In Australia, decisions about the post-separation relocation of a parent (usually a mother) with children where the other parent (usually a father) has opposed this are increasingly controversial, and have attracted both media and academic attention, including in the pages of this journal. Unlike in the United Kingdom where restrictions even on international relocations appear from analyses of the reported case law to be relatively rare, decisions in Australia restraining relocations are quite common. There has, as yet, been no Australian legislative reform specifically addressing decision-making on the issue of relocation. The decisions are made under the general provisions dealing with post-separation parenting (Part VII of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), hereinafter referred to as the ‘FLA‘).

Enforcement of patents is a pivotal factor in determining whether or not the patent system performs its public role of stimulating innovation. Without the means to exclude imitators, the party who pays for the original idea or invention will, in many cases, not be able to recoup their outlays, with the result that such parties are likely to direct their investment elsewhere and invest less in research and development. Enforceability matters even if the invention embodied in a patent is not being directly commercialised by the inventing organisation. Intellectual property (‘IP’) owners will not, for example, be able to license, cross-license, or sell their IP rights, or enter into joint ventures based on those rights, if the licensee, buyer or joint venture partner has no confidence that their IP rights confer effective exclusivity over brands, ideas or creations. Furthermore, IP owners will be reticent to disclose their ideas to prospective partners if they have doubts about their ability to prevent the other party from expropriating their proposal. Direct enforcement of each and every patent does not have to occur for the patent system to be effective. All that is required for incentives to work is that people believe that infringement will be stopped if necessary.

In Australian competition law, the notion of collusion between competitors is encapsulated in the concepts of ‘contract’, ‘arrangement’ and ‘understanding’ under the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (‘TPA’). These concepts have been integral to the civil prohibitions on cartel conduct under s 45(2) of the TPA since 1974. The same concepts are used in the new cartel offences and civil per se prohibitions which took effect in July 2009 as a result of amendments made by the Trade Practices Amendment (Cartel Conduct and Other Measures) Act 2008 (Cth).

In 2007, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (‘ACCC’) recommended amendments to the TPA in connection with the interpretation of ‘understanding’ in the wake of its largely unsuccessful cases against petrol retailers for alleged price fixing in Ballarat and Geelong and its subsequent petrol pricing inquiry. In this article it is argued that the proposed amendments should be rejected.

In an increasingly global economy, foreign anti-competitive practices pose just as much of a threat to the economic wellbeing of Australians as domestic anti-competitive practices. Multinationals which transcend national boundaries are now major players in many different markets. Furthermore, continuing globalisation means that the number of commercial activities with transnational implications will rise.

The Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) (‘TPA’) contains a provision that expressly gives the Act extraterritorial operation. Section 5(1) provides that the competition law prohibitions contained in Part IV extend to conduct engaged in outside Australia by bodies corporate incorporated, or carrying on a business, in Australia. With the exception of the prohibitions against cartel conduct, the extraterritorial operation of the prohibitions against the major forms of anti-competitive conduct is even broader. Since the Act’s inception, the prohibitions against price and non-price vertical restraints have extended to the engaging in conduct outside Australia by persons and bodies corporate (whether incorporated, or carrying on a business, in Australia or not) in relation to the supply of goods or services to persons within Australia.

In the Australian liberal democratic tradition, the expectation that government be accountable to the people is a product of the electorate’s grant of power to government. As government becomes more complex due to the expansion of human activity it regulates there is increased reliance upon official means of facilitating democratic accountability. Indicative of this development is the 20th century supplementation of traditional Westminster mechanisms of accountability with administrative law institutions such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman. These supplementary review processes and institutions of ‘new administrative law’ aim to render the application of discretionary decision-making by government administrators transparent and fair to the individual citizen. This was the primary vision of the Kerr and Bland Committees which framed the need for administrative review agencies against the background of the protection and promotion of individual citizen rights.