Comment

Extract

That such a power now exists is indisputable. Its ambit alone must yet be resolved. Its restrictions, that is, activities denied to an exercise of the power, must be those that apply generally to legislative powers. A noncoercive power is no power – an absurd proposition – and no reason exists to confine the power to one extending only to permit Commonwealth funds to be drawn from its Treasury. The true rule is stated by Mason J.

Every implied power arises from constitutional language, history or political reality. Thus, in the United States, powers over aliens, the Indian tribes, foreign relations and the compulsory requisition of private property derive from implication based on history and political reality. This is explained in the Curtiss-Wright case. Australia differs from the United States in three relevant respects: it is not a union of states; Commonwealth powers were not granted to it by the States; and there is, and there never was, dual Commonwealth-State citizenship.