Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers to questions to Senator Brandis asked by the opposition.

I had the pleasure the weekend before last of attending the 40th anniversary of my law school class. It was a reunion. We got together with all of those people who had been there on the day I graduated all those years ago. There were some people I had not seen for 40 years. Amongst them were some very distinguished jurists around the country. One of them, of course, was Jeffrey Goldsworthy, a professor of constitutional law at Monash University. At law school you learnt constitutional law, which was generally a first year subject. The first thing you learnt in constitutional law was about section 109 of the Australian Constitution. This is the section of the Constitution that refers to inconsistency between state and federal law. You may find circumstances where a state government might pass a law and the Commonwealth has an inconsistent law. How do you determine the issue between those two laws? The answer is section 109 of the Constitution. It says that if there is an inconsistency between a state law and a federal law, the federal law overrides the state law. I notice Senator Brandis is nodding at that assertion.

So the question I ask in relation to that lengthy and detailed statement, in Senator Brandis's words—