Justice John Logan of the Federal Court makes two points in a recent paper about statutory interpretation1. The first is that a ‘plethora of prescription’ in legislation ‘has, almost exponentially, increased the construction tasks a member of the [AAT] may be called upon to confront’2. The second is that interpretational principles ‘do not differ as between the judicial and executive branches of government’. One irony is that the complexity of our legislation both (A) reflects anxiety about ground-level delivery of what parliament wants and (B) undermines the certainty of legal outcomes. We cannot change this overnight, but we can all improve at reading legislation to better secure the purposes of parliament – that’s the challenge.
Gordon Brysland – Tax Counsel Network
See here for the official PDF of interpretationNOW! Episode 19
In this episode:
Footnotes:
Writer – Gordon Brysland, Producer – Michelle Janczarski. Thanks to Jenny Lin and Jo Stewart.
1 AAT Members Conference [2016] FedJSchol 5.
2 ‘micro-management’, the judge called it.