Capital Duplicators Pty Ltd & Anor v Australian Capital Territory

The parties to this proceeding before the High Court of Australia were Capital Duplicators Pty Ltd and Luhaze ACT Pty Ltd (the plaintiffs), and the Australian Capital Territory (the defendant). The Attorney-General of the Commonwealth intervened in the proceedings. The matter before the Court concerned the determination of the questions to be argued in the substantive hearing of the case, which was scheduled for a later date.

The legal issues before the Court involved the framing of specific questions for determination. These questions related to whether certain provisions of an Act were invalid. Specifically, the Court was required to consider whether the Act constituted a law with respect to the classification of materials, and the implications of such a classification, particularly in relation to obscenity. The plaintiffs sought to have a question concerning the Act being a censorship Act heard concurrently with other constitutional questions.

The Court's reasoning focused on refining the precise wording of the questions to be argued. The plaintiffs proposed a set of questions, and the defendant, through Mr. Katz, suggested an amendment to the second question to clarify that it should ask whether any provisions of the Act were invalid as being a law with respect to the "classification" of materials. Mr. Bennett, for the plaintiffs, accepted this amendment. The Solicitor-General for the Commonwealth also made a brief comment regarding the first question. The Court indicated that the case, while initially appearing complex, ultimately involved only three main questions for determination.