An unfortunate feature of legislative drafting is that most legislation is expressed to apply to the world at large … so said Ball JA in a recent gambling case1. TexBet was convicted of ‘providing’ gambling ads via SMS to a gambler in Victoria whose account had been closed on request2. It appealed on the basis that …
Petersen v Argentine Republic [2025] NSWSC 1071
After Argentina’s nationalisation of energy assets in 2012, a New York judge awarded US$16b in damages to P as a dispossessed party. When P sought to enforce judgment, Argentina said relevant process had not been validly served on it, something it said could only happen under convention procedures5.
Argentina argued that, …
RPPL [2025] FCA 1126; Stretton [2025] VSC 589
Two cases show how the re-enactment presumption works in practice. In RPPL, the issue was whether jurisdiction provisions in new ART legislation are to be read the same way as in the old AAT legislation8. Given the new provisions took into account the ‘existing well-settled position’, Cheeseman J (at …
Crossley v English [2025] WASCA 141
This water access case (at [101-106]) considers the ‘principle of co-interpretation’ – that being, when one Act amends another, the two are read together ‘as one connected and combined statement of the will of parliament’10. The principle applies at both common law and under statute11, though the latter ‘has added …
Meredith v NSW (No 5) [2025] NSWSC 1133
M headed a class action for assault [etc] after she was strip searched by police for drugs at a music festival. Were the searches ‘necessary’ in terms of the ‘seriousness and urgency of the circumstances’14?
Necessary means ‘absolutely necessary’, and urgency indicates a situation ‘requiring immediate action or attention’. The …
A Bolivian artefact1 bought from a Colorado dealer by Palmanova was forfeited after import under cultural heritage laws2. It had to be shown that a ‘protected object of a foreign country has been exported from that country’ and that the ‘export was prohibited by a law of that country’. It was established that (A) the artefact came …
Forty years ago in the K&S Lake case, Mason J set down what he called the ‘modern approach’ to statutory interpretation1. The crucial breakthrough which the judge sought to engineer was that context in the ‘widest sense’ is to be considered ‘in the first instance’ rather than at some later stage ‘when ambiguity might be thought to arise’…
Grapple Pay v Conroy [2025] NSWCA 171
The Latin term in pari materia means ‘analogous’. Parliament is presumed to intend the same words used in a later statute ‘in a similar connection’ take the same meaning7. The practical application of this depends on the strength of the analogy in question.
In the present case, a suggested analogy between …
Police Federation v CCP (Victoria) [2025] FCA 865
This case repeats principles applying to enterprise agreements10 but makes extra points. One, context extends to the ‘historical antecedents’ by reference to what they may show. Two, when an expression is transplanted from history, ‘it may have brought with it some of the soil in which it once grew, retaining a …
Laming v Electoral Commissioner [2025] HCA 31
Statutes rarely pursue one purpose 100%. Did certain Facebook posts not giving sender particulars attract civil penalties at the maximum possible level?12
Although an object was to deter non-compliance, it did not follow that penalties calculated on a multiple recipient basis were intended. Section 15AA was of little assistance. The deterrence …
