sorry Tom

So my question is: Where is the Justice in all this for defence force personnel? Esp for those who were done over in the years prior to 2005.
Screwed by the system.
Screwed by the government.
Screwed by the AMC.
Screwed by the High Court.

“Ooops, sorry. I know I just stuffed up your whole life but I meant well.”

Join the armed services and get shot at from both sides?

I think you recall your Com Con classes correctly (it was admin & constitutional law at our school). You may also recall the difficulties diffierent governments over several years had establishing arbitration and conciliation commissions in different forms. Whenever a commission was given the authority to sanction one of the adversaries the High Court struck down the commission as having judicial powers. The solution, adopted in Gillard’s Act as in previous Acts, is to establish a conciliation body and an industrial division of the Federal Court with parallel jurisdiction, but with one having administrative powers and the other judicial powers.

Reaching back to the dim mists of Com Con i.e. Commonwealth Constitutional law lecture days, my intuition is the HCA would be very jealous of the judicial power.

And think about it - if you could create a court under any head of power, Defence or any other power we could see new courts popping up under any of numerous subject areas.

That’s a prospect that’s bound to make the HCA nervous about the Executive trespassing on the separation of powers and poaching their judicial turf.

By the by, I always remembered the lecturer suggesting that theoretically the Parliament probably has its own inherent constitutional judicial power but by convention does not exercise it, except perhaps in the case of privileges committee processes. The suggestion was Parliament could theoretically set up their own star chamber and prison under the Hill for anyone they thought was naughty.

Now that would give the HCA heartburn.

But I guess rather than learning from this bungled overstretch in executive power, Howard has chosen denial instead. He sure seems angry lately, trolling against the ‘elites’ and their bill of rights. A humiliation he cries, an admission of democratic failure if we venture down that path. The floodgates on abortion and gay marriage will gush, he threatened.

I wonder where Howard’s American friends stand on this issue? After all, Bush did institute a Bill of Rights in the re-founding of Iraq, and I would find it greatly entertaining to see him disavow Howard on this issue. Might put the grumpy old b-stard in his place.

As Rudd might say, it seems like a “sh-t storm” over at Defense.

Where a member of the military is accused of doing something that breaches the civil law they should be charged under the civil law rather than the military law which the military currently insists on using. This would reduce the number of matters brought before the military court. Indeed, it seems that the former member of the navy in this case could and should have been charged under the civilian law for the assualt he was accused of.