CONSTITUTIONAL LAW ASSIGNMENT

INSTRUCTIONS

In Australian Constitutional Law, there is only ONE ASSIGNMENT. This assignment is compulsory and must be submitted by all students. The assignment will constitute 20% of the final mark in this subject.

Assignments must be submitted by the due date unless an extension has been granted. Extensions need to be requested by email prior to the assignment due date and specific supporting evidence provided. Late assignments attract a penalty of one mark out of 20, or 5% of the total marks available, per day. A pass mark is 50%. Assignments that are received more than ten days after the published due date will not be accepted. Please note that students granted an extension must still submit their assignment within ten days of the original assignment due date.

Assignments are assessed according to the “Assignment Grading and Assessment Criteria” outlined in the Good Assignment Guide. This guide also contains the rules and guidelines regarding the presentation of assignments and instructions on how to submit an assignment and is available from the Guides and Policies section of Canvas. Please read this guide carefully before completing and submitting this assignment.

Any submission which uses the ideas of others without attribution, or fails to reference properly the words and ideas of others, or which has been prepared – in whole or in part – by someone other than the student, will be regarded as plagiarism – and severe consequences apply. Students must acknowledge any assistance provided in preparing this assignment, including the use of automated writing tools, artificial intelligence (AI), reference generators, and translation software.

The maximum word length for this assignment is 3000 words (excluding citation footnotes and bibliography).

Completed assignments should be lodged through Canvas and received by 11:59pm AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)

Compulsory Assignment

It is June.

Only mere weeks ago, all seemed right with the world.

King Charles III was crowned as King of Australia, as well as of some other less important places.

The South Sydney Rabbitohs were atop the NRL ladder, which is where they should be, in a just world.

There were even rumours, however tentative, that the Wallabies could, for the first time in more than 20 years, pack a scrum – at least in training – that would not immediately fall apart.

Some considered this a golden age, others a coronation gift.

But whatever this time was to be called by future historians, it all came to an abrupt end on Monday, May 15th, 2023, aka “Monday, Bloody Monday” or “The Ides of May” – on any view a catastrophic day in Australian history.

On the morning of this Monday, May 15th, a series of what seemed to be coordinated terrorist bombings occurred in Sydney, Canberra, and Perth, targeting government buildings and financial centres. There were over 200 deaths and many more casualties. The dead included not just local residents but British, American, Israeli, South African, and Turkish citizens.

In Canberra, four House members and two Senators were killed with many more in a dire medical condition. As two of the House members were Government members, this has left the Government, formerly only with a one seat majority in the House, now in minority government.

There were also explosions at Adelaide’s airport that left two passenger aircraft destroyed, with 30 people dead and many more injured.

Also on this day, a series of cyber-attacks were launched against Australian banks and credit unions. The unofficial leaks from Government now appearing in the media suggest these attacks originated somewhere in the Republic of Veyshnoria.

While Australia had never had a good relationship with Veyshnoria, these cyber-attacks, coming on the same day as major terrorist bombings, made a tragic day so much worse, and continue to do great damage.

Many Australians wonder whether Veyshnoria was behind the May 15th attacks.

These cyber-attacks on financial institutions have hampered the recovery by disrupting banking services, especially transfers of money, reducing many Australians to using physical cash (bills and coins) for purchases of necessities. The rumoured prospect of more cyber-attacks has caused Australians to lose faith in banks and credit unions. Australian residents have now begun to withdraw ever larger amounts of cash from ATM machines, leading to shortages of cash. In many shops and retailers, only cash is now accepted, and credit is regularly refused. Many Australian workers are demanding access to their superannuation and to draw down cash for living expenses.

Robberies for cash, especially, have become common in Sydney and Canberra particularly, as an effect of the May 15th bombings means that police resources have been taken away from day-to-day policing. In Canberra, car-jackings, already a problem whenever the Raiders lose, have also increased. The increase in crime has made more Australians start to look at learning self-defence and how to use guns. Sydney, especially, has a thriving ‘black market’ in the purchase and sale of guns and ammunition for self-defence.

To meet the crisis of cash shortages. a new bank that operates from Australia Post’s local post offices, called “AusBank”, was set up by an order of the Treasurer shortly after the May 15th attacks. The AusBank will hold cash for Australian depositors and from this pool of cash, the Commonwealth will borrow from AusBank in order to spend on May 15th recovery projects. The Treasurer has been using the cash deposited with AusBank to pay for recovery and relief efforts, including donations to charities in Canberra. Many Australians like the ease with which they can deposit and withdraw cash from the post office.

The major private banks are seeing a loss of customers and, also, a loss of cash deposits, and are considering mounting a legal challenge.

The Australian Taxation Office is worried that transactions are not being declared and GST is not being collected.

While public speculation about the causes of the cyber-attacks has been focused on Veyshnoria, the question of who organised and perpetrated the terrorist bombings has been a subject of police investigation as well as public debate. Social media has been awash with theories. The hashtag #May15 has, as the TikTok-addicted youth will say, “gone viral.” Many Australians believe the May 15th attacks were organised online and that the bombs used were built by terrorists who relied on internet pages and videos that instructed “how to build a bomb.”

Sadly, if predictably, the Parliament has not been immune to the current crisis and its inevitable hysteria.

The Parliament recently convened for a commemoration of the dead and also to enact recovery legislation for the rebuilding of what was destroyed. The Parliament is considering the National Recovery Act (Act) and it is now the subject of much heated debate.

The Act itself include these features:

Part 1 grants the Attorney-General the power to limit the freedom of movement, including detention for up to 1 year, of any person who:

is “reasonably suspected” of involvement with the May 15th attacks, pending their possible criminal trial; or
has visited the Republic of Veyshnoria in the last five years and who has refused to be interviewed by the Australian Federal Police.

The Attorney-General can approach the Federal Court at any time for a renewed Part 1 order of detention where the Attorney-General considers the detention to be required by “public safety” consideration.

Part 2 requires all Australian persons, businesses, and governments from 01 July 2023 onwards to:

deposit any physical cash with AusBank; and
prohibits any other bank or financial institution from accepting physical cash deposits.

Part 3 establishes the Australian Recovery Agency (Agency) to investigate threats to Australian security and which has powers to:

direct media organisations to publish/broadcast (and remove) content that the Agency considers supportive of (or prejudicial to) national security;
apply ex parte to the Supreme Court of any State for orders that the property of a media organisation is forfeited to the Commonwealth where that media organisation has not complied with a direction under (3)(a) above. Where a forfeiture order is made by the Court in favour of the Commonwealth, it may not be appealed;

regulate the access of non-Australian citizens to use the internet by:

requiring all customers for phone and internet services to produce their passports as proof of citizenship when buying any telecommunications device or internet service;
charging a “Security Fee” that is a 10% surcharge on their monthly internet bill;

blocking access to social media applications by those who have contravened (i) or (ii) above.

sell properties forfeited under (3)(b) and invest the proceeds in the projects in the Fund in Part 4 below.

Part 4 grants authority to the Treasurer to impose a discretionary 10% tariff on all goods imported into Australia, with such monies to be paid into the National Reconstruction Fund (“Fund“). The Treasurer may use the funds raised for any national security-related projects in Australia and outside Australia;

Part 5 authorises the Agency to create and manage “National Recovery Projects” by:

(a) sending notices to Australian residents when they turn 18 years of age that they are required to attend the Agency’s office in their nearest capital city to register for national recovery work in Sydney, Canberra, Perth, or Adelaide.

(b) ordering those registered under (a) be sent to work on national recovery work for a period of up to 4 years in return for a daily stipend of $30 per day and a lifelong waiver of educational fees charged by Commonwealth or State;

(d) requiring non-citizens to pay an annual “Residency Fee” of $10,000 to the Fund on July 1 each year to assist with national reconstruction or these non-citizens will be subject to immediate immigration detention and then deportation from Australia to their country of citizenship;

(e) cancelling the passport of any Australian who fails to comply with a notice issued to them in (a) or fails to comply with work requirements in (b) for a period of 30 years.

The Treasurer has already paid out $500m in May 15th recovery payments to individuals affected by the various attacks. As more cash is deposited with AusBank, more payments to struggling Australians will be made. This has led to a steady rise in national morale. At the same time, the crime problem is terrible as more people carry more cash in their wallets.

It is a common view that the worst thing that could happen is litigation over the Government’s recovery work.

As a constitutional lawyer, the Prime Minister’s Department has approached you to provide a detailed analysis of the legal position.

There is concern that there will be legal challenges to what the Government has done and is proposing to do.

Your instructions are to identify all the legal problems and provide constitutionally valid solutions.

Finally, if you want to be paid in cash, then the quality of your advice will have to be exceptionally good, indeed.

Examine all of the facts and provide your advice to the Prime Minister’s Department on all of the issues raised here.