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The Australian Government introduced a resource rent tax on offshore oil and gas deposits in 1987 and since then it has raised in excess of an additional $1 billion a year in revenue over and above the normal company tax on income. At the time it was being introduced a great deal of controversy followed the proposed introduction of the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT). On 2 November 2011, the Australian government introduced the raft of bills into Parliament for the imposition of a Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) on profit generated from iron ore, coal and gas from coal seams from 1 July 2012. Onshore oil and gas deposits will now be subject to a rent tax under the new PRRT regime that was also introduced into Parliament on 2 November 2011. The proposed MRRT has been met with criticism from certain mining companies, the Opposition parliamentary parties and noted economists. However, Australia currently has a budget deficit and a MRRT is being viewed by the government as being a solution to repaying government debt and to redistribute the burden of tax by reducing the rate at which companies pay income tax. A Resource Rent Tax (RRT) has been used by a number of countries such as the United Kingdom and Norway to increase government revenue from their 'North Sea' oil reserves. This paper will address the question raised above: namely, why is there opposition to a proposed MRRT given the continued existence of a PRRT in Australia for over 14 years? The paper will also contend that there are sound philosophical reasons for having this form of taxation and that as a result of the continued existence of a PRRT in Australia together with the fact that resource rent taxes have been adopted in many other countries, that the criticism of the new MRRT is unwarranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mash-ups, applications that use data from two or more different online services to create new services, are a slowly growing and relatively new technology being adopted by libraries. The Australian Parliamentary Library has used a mash-up technology, Yahoo Pipes, to innovatively solve the problem of how to collect press releases from Senators and Members for a national repository. Yahoo Pipes is an application that lets any user aggregate, manipulate, and mash up content from around the web. This paper describes how mash-ups are used in libraries generally and the implementation of Yahoo Pipes in the Parliamentary Library to collect press releases of Senators and Members, and describes issues identified through undertaking the project and considers areas for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue involving the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in Australia is about which level of government can legislate on the subject of marriage under the distribution of powers provided by the Constitution. The country has an express provision in the Constitution granting Federal Parliament the power to pass laws on the subject of marriage and other correlating issues. Hence, an amendment to the Marriage Act was enacted in 2004 so as to define marriage as the union between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Firstly, this paper analyzes whether the Federal Parliament has the authority under the Constitution to legislate on same-sex marriage. Secondly, the paper discusses whether any Australian state could grant a right for same-sex couples to engage in marriage that is not recognized under the federal law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the way racism is now hidden behind discourses of 'cultural difference' rather than relying on beliefs of biological inferiority, capturing instances of racism has now become a difficult task. The discourse of 'difference' in recent times has strongly manifested itself as exclusion from a discursively constructed nation: borders of the nation are redrawn along cultural essentialist lines so that undesirable 'others' are always excluded. Taking data from Australian parliamentary debates on immigration and citizenship during 2006-2007, this paper uses critical discourse analysis to explore how politicians discursively (re)construct borders of 'Australia' to either exclude or include immigrants. This paper argues that exclusion and inclusion in national constructions are more conducive ways of seeing how racism and anti-racism towards immigrants are enacted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analogy by reference to statute as a tool of legal analysis in the development of the common law is not prohibited. Recent cases confirm not only the existence of the tool but provide evidence of its use and application. However, to state that the judiciary on occasion develops the common law by analogy to statute - a concept that has been labelled the 'doctrine of analogy' - is simply to make a statement of conclusion. And that statement of conclusion invites several further questions. Is analogical reasoning by reference to statute qualitatively different from the usual type of analogical reasoning on which the common law depends? From what authority is this mode of reasoning derived? Put in different terms - what is the judicial function? This paper proposes that viewing the development of the common law through the lens of formal rules and substantive reasoning can assist in identifying the way the judiciary develops the common law by reference to statute, and the basis upon which the judiciary develops the common law by reference to statute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary libraries provide access to information and analysis and advice to members of parliament and their staff. The need for high quality, impartial and timely information is critical in the parliamentary environment, and it is a challenge to balance these requirements in information delivery. This paper summarises from audio transcripts stakeholder perspectives on the Australian Parliamentary Library from the Joint Chairs of the Joint Standing Committee on the Parliamentary Library, Leader of the Australian Democrats and Clerks of the Senate and House of Representatives. Feedback from a recent client survey and focus groups is included, together with reflections on how strategic planning in the Australian Parliamentary Library should address the issues identified. These are the same issues faced by all research libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle of legality has been described as a presumption that Parliament does not intend to abrogate or curtail fundamental common law rights, freedoms, immunities and principles (collectively 'fundamental common law protections'), and depart from the general system of law, except by clear and unambiguous language. It is a common law interpretive principle that protects fundamental common law protections from infringing statutes. Nevertheless, a question arises as to whether the principle can and should be extended beyond the realms of the common law, to protect certain statutory rights in Australia. This is yet to be considered at length in academic commentary and is presently unresolved. Such a development would exponentially increase the principle's potential scope of application. This article seeks to examine comprehensively the issue by reference to the principle of legality's origins and rationale, the concept of parliamentary sovereignty and doctrine of implied repeal, and analogous instances where statutory rights are protected through interpretation. This article argues that, on balance, the principle of legality should not be utilised to protect statutory rights from statutory infringement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Murphy v Electoral Commissioner is the latest decision of the High Court of Australia addressing the constitutional validity of a federal electoral procedure. The Court upheld longstanding provisions of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (Cth) that temporarily prohibit persons from enrolling to vote or updating their enrolment before a Federal Election. This case note analyses three issues arising from the case. First, it examines the remedial difficulties posed by invalidating electoral legislation while the Parliament is dissolved. Second, it analyses the Court's narrow application of the 'directly chosen by the people' requirement contained in ss 7 and 24 of the Australian Constitution. Finally, it evaluates the majority's decision not to apply a structured proportionality test in light of recent developments in the context of the implied freedom of political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, the common law principle of legality has hardened into a strong clear statement rule that is applied when legislation engages common law rights and freedoms. It has transformed a loose collection of rebuttable interpretive presumptions into a quasi-constitutional common law bill of rights. However, these developments are not without controversy or issue. The analysis undertaken in this article suggests that the principle of legality as clear statement rule -- as mandated by the High Court in Coco v The Queen -- can only work legitimately if Parliament has clear and prior notice of the rights and freedoms that it operates to protect. But it is problematic if what a common law right, such as freedom of speech, requires or guarantees in any given legislative context is unclear and contested, and so must be judicially divined at the point of application. In these cases, the principle operates to enforce a (post-legislative) judicial approximation of what best protects and promotes an abstract legal value or principle. It amounts to the illegitimate judicial remaking of prior legislative decisions on rights. This undercuts the normative justifications for the principle of legality as it obscures from Parliament the common law (rights) backdrop against which its legislation is enacted and interpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]