Contents
- Australia's fundamental law
- The 5 main functions of the Constitution
- 1: Creation of the Commonwealth and its institutions of government
- 2: The colonies continue as States
- 3: The federal system – relations between the Commonwealth and the States
- 4: The common market
- 5: Rights and freedoms
Australia's fundamental law
The Constitution is the fundamental law of Australia binding everybody and everything, including the Commonwealth Parliament and government and the parliaments and governments of the States. It follows that any action, including the passing of an Act by the Commonwealth Parliament or a State parliament, is invalid and of no effect if it is contrary to the Constitution. It sets out the most basic rules for how decisions and laws are made concerning Australia.
In one sense the path to the Constitution began with British colonisation of Australia. But this event sits within a broader landscape. For tens of thousands of years, Australia's Indigenous peoples had occupied the land. They had developed subtle and elaborate laws and systems of organisation to regulate their communities – a fact which, as we discuss in chapter 10, was recognised by the landmark High Court decision of Mabo (No 2) (1992). Also, British colonisation brought to Australia not just people but also the common law and governmental institutions. These were a potent source for the development of the Australian Constitution, as were the institutions which evolved in colonial Australia and other national constitutions – in particular, those of the United States of America and Canada.
Why is the Constitution regarded as the fundamental law of Australia? Its status initially rested on the fact that it was part of an Act passed by the British Parliament. The history leading up to that passage is set out in chapter 2, and a summary of its structure is at [1.6]–[1.10].
However, as we shall see in chapter 3, in the 20th century Australia became a totally independent nation, and the British Parliament no longer has any legislative power over Australia. In view of these developments, the Constitution's status as the fundamental law of Australia is now seen as resting on what the High Court has described as the 'sovereignty of the Australian people' – specifically, on the Australian people's decision during 1898 to 1900 to approve the Constitution and on their continuing commitment to remain bound by its terms. This concept of popular sovereignty is reinforced by section 128 of the Constitution, which says that the Constitution can only be changed if the people of Australia, voting at a referendum, approve of the change.
There have been a few changes brought about by this referendum process, which we discuss in chapter 11. But many changes have been brought about by other mechanisms provided for by the Constitution – in particular, the role of the High Court as the principal body responsible for its interpretation and the capacity of the Commonwealth and the States to act cooperatively in the national interest.
The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 is a statute of the British Parliament containing a preamble, an enacting clause and then 9 numbered clauses. It came into operation on 1 January 1901.
The preamble states that the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania have agreed to unite in one indissoluble federal Commonwealth under the Crown and under the Constitution. Western Australia agreed to join the Commonwealth too late to be mentioned, but in time to be one of the 6 original States at federation.
The first 8 clauses are commonly called the 'covering clauses'. They contain mainly introductory, explanatory and consequential provisions. For example, covering clause 2 provides that references to the 'the Queen' (meaning Queen Victoria, who was British sovereign at the time the Constitution Act was enacted) shall include references to Queen Victoria's heirs and successors. As a consequence references to the Queen are now to be read as references to King Charles III.
The ninth clause contains what is commonly known as 'the Australian Constitution'. The Constitution is divided into eight chapters and 128 consecutively numbered sections. (An additional section 105A was inserted in 1929, and section 127 was removed in 1967.)
To date, 44 proposals for amendment have been taken to a referendum in accordance with the procedure for changing the Constitution laid down in section 128. Only 8 of these proposals have been approved by the Australian people. (The history of constitutional reform is traced in chapter 11. Accordingly, the text of the Constitution remains almost the same as it was in 1901.
The 5 main functions of the Constitution
The Constitution carries out 5 main tasks:
- It creates a new set of central government authorities and outlines their functions and powers. The new authorities are generally described in the Constitution as either 'Commonwealth' or 'federal'.
- It recognises the existence of the 6 Australian colonies as they were in 1900 and confers on these colonies the status of States. It also allows for the continuation of the States, their constitutions, government arrangements and bodies of law, except as these are changed by the new Australian Constitution.
- It regulates the relations between the Commonwealth authorities and those of the States.
- It establishes an Australian common market – free trade between the States and a common external customs tariff.
- It makes some express provision concerning the relation of the individual citizen to the Commonwealth government and, to a lesser extent, the State governments, generally protecting what we would now call the human rights of Australians from some government actions. Perhaps more importantly, the basic principles of government established by the text and structure of the Constitution – in particular, representative democracy and the independence of the federal judiciary – impliedly confer a number of basic safeguards on the Australian people.
We consider each of these functions in summary below, and these are discussed further in more detail in the relevant chapters of this book.
1: Creation of the Commonwealth and its institutions of government
Commonwealth body politic
On 1 January 1901 a new body politic, the Commonwealth of Australia, was brought into being (covering clauses 4 and 6). Following the basic 3-way 'separation of powers' in British and colonial practice, Chapters I, II and III of the Constitution confer the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the Commonwealth on 3 different bodies which are created by the Constitution:
- Legislative power is conferred on the Parliament (Chapter I of the Constitution). Legislative power is the power to make laws.
- Executive power is conferred on the executive government (Chapter II of the Constitution). Executive power is the power to administer laws and carry out the business of government and is exercised by ministers, departments, agencies and the defence forces.
- Judicial power is conferred on courts (Chapter III of the Constitution). Judicial power is the power to conclusively determine a controversy about legal rights. It is the power ordinarily exercised by courts when they conduct criminal trials and determine disputes.
Separation of powers
Despite the structure of the Constitution, there is no strict demarcation between the Parliament and the executive government when it comes to exercising legislative power. It is true that only the Parliament may pass Acts, but these Acts often confer on the executive government the power to make relevant regulations, rules or by-laws. For example, the Parliament has enacted in the Customs Act 1901 that no person may bring a 'prohibited import' into Australia and leaves it to the executive government to say in the Customs Regulations what is a 'prohibited import'.
This delegation of legislative power by the Parliament is not as extreme as it may appear, because both houses of Parliament ordinarily retain the power to 'disallow' (that is, reject within a specified time) any regulation or other instrument which has been made by the executive government.
The 'separation' between the Parliament and the executive government is further blurred by the fact that the principle of responsible government requires the Prime Minister and the other government ministers who administer the executive government to be members of Parliament. The Minister responsible for the Customs Act is a member of Parliament, which makes and amends that law, has general responsibility for the administration of the Act, and is accountable to the Parliament for this administration.
By contrast, the separation between the judiciary on the one hand and the Parliament and the executive government on the other is strict. Only a court may exercise the judicial power of the Commonwealth, and a federal court may only exercise judicial power and incidental non-judicial power. The question whether a person has contravened a law of the Commonwealth by bringing a 'prohibited import' into the country can only be conclusively determined by a court.
Parliament
The Constitution establishes the federal Parliament, comprising the Queen and the Senate and House of Representatives (section 1).
House of Representatives
In the House of Representatives the number of members from each State is proportionate to the size of the State's population, although each State is guaranteed at least 5 seats (section 24). Each electorate has about 150,000 people and 110,000 electors in it. After the 2022 election New South Wales had 47 members, Victoria 39, Queensland 30, Western Australia 15, South Australia 10, and Tasmania 5. The people of the Northern Territory were represented by 2 members of the House of Representatives and the Australian Capital Territory was represented by 3 members. So there were 151 members of the House of Representatives.
The House of Representatives is elected for 3 years, but it may be dissolved earlier by the Governor-General (section 5 and section 28). In dissolving the House, the Governor-General ordinarily acts on the advice of the Prime Minister.
Senate
The people of each of the 6 States elect the same number of senators, currently 12, regardless of their State's population (section 7). The Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory elect 2 senators each. The total number of senators is therefore 76.
Senators from the States are elected for a term of 6 years, with half of the seats becoming vacant every 3 years by a system of rotation (section 7 and section 13). Senators from the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory are elected at each general election of members of the House of Representatives. If a deadlock occurs between the houses then the Governor-General may dissolve both houses simultaneously (section 57). Again, in dissolving both houses, the Governor-General acts on the advice of the Prime Minister.
Acts of Parliament
Before a proposed law (commonly referred to as a Bill) becomes an Act of Parliament, it must be passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Bill is then presented to the Governor-General, who assents to it in the Queen's name (section 58). A Bill becomes an Act of Parliament when it receives this assent. Nearly all Bills which become Acts of Parliament are proposed by the government – that is, the parliamentary party or coalition of parties which holds a majority of seats in the House of Representatives, or at least has the support of the House.
As usual in British-style bicameral (2 house) parliaments, the House of Representatives, as the house which determines who controls the executive government, is given a preferred position in relation to taxation and appropriation (spending) Bills. These have to originate in the House of Representatives. The Senate may not amend a tax Bill or ordinary annual appropriations, although it may suggest amendments (section 53). The Senate may also reject taxation and spending Bills outright.
Subject to the few exceptions referred to in section 53 concerning the initiation and amendment of Bills which appropriate revenue or impose taxation, the Senate has equal power with the House of Representatives in respect of all Bills (see the last sentence of section 53). Often the government does not have a majority of seats in the Senate. (The last time a party or a coalition of parties had a majority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate was in 2004–2007.) Therefore, disputes may arise between the 2 houses as to whether a Bill should be passed in its proposed form. These disputes are generally resolved in some way by the houses.
Section 57 prescribes the procedure for resolving any irreconcilable disagreement between the 2 houses. That procedure essentially involves the dissolution of both houses of Parliament by the Governor-General (that is, a 'double dissolution'), the holding of an election for both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and then, if necessary, the convening of a joint sitting of the 2 houses following the election to determine whether the proposed law or laws which led to the dissolution should be passed.
Legislative powers of the Parliament
The Constitution does not confer on the Commonwealth Parliament the power to make laws on all subjects. Instead, it lists the subjects about which the Commonwealth Parliament can make laws. Most of these subjects are set out in section 51. They include international and interstate trade, taxation, defence, bankruptcy, trading and financial corporations, marriage and divorce, immigration, external affairs, and interstate industrial arbitration.
This list of powers given to the Commonwealth Parliament does not refer to a number of important subjects, including education, the environment, criminal law, and transport, but this does not mean that those subjects are outside the Commonwealth Parliament's powers to the extent that they relate to the subjects that are listed. For example, even though the Commonwealth Parliament has no specific power in relation to the environment, under its external affairs power it can prohibit the construction of a dam by a State if that is necessary to give effect to an international agreement on the environment, as confirmed in the Franklin Dam case (1983). Further, even though the Commonwealth has no specific power in relation to transport, international and interstate trade includes international and interstate transport.
The powers listed in section 51 are preceded by a general formula similar to that in the State constitutions: the laws are required to be 'for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth'. However, the courts leave a judgment on that issue to Parliament; they concern themselves only with whether a challenged law can reasonably be described or classified as coming within one or more of the areas of power set out in section 51 and elsewhere.
Apart from the powers listed in section 51, the legislative powers of the Commonwealth Parliament include many machinery matters scattered through the Constitution – for example, the power of electoral regulation in section 10 and section 31 taken together with section 51(xxxvi). The trade and commerce power in section 51(i) is further defined in section 98. Section 122 gives the Parliament a general power to make laws for federal territories.
The Parliament is discussed in more detail in chapter 6.
Executive government
A literal reading of the Constitution does not give much information about how the executive government of the Commonwealth functions. For example, the terms of Chapter II (sections 61 to 70) give the impression that the monarch and the Governor-General have sweeping powers in relation to the Commonwealth government. Section 61 says that the executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General, while section 68 says that the command of the defence forces is vested in the Governor-General.
King
Despite this, the monarch does not play a day-to-day role in the Commonwealth government. Those few functions which the King does perform, such as appointing the Governor-General, are done in accordance with advice from the Prime Minister and other ministers.
Governor-General
The Governor-General performs a large number of functions. However, apart from exceptional circumstances, the Governor-General also acts in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister and other ministers. The reason for this is the principle of responsible government which underlies the Constitution. Under this principle, the Crown (the King, represented by the Governor- General) acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and the ministers, who are in turn members of, and responsible to, the Commonwealth Parliament. It is for this reason that section 64 of the Constitution requires ministers to be, or to become, members of Parliament.
View a list of Australia's Governors-General.
Ministers
Ministers of state are appointed by the Governor-General to administer government departments (section 64, first paragraph). Seven ministers were thought sufficient in 1901 (section 65). The Commonwealth government at once acquired a tax department from the States (section 69, last paragraph) and, soon after, departments for the 4 areas of activity listed in section 69. A Commonwealth law now limits the number of ministers to 42. After the 2022 election there were 23 cabinet ministers and 7 'junior' ministers. There were also 12 ministers designated as parliamentary secretaries, appointed to assist the other ministers in the performance of their functions.
Federal Executive Council
Chapter II also mentions a Federal Executive Council (section 62), which is to include the ministers (section 64, second paragraph). The Executive Council comprises all past and present ministers. However, only current ministers take part in Executive Council business, and usually only 2 or 3 ministers attend meetings of the Council with the Governor-General. The Executive Council is not a deliberative body. Its principal functions are to receive advice and to approve the signing of formal documents, such as regulations and statutory appointments. It corresponds to the Privy Council in Britain.
Prime Minister and Cabinet
The body which decides general executive policy is not the Federal Executive Council but the 'Cabinet', which is not mentioned in the Constitution. Cabinet, the real controlling body of the executive government, meets without the Governor-General. Its presiding officer is the Prime Minister, who, like Cabinet, gets no mention in the Constitution.
View a list of Australia's Prime Ministers.
The ministers are not merely members of Parliament; they are also members of the political party or coalition of parties which commands a majority in the House of Representatives, or at least the support of the House. Ministers may be either members of the House of Representatives or senators, but established constitutional convention requires the Prime Minister to come from the House of Representatives. They, and not the King or Governor-General, provide the real working link between the Parliament and the executive government. This is a major characteristic of responsible government on the British model.
Departments and agencies
Departments are established by the Governor-General under section 64 of the Constitution. They are headed by a secretary and staffed by public servants. The responsibilities of ministers and departments are set out in the Administrative Arrangements Order, made by the Governor-General.
However, the picture of the executive apparatus of the Commonwealth is incomplete if we consider only the departments of state controlled by ministers. Even within the departmental structures, there are many types of administrative structures and agencies which have a good deal of autonomy from ministers. Outside the regular departmental structure, there are executive boards, tribunals, commissions, statutory authorities, statutory corporations and companies with varying degrees of independence and as diverse as the Reserve Bank, Australia Post, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.
The executive government is discussed further in chapter 7.
Courts
The Australian federal judiciary consists of the High Court of Australia and any other federal courts that Parliament creates (section 71). These courts are given a high degree of independence. The justices are appointed by the Governor-General on Cabinet advice. They can be removed only by both houses of Parliament. Justices are now subject to compulsory retiring ages (section 72).
High Court
One of the High Court's principal functions is to decide disputes about the meaning of the Constitution. For example, it is the High Court which ultimately determines whether an Act passed by the Commonwealth Parliament is within the legislative powers of the Commonwealth. It is the High Court which determines whether a Commonwealth or State law contravenes some implied or express constitutional prohibition. The power which the High Court has to interpret the Constitution means that it is a critically important body.
The High Court is also the final court of appeal within Australia in all other types of cases, even those dealing with purely State matters such as a conviction under State criminal laws.
The High Court is made up of 6 justices and a Chief Justice. Justices can continue until they reach the age of 70, when they must retire (section 72).
View a list of Chief Justices of the High Court of Australia.
Other federal courts
Chapter III gives the Commonwealth Parliament power to create other federal courts, and section 71 vests 'federal judicial power' in such courts. Federal judicial power is judicial power relating to one or more of the classes of dispute set out in section 75 and section 76 of the Constitution.
Parliament has created the Federal Court (which has jurisdiction in relation to many of the disputes which may arise under Commonwealth legislation – for example, the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Migration Act 1958). The Family Court (which deals with matrimonial and divorce cases) and the Federal Circuit Court (which is the first level of federal court) have been brought together as the Federal Circuit and Family Court.
The Commonwealth Parliament also has power to confer jurisdiction to hear federal disputes on State courts (section 77(iii)), and it has done this widely. The fact that State courts can exercise federal jurisdiction means that the Constitution to some extent protects and limits what State laws can do to those courts. For example, a State parliament could not abolish the State supreme court or confer inappropriate functions on it.
These issues in relation to the judiciary are discussed further in chapter 8.
2: The colonies continue as States
Under the federal system created by the Constitution, the 6 former colonies became the 6 States of Australia (covering clause 6).
Before federation, each State had its own constitution. Section 106 of the Australian Constitution provides that the constitutions of the States continue in force. It also recognises a continued power in the States (derived both from their constitutions and from the British Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865) to amend their own constitutions. Section 107 emphasises this. However, section 106 and section 107 also clearly recognise that State constitutions and powers are necessarily exposed to change or qualification as a result of federation and must be read subject to the Australian Constitution.
As noted earlier, under the constitution of each of the States, a State parliament can make laws on any subject of relevance to that State. Apart from a few exceptions, the Australian Constitution does not confine the matters about which the States may make laws. The most important exceptions are that the States cannot impose duties of customs and excise (section 90) and cannot raise defence forces without the consent of the Commonwealth Parliament (section 114).
Accordingly, the State parliaments can pass laws on a wider range of subjects than the Commonwealth Parliament. For this reason, important areas, including education, housing, criminal law and roads, are regulated primarily by laws of the States rather than by laws of the Commonwealth Parliament (but see [1.55]–[1.57]).
The role of the States under the Australian Constitution and the State constitutions is discussed further in chapter 4.
3: The federal system – relations between the Commonwealth and the States
The Constitution establishes a federal system of government for Australia. Under a federal system, governmental powers are distributed between a central government and regional governments. In Australia, that distribution is between the Commonwealth and the 6 States. The relationship between the Commonwealth and the Territories is fundamentally different, since all Territories are creatures of the Commonwealth. However, for many practical purposes, the self-governing Territories – the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory – are treated in a similar way to States.
Although the State parliaments can pass laws on a wider range of subject matters than the Commonwealth Parliament, the Commonwealth is today generally regarded as the more powerful partner in the federation. This result would have surprised many of those involved in drafting the Constitution. They intended to create a 'coordinate' federal system, in which the Commonwealth and the States would act independently of each other on topics defined in a way that minimises the possibility of overlap or collision.
As discussed in chapter 5, there are a number of reasons why the Commonwealth has assumed a predominant position in the federation. One of the principal reasons is section 109 of the Constitution, which provides that, if a Commonwealth law is inconsistent with a law of a State, the Commonwealth law prevails and the State law is invalid to the extent of the inconsistency.
Because of this, the Commonwealth can override State laws if they are within the subject matters conferred on the Commonwealth by the Constitution. As a result, many subjects of Commonwealth power are regulated almost entirely by Commonwealth law. This, coupled with the generally expansive interpretation which the High Court has given to the Commonwealth's legislative powers, has seen the Commonwealth Parliament regulate an increasingly large number of matters to the exclusion of the States.
The other great difficulty for the States is that, for a variety of reasons explained in chapter 5, they have been unable to raise sufficient revenue to perform all their governmental functions. This revenue shortfall has made the States dependent to a significant extent on grants of financial assistance from the Commonwealth under section 96 of the Constitution.
The Commonwealth's power under section 96 to impose conditions on how the States spend this financial assistance has allowed the Commonwealth to influence the way things are done in areas where it has no direct power to pass laws. For example, the Commonwealth has exerted significant control over schools and universities in this way, even though it has no specific power over education.
These issues concerning the relationship between the Commonwealth and the States are further discussed in chapter 5.
4: The common market
The desire to have a single trade area throughout Australia was one of the main reasons the Australian people supported federation. To achieve a single trade area, Australia needed both uniform customs duties and the abolition of protectionist burdens on interstate trade.
Therefore, the Constitution required uniform customs duties to be imposed within 2 years of its commencement (section 88). Once that uniformity was achieved, it prohibited the State parliaments from imposing duties of customs and of excise, and from granting bounties on the production or export of goods (section 90).
To further promote the common market, section 51(ii) prohibits the Commonwealth Parliament from discriminating between States when imposing a tax, and section 51(iii) requires any bounties granted by the Commonwealth Parliament to be uniform throughout Australia. Also section 99 prohibits the Commonwealth from giving preference to any State or part of a State in trade and commerce laws generally.
State protectionism was abolished primarily by providing in section 92 that trade and commerce between the States shall be 'absolutely free'. Section 92 was for a long time the most litigated provision in the Constitution. The rhetorical and vague language of the provision ('absolutely free' from what?) meant that on several occasions the High Court changed its interpretation of section 92. However, in the important case of Cole v Whitfield (1988), the High Court unanimously declared that the purpose of section 92, when applied to interstate trade and commerce, was to eliminate protectionism.
It now seems settled that section 92 prohibits Commonwealth and State action which discriminates against interstate trade or commerce and which has the purpose or effect of protecting the intrastate trade or commerce of a State against competition from other States. For example, section 92 would be contravened if, say, the New South Wales Parliament, in an attempt to make New South Wales milk more price competitive, imposed a special levy on all milk from Victoria that was sold in New South Wales.
The Inter-State Commission, contemplated in section 101 of the Constitution, was intended to play a prominent role in preserving the common market, but doubts about its power and the early mitigation of interstate railway rate wars and river disputes led to the abandonment of the Commission in the 1920s. As a result, the policy of the common market has been mainly the responsibility of the High Court through its role in interpreting provisions such as section 90 and section 92. In 1984, the Inter-State Commission was revived as an investigatory body, only to be effectively dissolved again in 1990.
5: Rights and freedoms
Until relatively recently, the conventional view was that the Constitution said little about those basic rights and freedoms which are often included in constitutions, such as liberty and security of the person, freedom of association, liberty of political action and freedom of speech. Most of the framers of the Constitution believed that these rights were best left to the protection of the common law in association with the Parliament. Accordingly, the Constitution has no equivalent to the bill of rights found in the United States Constitution. Despite this, since the early 1990s, fundamental rights and freedoms have assumed more importance. This is due largely to changes in the approach which the High Court has taken to interpreting the Constitution.
Express rights
Most of the provisions in the Constitution which expressly restrict legislative action apply only to the Commonwealth Parliament and not to State parliaments. Section 51(xxxi) says that a Commonwealth law with respect to the 'acquisition of property' must provide 'just terms' for the acquisition. Section 80 says that the trial of some Commonwealth offences must be by jury. Section 116 prohibits the Commonwealth from enacting a law which establishes any religion or which prevents the free exercise of any religion.
In addition to regulating interstate trade and commerce in the way discussed at [1.65], section 92 also requires 'intercourse' between the States to be 'absolutely free'. This provision applies to both the Commonwealth Parliament and the State parliaments. It guarantees that an individual's right of movement and communication between the States shall not be unjustifiably restricted. Section 117 prohibits a State parliament from discriminating against non-residents of that State.
Implied restrictions on government power
In addition to these express freedoms, the High Court has also recognised a number of implied freedoms, derived mainly from the fundamental principles of government underlying the Constitution. For example, because of the separation of powers effected by Chapter III of the Constitution, only a court may exercise the judicial power of the Commonwealth. Generally, a law of the Commonwealth Parliament cannot give a public service administrator, such as an inspector or police officer, the ability to make an enforceable determination about existing rights – for example, deciding whether someone has broken a law and what their punishment will be for doing so. Only an independent court, by a judicial process, can do this.
Another example of how implications drawn from the text and structure of the Constitution can restrict legislative power was provided in 1992, when the High Court declared invalid a Commonwealth law which attempted to restrict the broadcasting of political advertising (Political Broadcasts case (1992)). The Court decided that the restrictions imposed by that law were inconsistent with the form of representative government entrenched by the text and structure of the Constitution, and specifically an implied freedom of communication on political matters.
Human rights legislation
Federal action on fundamental rights has been developed under the external affairs power (section 51(xxix)). Australia is a party to many treaties covering human rights and freedoms, notably the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The High Court has long held that the Commonwealth can enter into treaties on any subject matter, including matters otherwise within State power, and can make laws to carry out those treaties even though this involves dealing with topics otherwise beyond Commonwealth power. The Racial Discrimination Act 1975, which implements the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, is such a law. The States have also been active in this area, and the laws made by the Commonwealth and the States are generally complementary.
These issues concerning rights and freedoms are discussed further in chapter 9.
