessary
to secure one conviction will be sufficient to
secure another conviction; even more so when there
are systems of local licences or local
requirements, as in this case.The resultant inconvenience is, in our
submission, worthy of more than the word
"inconvenient". It is, in our submission, entirely
invidious that according to this doctrine of State
interest justifying State power persons in any one
location who are described using constitutional
expressions as residents in that State, and who
elect just one State Parliament, are none the less
put to difficult legal choices which may require
judicial determination as to which of the statutesthey would rationally obey in order to avoid harsh
consequences.
Imprisonment is a very common criminal sanction. Imprisonment will, of course, always be
inflicted and suffered in the place of the court
where the conviction is entered. The spectre is
therefore raised, we say, which ought to be
dispelled by a decision of this Court of persons by
their one act of conduct being liable to
imprisonment in various other States,
notwithstanding that they have committed just the
one act. As soon as one has offences of strict liability, as in this case, where mere scientific
or physical demonstration of causation to an
effect, or worse, to a threatened effect, which is
the first leg of the prosecution case against us,
as soon as they are enacted, in our submission,
| Brownlie | 21 | 10/9/93 |
that spectre necessarily arises on the approach
taken by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
We say that the basis upon which we would seek
to ground our argument, namely, that location,
locale or territory, ought to be always the prior
claim of legislative sovereignty, is entirely
consistent with the notion of residency, or
belonging to a State which is found, as I say, in
covering clause 5, in section 75(iv), in
section 100 and in section 117. Similarly, though
for entirely different purposes, the Constitution,
has regard to the physical location of crime in
section 80.
In our submission, it would be curious if one
did not prefer the place where the act or omission
took place rather than the place where threatened
consequences or actual consequences may unwind one
after the other. In our submission, the importance
is that the consent of the government, the
sovereignty of the people, is reflected in ensuring
that criminal liability, being the general control
of conduct by government, is imposed by theParliament for which one may vote according to the
basically residential franchise throughout
Australia.
Finally, in our submission, this argument
accords with the approach taken by this Court in
the entirely different area dealt with in
Breavington v Godleman, McKain v Miller and Stevens
v Head because the argument by a broad analogy
gives the same prominence to the place where the
wrong act was committed as the new choice of law
rules give for that different civil purpose. The
analogy is clearly not perfect because there is a
difference between the location of criminal actsand the occurrence of the last element in a civil
cause of action but, in our submission, it accords
with an appropriate federal principle as well as
with the common law notions adumbrated in those
cases, namely a prior claim of physical location as the place where the legal characterization of
conduct ought be determined.
For the higher alternative we put for this
argument, we rely by general analogy on the US
dormant or negative commerce clause approach in
answer to Justice Toohey's question, namely that
even if Queensland has not spoken, that is a power
of Parliament to be continued. Alternatively, we
rely of course on the fact that Queensland had
spoken in this area.
Your Honours, South Australia, we understand,
will raise an argument about simultaneous obedience
| Brownlie | 22 | 10/9/93 |
and the manner in which that may be used to resolve
these problems. If we may, we will not touch on
them in-chief. They do not inform, in oursubmission, the reasons why special leave ought to
be granted to raise the argument of federal
principle which we have just put.
Your Honours, the second argument which can be
put more briefly now because it derives from much
of the material we have referred to for our first
argument, relates to section 118. We stress that
we are not invoking section 118 for the purposes of
any choice of law exercise at all, and we are
therefore not looking at section 118's primary
speech which has been debated in this Court to
courts. We are looking at its speech to legislatures in this case.
The argument we would seek to advance does not seek to subject New South Wales to Queensland law.
What it seeks to do is to prevent New South Wales
from entrenching on the sovereign operation of
Queensland law. Undoubtedly, a consequence of our
argument, were it correct, is that there will be an
effect on New South Wales court proceedings because
certain New South Wales law will be held not to
have had the purported effect. But that is not by applying Queensland law to the New South Wales
proceedings or to any part of New South Wales
territory. Instead, it proceeds by preventing the
New South Wales law from applying where the
Queensland law certainly does - or to put it
another way, where the public Acts of Queensland
undoubtedly run.
Put shortly, we wish to argue that the New
South Wales Parliament can give full faith and
credit to the public Acts and law of Queensland
only by permitting the Queensland law to serve its
obvious governmental and political function of
shaping the conduct by threat of criminal sanction
in its territory; that otherwise the command of
section 118 as it is addressed to State legislatures is misserved by being lip-serviced to
the continued legislative activity of other States,
while simultaneously and by another State's own
laws a calculated refutation or undermining of the intended governmental effect of a parliament's law
was within its own territory.
The argument that we seek to advance under
section 118, far from seeking to construe and apply
it as requiring some interstate uniformity, in fact
is designed to prevent the anti-federal impositionof a form of interstate uniformity.
| Brownlie | 23 | 10/9/93 |
There would be an interstate uniformity in
terms of the practical command of State legislation
if New South Wales is correct and a legislature
which claims to have an interest which will be
served by laws with criminal effect outside its
territory, that is, which impose sanctions on
conduct outside its territories.
Whichever legislature proposes the harshest
law of that kind will, of necessity, be that which
is going to be obeyed by rational people.
Uniformity will be imposed, not by agreement
between the States, as is presently the case, and
an entirely federal response by co-operativeschemes at a political level, but uniformity would
be imposed by simply noting, as New South Wales
does, that there being an undoubted interest, there
must follow in its train a power to legislate with
that extraterritorial effect.
The argument which we advance, both under
sections 106, 107, 108 and 118, is in fact designed
to secure local variation, whereas as been put with
respect to the rather different position in Canada,
designed to serve the object of a federal union,
being the freedom of each State to experiment,
rather than being a collection of self-interested
Balkanised States.
Your Honours, if I might simply hand up,
without taking Your Honours to it, the certain
extracts from convention debates, the relevant
passages I believe are visibly marked in the
margins. We say it is not at all surprising that there is very little attention paid to this kind of
issue in the debates, and nor is it surprising that it was paid at the beginning of the process, rather than throughout and at the end. Because, the very
act of proposing federation was an act which
required reassurance, as these extracts show, one
to the other, that the States were not grabbing for
power over each other's territory. In our
submission, these extracts show that that, we would say, self-evident proposition for political
efficacy then, and we say for federal union now,
was accepted in certainly some somewhat flowery
oratory.
The extracts also include a reference to a
proposal by Mr Wrixon that there be a uniform
criminal law throughout the Commonwealth, perhaps
to avoid the kind of problem that may otherwise
have arisen, and that that was rejected precisely
in order that each State may regulate, for its own
conditions, according to its own legislature's
assessment of what was right by criminal statute,
conduct within its own territory. That
| Brownlie | 24 | 10/9/93 |
particularly emerges in the perhaps extraordinary
passage in Mr Clark's speech, starting at page 252,
where Your Honours will find a robust
characterization of the differences between the
various American States and why that justified, for
example, territorial autonomy as to criminal law.
We do not say for a moment that that would
have applied to the Australian colonies at the time of these debates, but that the very principle which
is so colourfully put there is one which permits of
the State local experiment, the local variation,
which can be effective only if there is one set of
criminal sanctions guiding the conduct by a mixture
of goad and reward within the territory.Your Honours, finally in our submission, there is a special leave point with respect to section 12
as well, because the reasoning by which the
Chief Justice found a contrary intention againstascribing New South Wales locality to the word
"position" in section 16 is a reason which partakes
of precisely the same erroneous approach we haveattacked, namely that a State's interest .is the
only limit on a State's power to legislate
extraterritorially; as if States, in other words,
were separate nations.
I drew Your Honours' attention earlier to the
words which New South Wales concedes must mean,
under section 12 in New South Wales, that is
"waters", and to the "dry beds" and the "drains",
and the "gutters" which follow that, which must
also refer to New South Wales. Now, the obvious intent of the legislature in punishing people who
place material in a position where it may blow or
percolate or find its way into a dry bed, is
clearly because the Parliament wishes to prevent
potential pollution of actual waters.
BRENNAN J: But this case was conducted, so the
Chief Justice said, on the basis that the Crown
relied upon evidence that the endosulfan entered the Barwon River.
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour, the way the Chief Justice puts it |
is that it was conducted on the basis that the
offence was complete both by the likelihood and by the entry and, as His Honour points out, the entry into the waters was itself evidence with respect to
the likelihood offence.
BRENNAN J: That may be so, but the basis on which it was
conducted was that the offence which was charged
was one which had as one of its factual elements
the actual pollution of New South Wales waters.
| Brownlie | 25 | 10/9/93 |
| MR WALKER: | By way of evidence, yes, Your Honour; by way of |
constituent element, no, not necessarily.
BRENNAN J: That cannot be so because if the offence was
complete prior to that time, that is prior to the
entry of the waters, there must be a new element
added at the time of the entry of the waters.
| MR WALKER: | No, Your Honour, with respect. | As His Honour |
puts it at page 33 of the application book, line 7:
As a practical matter, proof that something is washed into waters will often assist a
conclusion that it was originally placed in a
position where it was likely to wash into
those waters.
So that a new element in terms of evidence is added
to the prosecution case of likelihood, but it is
not necessary in order to justify the relevance of
that evidence that the offence as well be charged
as requiring as a constituent element in the
imposition of criminal liability actual entry.
BRENNAN J: All I wish to point out is for the special leave
purposes, the case was understood in the court
below as being a case in which a result, namely thepollution of New South Wales waters, was in issue.
| MR WALKER: | Yes, Your Honour, but pollution of New South |
Wales waters -
| BRENNAN J: | It may be a different kind of argument if we |
were not concerned with a result of polluting New
South Wales waters.
| MR WALKER: | Your Honour, the result of polluting, according |
to this statute, is brought about by events and
conditions wholly confined to Queensland, as well
as by events and conditions actually manifested in
New South Wales and what the Chief Justice has said
is that the evidence of the latter phenomena was
evidence of the former, as well as being in itself an element in an alternative way of putting the
charge. But we accept, as we must, that the case
was certainly conducted on the basis that one way
in which the offence was put was that the material
had entered the Barwin in New South Wales; we
accept that, Your Honour, that is clear.
However, the means by which the Chief Justice
reasoned to our contrary conclusion, within the
meaning of section 12, for the purposes of that
conviction, which depended upon the material
originally being placed in a position where it waseventually washed into the Barwin, necessarily
involved His Honour saying that position was not
| Brownlie | 26 | 10/9/93 |
qualified by location in New South Wales, contrary,
we say, to the ordinary and plain understanding of
the words of section 12. And why it is a special leave point is that - - -
| BRENNAN J: | Your argument basically is that New South Wales, |
if it passes a law which is in protection of a
result occurring in New South Wales, must accept
that Queensland is an Alsatia as to the cause.
| MR WALKER: | I am sorry, Your Honour, now - - -? |
BRENNAN J: That if New South Wales passes a law in
protection of a particular result that occurs in
New South Wales, Queensland is, nevertheless, an
Alsatia into which the New South Wales law cannot
reach to proscribe the cause.
| MR WALKER: | Yes, depending upon the kind of distinctions we |
put earlier, yes, Your Honour. The reasoning by which the Chief Justice excluded the section 12
territorial limitation was precisely the same kind
of reasoning as led to the rejection of the
constitutional arguments, namely, that the interest
of New South Wales required that the watershed be
entirely covered by its legislation; that conduct
which was likely, because of location in the
watershed, to affect New South Wales' waters needed
to be controlled by New South Wales statute in
order to make the New South Wales stat~te indeed an
act for clean waters in New South Wales.
In our submission, that argument, in a sense,
assumes its own conclusion because the inquiry is
whether section 12 is excluded, that is, whether
the law does, on its proper interpretation,
sanction conduct out of New South Wales.
His Honour assumes that New South Wales is, as it
were, bordering barbarian territory where there
will be no concern for clean water at all, and yet we know that Queensland has a Clean Waters Act andthat could have been expected from the nature of
the federation of equal States, both politically and in many other ways at the time of Federation. The common phenomena of State co-operative legislative schemes, in our submission, puts the lie to the proposition that it is only by individual self-interested extraterritorial reach of criminal statutes that New South Wales could be assured of an effective regime for keeping its waters clean. So, in my submission, the section 12 argument
as well raises for consideration by this Court
whether the interest of States which would
otherwise be the touchstone for determining the
validity of extraterritorial legislation suffices
| Brownlie | 27 | 10/9/93 |
on all occasions and in all contexts including the
imposition of criminal liability to permit more
than one State to punish conduct which, so far as
the Act is concerned, is wholly committed in
another State. May it please Your Honours.
MASON CJ: Yes, thank you, Mr Walker. Court will take a
short adjournment in order to determine the course
it will take in this matter.
AT 11.45 AM SHORT ADJOURNMENT
UPON RESUMING AT 11.50 AM:
MASON CJ: | The Court does not need to trouble counsel for the respondent, nor counsel for the interveners. |
Having regard to the wording of section 16(1)
of the Clean Waters Act 1970 (NSW) and the fact
that it is common ground that the references to
"waters" in that subsection should be understood as
references to waters in New South Wales, the Court
considers that, on the facts of this case, the
proposed appeal would not enjoy sufficient
prospects of success to warrant the grant ofspecial leave to appeal.
The application is therefore refused.
AT 11.51 AM THE MATTER WAS ADJOURNED SINE DIE
| Brownlie | 28 | 10/9/93 |
Key Legal Topics
Areas of Law
-
Administrative Law
-
Statutory Interpretation
-
Constitutional Law
Legal Concepts
-
Appeal
-
Jurisdiction
-
Statutory Construction
-
Standing
0
0
0