Harris v Military Rehabilitation [2025] FCA 381
In this case, McEvoy J (at [26]) quotes as follows10 –
‘The current approach to statutory interpretation involves courts assuming that those drafting legislation, and parliaments which enact it, are familiar with the general principles of statutory construction, and that courts will take statutory language as they find it, read with the purpose and context in which it appears’11.
One writer describes this as ‘drafting presumed competent’12. Another refers to the ‘age-old confrontation between judges and drafters’13. Pearce talks about a ‘potentially unsympathetic audience’. Drafters, parliament and judges work in a system of shared understandings and respect.
This principle is from Episode 121 of interpretation NOW!
Footnotes:
10 MJD Foundation [2017] FCAFC 37 [125] Perram J.
11 Taylor [2014] HCA 9 [35-40], Marshall (1972) 124 CLR 640 (649) cited.
12 Bennion (413), cf Ealing London [1972] AC 342 (360).
13 Greenberg in Barnes (ed) Coherence of Statutory Interpretation (71).