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On 17 March 2020, Tasmania entered a ‘state of emergency’ in response to COVID-19. Parliament stands adjourned, and the executive is regulating the crisis through delegated regulations that significantly limit civil rights and freedoms. Despite assurances that Tasmania’s Subordinate Legislation Committee would scrutinise executive power throughout the crisis, its role has been limited, due to an overly prescriptive (and we argue incorrect) reading of Tasmania’s scrutiny framework, which has not been properly reformed in several decades. This is a salient lesson as to why constitutional laws require regular review and modernisation, to ensure parliaments remain supreme even (and especially) during crises and emergencies.

In response to the recent passage of same-sex marriage law and the establishment of a Religious Freedom Inquiry (the Ruddock Panel), there has been considerable public debate on whether current exemptions for religious bodies under anti-discrimination law should be extended to individuals with a religious or conscientious objection to same-sex marriage. The authors compared current proposals for widening exemptions in anti-discrimination legislation to the legal position in the 29 other jurisdictions which permit same-sex marriage. If proposals that are currently debated were enacted, Australia would be the only jurisdiction to wind back its protections for LGBTIQ+ individuals against discrimination.

The recent judgment in the International Court of Justice case Whaling in the Antarctic(Australia v. Japan: New Zealand intervening) determined that Japanese ‘special permit’ whaling in the Southern Ocean was not ‘for the purposes of scientific research’. This is the only exemption permitted under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling’s current moratorium on commercial whaling. The Court made its determination by characterising the Japanese research program as a scientific program, but failing to define what scientific research actually was or was not. This paper presents the background to the decision, and challenges the reasoning of the Court and its standard of review test. It concludes that the Court failed to take the opportunity to offer a clear determination to states on their legal–scientific obligations within international law.

Examines some of the Australian legislative provisions that attempt to prohibit or to control the creation of human embryos by reproductive cloning. Commonwealth Gene Technology Act 2000; Victorian Infertility Treatment Act 1995; Western Australian Human Reproductive Technology Act 1991.