It is at last being recognized that there is need to reform the antiquated and costly apparatus of administrative law that we inherited frum England. Despite murmurs of dissatisfaction extending over many decades all that has been achieved so far by legislation amounts to little more than a tinkering with the machinery of adjudication in marginal areas. The problem is an old one. The public interest demands that administration, including the provision of multifarious services that are crucial to the community, be carried out as efficiently as possible. Equally the public interest demands that individual rights and expectations should not be overridden by an uncaring bureaucracy.

There is a well-known obscurity in the law relating to Commonwealth immunity from State legislative power. It is that whereas the High Court has laid down in clear terms that the Commonwealth is not subject to State legislative power at all, it has at the same time said that the Commonwealth may be “affected by” State laws but has not explained what is meant by “affected by”.

There is also a less well-known obscurity in the law relating to State taxation of Common\vealth public servants. The High Court has held that general State tax laws apply to Commonwealth public servants in the same way as to other subjects of the State, unless the Commonwealth enacts legislation exempting the payments which it makes to its public servants by way of salary or pension from State taxation. The obscurity is that a Commonwealth law prescribing salaries for its own public servants appears to be an exercise of exclusive legislative power; that a law exempting such salaries from State taxation appears to be incidental to that power, and therefore itself an exercise of exclusive power; but that if this is so, the State tax law also, in its application to Commonwealth salaries, appears to be an exercise of Commonwealth exclusive power and therefore invalid in the first place.

The inquiry by the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs into “the law and administration of divorce, custody and family matters, with particular regard to oppressive costs, delays, indigates and other injustices” is to be welcomed. This article will discuss as prospects for reforming the law affecting the grounds for divorce, with particular reference to the guidance that might be gained from the Divorce Reform Act 1969 (Eng.). This Act provides support for a member of proposals to amend the Matrimonial Causes Act 1959-1966 (th) which could be implemented imrnediately. The proposed amendents raise none of the controversial issues of principle which dominated the debates on the 1959 Act in Australia and the 1969 Act in England, and their enactment would not prejudice the outcome of the Committes deliberations on the ultimate shape of Australian divorce law. Their beneficial effect on divorce practice, however, would be subnual and would help to pave the way for more fundamental reforms.

In 1971, Blackburn J., delivering a swingeing judgment in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, held that the members of three Arnhem I and clans had no legally recognizable rights in their ancestral lands, and thereby decided what was thought to be the first case brought by Australian aboriginals seeking legal recognition of their customary land rights.

British settlements were first established in Australia in 1788. Ever since it is a notorious fact that aboriginals have been consistently deprived of their land by settlers, miners and governments. The surprising thing therefore, to lawyers unfamiliar with the history of Australian race relations, is that aboriginal rights in land do not appear to have been asserted in the courts by aboriginal plaintiffs before the present proceedings began. The absence of reported cases dealing specifically with the rights of Australian aboriginals in their lands is all the more exceptional in the light of the wide range of decisions on indigenous claims in other murisdictions.

When a defendant is asked to plead to a criminal charge, he is not restricted to the pleas of guilty and not guilty. Other pleas well known to lawyers include autrefois acquit and the plea to the jurisdiction. Some older pleas such as benefit of clergy have been abolished.

The plea of non vult contendere cum domina Regina et posuit se in gratiam curiae is unfamiliar to Australian lawyers. The last reported use of the plea in England was in 1702 in The Queen v. Telnpleman. The report of this case is unfortunately brief:

After pleading guilty to an indictment, the defendant may give evidence that justifies the fact in mitigation oj punishment—S.C. 3 Danv. 253. S.C. 1 Salk. 55.

After pleading guilty to an indictment, you may give anything in evidence that justifies the fact, or proves him not guilty of the fact; for the entry is non vult contendere cum dominâ Reginâ, sed ponit se in gratiam Curiae. And it is not like the case where one is found guilty by verdict.