GAGELER J. "The framers of a Constitution at the end of the nineteenth century may be supposed to have known that there have been in this world many forms of Government, that the various incidents and attributes of those several forms had been the subject of intelligent discussion for more than 2,000 years, and that some doctrines were generally accepted as applicable to them respectively". The framers of the Australian Constitution selected, adapted and melded elements of the substantially overlapping constitutional traditions of the United Kingdom and the United States as those traditions were understood to have developed to the end of the nineteenth century. They did so to produce a framework for the creation, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of a distinctly Australian system of national governance. That framework the Australian people, themselves acquainted with the manner in which representative and responsible government under the rule of law had come to be established and to operate in each of the colonies which were to become States, chose to approve. The objectively discernible mutual intentions of the framers and of the people would miscarry, and the system of national governance which the framers laboured to see created would be diminished, were the product of their labour sought to be "construed merely by the aid of a dictionary, as by an astral intelligence … without reference to history".
Nowhere is an appreciation of the historical context within which the Australian Constitution was brought into existence more important than in seeking to understand the "judicial power of the Commonwealth", which s 71 vests solely in this Court, in federal courts which the Commonwealth Parliament chooses to create in accordance with s 72 and in courts which the Commonwealth Parliament chooses to invest with "federal jurisdiction" with respect to one or more of the nine categories of "matter" specified in ss 75 and 76. The difficulty and the danger of attempting to formulate some all-encompassing abstract definition of the judicial power of the Commonwealth was acknowledged from its inception, was repeatedly recognised in judicial pronouncements throughout the twentieth century and has been reiterated in this century.
For present purposes, an understanding of the nature and scope of the judicial power of the Commonwealth is enhanced by close attention to the reasoning of the plurality of this Court in R v Davison. Dixon CJ and McTiernan J (with whom Fullagar J agreed) there pointed out that many functions have traditionally been undertaken by courts of law and equity from which elements of various definitions of judicial power formulated for differing purposes in the early twentieth century are "entirely lacking". They added that there are also many functions which can be committed to a court which might equally be committed to an administrator.
Dixon CJ and McTiernan J continued:
"The truth is that the ascertainment of existing rights by the judicial determination of issues of fact or law falls exclusively within judicial power so that the Parliament cannot confide the function to any person or body but a court constituted under ss 71 and 72 of the Constitution and this may be true also of some duties or powers hitherto invariably discharged by courts under our system of jurisprudence but not exactly of the foregoing description. But there are many functions or duties that are not necessarily of a judicial character but may be performed judicially, whether because they are incidental to the exercise of judicial power or because they are proper subjects of its exercise."
Their Honours went on to explain, by reference to the analysis of Holmes J in Prentis v Atlantic Coast Line Co, that where the legislature has prescribed that a particular act or thing be done through the application of a judicial process, "the character of the proceeding or of the thing to be done becomes all important" in that "[t]he nature of the final act determines the nature of the previous inquiry".
Within that exposition of principle lie two important conceptions. Each had been the subject of earlier judicial articulation and each came to be developed more fully in later cases. The first is of the existence of an area of judicial power within which a particular act or thing done is directed to an ultimate end that can be achieved only through the exercise of judicial power. At the centre of that exclusive area is what has subsequently been described as the "unique and essential function" of the judicial power of "the quelling of … controversies [as to legal rights] by ascertainment of the facts, by application of the law and by exercise, where appropriate, of judicial discretion". Also within that exclusive area of judicial power and more difficult to catalogue are some, but by no means all, other functions that have in the past been exercised only by courts. The second conception is of an area of judicial power, within "[t]he borderland in which judicial and administrative functions overlap", and within which a particular act or thing done by a court through the application of a judicial process is directed to an ultimate end that might equally be achieved through the application of a non-judicial process. Beyond those two conceptions lies the area of non-judicial power.
Where the Commonwealth Parliament confers a power to do a particular act or thing on a court, it must be assumed in the absence of some indication to the contrary that the Parliament intends and requires that power to be exercised by that court through the application of a judicial process. If the act or thing is capable of being done through the application of a judicial process, the question whether the power to do it is within the judicial power of the Commonwealth turns on the end to which the act or thing is directed.
Where what the court is empowered to do is to make an order requiring or permitting the conduct of an inquiry or investigation, the question whether the power to make that order is within the judicial power of the Commonwealth therefore turns on the end to which the inquiry or investigation is directed. That is so notwithstanding that the mere making of the order might in a technical, but artificial, sense be said to quell a controversy about whether the order itself should be made.
Of the import of the endorsement in Davison of the analysis of Holmes J in Prentis, Mason J explained in Pioneer Concrete (Vic) Pty Ltd v Trade Practices Commission that the exercise of a power to compel the provision of information is not inherently an exercise of judicial power but that:
"It may constitute an element in the exercise of judicial power when the power is part of the proceedings of the court, its object being to aid the court or the parties to obtain and present evidence in those proceedings. Then the exercise of the power by the court or the parties in proceedings in the court is for the purpose of enabling the court to hear and determine the lis and is, accordingly, incidental to, if not an element in, the exercise of judicial power."
The position is no different in principle where the power conferred on a court to compel the provision of information has as its object to assist an applicant for the exercise of that power in the pursuit of a claim of legal right which is the subject of a proceeding in another court or which may not yet have become the subject of a proceeding at all. A power of that kind was traditionally exercised by the Court of Chancery in issuing bills of discovery and is now often enough exercised by courts making orders for preliminary discovery in accordance with modern rules of civil procedure. The making of an order for preliminary discovery, as the Full Court of the Federal Court demonstrated in Hooper v Kirella Pty Ltd, fits comfortably within the paradigm case of an exercise of judicial power in that it is directed ultimately to the resolution of a claim of legal right. That is so notwithstanding that the information sought is essential to the pursuit of the claim and notwithstanding that the claim might well be shown by that information when obtained to be incapable of being established.
It is at this point in the analysis that there arises an important question of principle. What if the power conferred on the court to make an order compelling the provision of information is exercisable without any requirement for there to be a lis - in the sense of a claim or controversy as to legal right - in aid of the resolution of which the making of the order is directed? What if, to adopt language used by Gaudron J in Gould v Brown to describe the power to order the examination of an examinable officer in relation to the examinable affairs of a corporation then conferred by ss 596A and 596B of the Corporations Law, it is "simply a power to obtain information"?
Questions of that kind arose in this Court in the exercise of its appellate jurisdiction in Cheney v Spooner and again in Rees v Kratzmann.
In Cheney v Spooner, the appeal was from an order made under s 16 of the Service and Execution of Process Act 1901 (Cth) giving a liquidator leave to serve in Victoria a summons for examination concerning the affairs of a company in voluntary winding up which had been issued by a Master in Equity of the Supreme Court of New South Wales under s 123 of the Companies Act 1899 (NSW). In the course of holding the summons for examination to answer the statutory description in s 16 of a "summons … requiring any person to appear and give evidence … in any civil or criminal trial or proceeding", Isaacs and Gavan Duffy JJ referred to the winding up, which had been initiated by petition to the Supreme Court, as "a distinct judicial proceeding". They said that the summons required the giving of "evidence" in that proceeding on the basis that it provided the liquidator with "the means of obtaining information, that is evidentiary facts, enabling him to come to a conclusion as to ultimate facts" in the discharge of his "responsibility of working out the affairs of the company". No constitutional issue was raised, however, and s 16 was subsequently held not to be confined to process judicial in nature.
In Rees v Kratzmann, the appeal was from a decision of the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Queensland dismissing an appeal from a direction of a single judge of that Court that the respondent, a former managing director, not be allowed to answer a certain question in the course of being publicly examined in relation to the affairs of a company pursuant to an order which had been made under s 250 of the Companies Act 1961 (Q). Preliminary objection was taken to the jurisdiction of this Court to hear the appeal on the ground that, the appeal arising only in the course of a public examination, there was no lis between the parties and that the order appealed from was for that reason not a decree, order, judgment or sentence within the meaning of s 73 of the Constitution. The objection was overruled. Without giving reasons, the Court directed that the hearing of the appeal proceed, thereby treating the order of the Full Court of the Supreme Court as one made in the exercise of judicial power.
One explanation for the outcome of the preliminary objection in Rees v Kratzmann might be that, irrespective of whether the making of the order under s 250 of the Companies Act had been an exercise of judicial power, the question which arose in the course of the examination as to the scope of the order involved a justiciable controversy. The same explanation might be given of the basis on which an application for special leave to appeal was entertained without objection in Mortimer v Brown, and of the basis on which appellate jurisdiction was exercised without objection in Hamilton v Oades, where the issue was whether the common law privilege against self-incrimination was abrogated by the equivalent provision in s 541 of the Companies (New South Wales) Code.
The question of whether a power legislatively conferred on a court to order an examination in relation to the examinable affairs of a corporation is judicial in nature was raised squarely for the consideration of this Court for the first time in Gould v Brown. The issue was whether the power to make such an order, then conferred by ss 596A and 596B of the Corporations Law applying as State legislation under the Corporations (New South Wales) Act 1990 (NSW), was validly conferred on the Federal Court. Only three members of the Court of six - Brennan CJ and Toohey J and (in a separate judgment) Gaudron J - found it necessary to address whether the power was judicial in nature, and all three found it necessary to do so only to the extent that the power was available to be exercised in respect of a corporation that had been the subject of a winding-up order made by the Federal Court. The view of Brennan CJ and Toohey J was that "[t]o the extent that the power to order and conduct examinations is available for exercise in the course and for the purposes of a winding up, it is an incident of the judicial power of winding up and has a judicial character". The view of Gaudron J, more sceptical and tentatively expressed, was to substantially similar effect save that her Honour took the view that the power could only be exercised by the court which had ordered the winding up.
The question was not raised in the appeal to this Court in Spinks v Prentice, in which other issues were raised as to the validity of the conferral on the Federal Court of power under the Corporations Law set out in s 82 and applying as Territory legislation under s 5 of the Corporations Act 1989 (Cth). Gummow and Hayne JJ, with whom Gleeson CJ relevantly agreed, expressly declined to address the issue. Gaudron J reiterated the view she had expressed in Gould v Brown.
The question was raised again in this Court in Saraceni v Jones, on an application for special leave to appeal from a decision of the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Western Australia. The Court of Appeal had formally answered a question referred for its consideration to the effect that the exercise of power by the Supreme Court to make an order for examination under s 596A of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and to conduct an examination under s 597 in relation to a corporation in receivership and where the property of the corporation is in the possession of a mortgagee or its agent under Pt 5.2 of the Corporations Act constitutes an exercise of the judicial power of the Commonwealth. Refusing special leave to appeal, three members of this Court expressed the view that the actual orders of the Court of Appeal were not attended by doubt. That expression of view is of persuasive value but it does not have precedential effect.
The question of whether the power to make an order for examination under s 596A of the Corporations Act is judicial in nature returned to be squarely raised in this Court in these proceedings in its original jurisdiction, which challenge orders made by the Federal Court for examinations into the examinable affairs of a corporation in voluntary liquidation. At the conclusion of the hearing before the Full Court of this Court, I joined in making orders which included an order formally answering in the negative a question reserved for the consideration of the Full Court asking in unqualified terms whether s 596A of the Corporations Act is invalid as an attempted conferral of non-judicial power on a federal court or on another court exercising federal jurisdiction.
My reasons for considering s 596A of the Corporations Act to be a valid conferral of judicial power embrace neither of two somewhat extreme positions advanced in the course of argument by the defendants and by some who intervened to support validity. The argument at one extreme was that it was sufficient to characterise the power as a judicial power that the examination might yield some information that might be used to pursue some claim of legal right. The argument at the other extreme was that it was sufficient to characterise the power as a judicial power that a broadly analogous power of examination can be seen to have been exercised by courts in the Australian colonies in 1900 under provisions modelled broadly on s 115 of the Companies Act 1862 (UK). The first pays insufficient attention to the importance of constitutional history. The second relies on a misinterpretation of what was said by Kitto J in Davison, which results in a conception of constitutional history that is too narrow.
The separate reasons for judgment of Kitto J in Davison contain the following statement:
"It may ... be said that when the Constitution of the Commonwealth prescribes as a safeguard of individual liberty a distribution of the functions of government amongst separate bodies, and does so by requiring a distinction to be maintained between powers described as legislative, executive and judicial, it is using terms which refer, not to fundamental functional differences between powers, but to distinctions generally accepted at the time when the Constitution was framed between classes of powers requiring different 'skills and professional habits' in the authorities entrusted with their exercise."
The statement too readily misinterpreted is that which immediately follows. His Honour said:
"For this reason it seems to me that where the Parliament makes a general law which needs specified action to be taken to bring about its application in particular cases, and the question arises whether the Constitution requires that the power to take that action shall be committed to the judiciary to the exclusion of the executive, or to the executive to the exclusion of the judiciary, the answer may often be found by considering how similar or comparable powers were in fact treated in this country at the time when the Constitution was prepared. Where the action to be taken is of a kind which had come by 1900 to be so consistently regarded as peculiarly appropriate for judicial performance that it then occupied an acknowledged place in the structure of the judicial system, the conclusion, it seems to me, is inevitable that the power to take that action is within the concept of judicial power as the framers of the Constitution must be taken to have understood it."
The significance of the second of those statements of Kitto J lies in its connection with the first and in the weight properly to be accorded to his Honour's reference to what had come "by" 1900 "consistently" to be "regarded as peculiarly appropriate for judicial performance". His Honour was writing in the context of considering the characterisation of the power to order sequestration, which had been exercised judicially for centuries.
What Kitto J can be taken to have meant in Davison can only fully be understood by considering what he there said together with what he said subsequently in R v Trade Practices Tribunal; Ex parte Tasmanian Breweries Pty Ltd, to which it will be appropriate in due course to turn. There is no inconsistency.
The appropriate perspective on what Kitto J said in Davison is that adopted by Jacobs J in R v Quinn; Ex parte Consolidated Food Corporation. An argument advanced in that case, relying on what Kitto J had said in Davison, was that the particular function of removing a trademark from a register fell within the exclusive area of judicial power because it had in practice been conferred only on courts between 1875 and 1938.
Rejecting that argument, Jacobs J (with whom Barwick CJ, Gibbs, Stephen, Mason and Murphy JJ relevantly agreed) said:
"The historical approach to the question whether a power is exclusively a judicial power is based upon the recognition that we have inherited and were intended by our Constitution to live under a system of law and government which has traditionally protected the rights of persons by ensuring that those rights are determined by a judiciary independent of the parliament and the executive. But the rights referred to in such an enunciation are the basic rights which traditionally, and therefore historically, are judged by that independent judiciary which is the bulwark of freedom."
His Honour continued:
"On the other hand the course of legislation in comparatively recent times does not, in itself, provide a foundation for the historical approach. If the legislation requires the exercise of a power to determine questions the determination of which will affect what are traditionally regarded as basic legal rights, the judicial nature of the power springs from the effect which the exercise of the decision-making function under the legislation will have upon the legal rights rather than from the history of similar legislation reposing the function in a judicial tribunal."
The perspective on the significance of history adopted by Jacobs J in Quinn is as important to determining whether a particular function is inherently non-judicial (so as to lie beyond that which is capable of being conferred on a court) as it is to determining whether a particular function is exclusively judicial (so as to be capable of being conferred only on a court). The primary question in each case is not as to how the function might have been exercised in practice at or around 1900. The answer to that narrow temporal question will be relevant, but it cannot be determinative. The aim is not simply to take a snap-shot of the historical position at a moment in time. The fundamental question is as to how the particular function is now to be characterised having regard to the systemic values on which the framers can be taken to have drawn in isolating the judicial power of the Commonwealth and in vesting that power only in courts. The aim is to be faithful to those values.
The task of assigning content to the judicial power of the Commonwealth "is one of construing the Constitution as it stands", Windeyer J explained in Tasmanian Breweries, yet that task of construing the Constitution as it stands is one which it is "impossible to do … on the assumption that Montesquieu had never lived … or that those who framed our Constitution did not copy s 71 from s 1 of Art III of the Constitution of the United States". Of the concept of judicial power to which s 71 refers, his Honour went on to state:
"The concept seems to me to defy, perhaps it were better to say transcend, purely abstract conceptual analysis. It inevitably attracts consideration of predominant characteristics and also invites comparison with the historic functions and processes of courts of law."
Windeyer J was explaining that the concept of the judicial power of the Commonwealth needs to be understood by reference to the reason for that power being separated and reposed only in courts of law. He was also explaining that the reason for the judicial power of the Commonwealth being separated and reposed only in courts of law needs to be understood against the background of the at first common and then divergent constitutional histories of the United Kingdom and the United States, and the powerful ideas which that history generated.
That explanation by Windeyer J in Tasmanian Breweries is wholly consistent with the frequently quoted statement of Kitto J in the same case that "a judicial power involves, as a general rule, a decision settling for the future, as between defined persons or classes of persons, a question as to the existence of a right or obligation, so that an exercise of the power creates a new charter by reference to which that question is in future to be decided as between those persons or classes of persons". That description was of what I have already described as the paradigm case of an exercise of judicial power. Importantly, Kitto J added that "[i]t is right, I think, to conclude from the cases on the subject that a power which does not involve such a process and lead to such an end needs to possess some special compelling feature if its inclusion in the category of judicial power is to be justified".
By framing his description of judicial power in Tasmanian Breweries in "general and ahistorical terms", Kitto J cannot be taken to have been ignoring the importance of what he had described in Davison as "distinctions generally accepted at the time when the Constitution was framed". Nor can he be taken to have been ignoring or marginalising the lessons of history. With reference to his Honour's description of the paradigm case of an exercise of judicial power, and similar descriptions that are to be found in other cases, Professor Zines observed:
"Indeed, in a sense, the concept of judicial power referred to above is itself derived from historical examination, that is, of what courts have done. From this has been distilled those features that are pre-eminently or exclusively judicial, which have been arrived at by having regard to social values and the reasons for preserving the separateness of judicial power."
His Honour's requirement, outside the paradigm case, for "some special compelling feature" to justify inclusion in the category of judicial power expressly invokes a normative frame of reference.
Of similar effect to the observations of Windeyer J in Tasmanian Breweries and Jacobs J in Quinn is an observation of Cardozo CJ which was quoted by Mason and Deane JJ in Hilton v Wells and (in part) by French CJ and Kiefel J in Wainohu v New South Wales as applicable to the Australian Constitution:
"From the beginnings of our history, the principle has been enforced that there is no inherent power in Executive or Legislature to charge the judiciary with administrative functions except when reasonably incidental to the fulfilment of judicial duties. ... The exigencies of government have made it necessary to relax a merely doctrinaire adherence to a principle so flexible and practical, so largely a matter of sensible approximation, as that of the separation of powers. Elasticity has not meant that what is of the essence of the judicial function may be destroyed".
Not unimportant for present purposes is that Cardozo CJ made that observation in the context of holding invalid, as incompatible with the separation of powers under the Constitution of the State of New York, a statutory provision which allowed the Governor, in any proceeding for the removal by him of a person from public office, to direct that evidence be taken before a justice of the Supreme Court.
What then does history relevantly teach about the relationship between a power of investigation or inquiry and the essence of the judicial function?
Baron de Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws was first published in 1748. "Of the Constitution of England", he then famously observed (according to an English translation of 1751):
"Again, there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers. Were it joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary controul; for the judge would be then the legislator. Were it joined to the executive power, the judge might behave with all the violence of an oppressor."
Borrowing from and providing "an essentially English interpretation of Montesquieu", Sir William Blackstone wrote in the first book of his Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in 1765:
"In this distinct and separate existence of the judicial power ... consists one main preservative of the public liberty; which cannot subsist long in any state, unless the administration of common justice be in some degree separated both from the legislative and also from the executive power. Were [judicial power] joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property, of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe. Were it joined with the executive, this union might soon be an overballance for the legislative. For which reason, by the statute of 16 Car I c 10 which abolished the court of star chamber, effectual care is taken to remove all judicial power out of the hands of the king's privy council; who, as then was evident from recent instances, might soon be inclined to pronounce that for law, which was most agreeable to the prince or his officers. Nothing therefore is more to be avoided, in a free constitution, than uniting the provinces of a judge and a minister of state."
In Huddart, Parker & Co Pty Ltd v Moorehead Isaacs J referred to that passage, amongst other passages, in Blackstone as "a key" to the meaning of the judicial power of the Commonwealth. After quoting that passage in Blackstone, together with statements concerning the separation of the judicial power of the Commonwealth in R v Kirby; Ex parte Boilermakers' Society of Australia made by a majority of this Court and in R v Richards; Ex parte Fitzpatrick and Browne (the first made in the context of emphasising the role of the courts in maintaining the federal system and the second emphasising the role of courts more generally in determining whether the other arms of government had acted in "excess of power"), Deane J said in Re Tracey; Ex parte Ryan:
"Therein lie the main point and justification of the doctrine of the separation of judicial from executive and legislative powers upon which the Constitution is structured. To ignore the significance of the doctrine or to discount the importance of safeguarding the true independence of the judicature upon which the doctrine is predicated is to run the risk of undermining, or even subverting, the Constitution's only general guarantee of due process."
Blackstone's linking of the separation of judicial power to the dissolution of the Court of Star Chamber by the Habeas Corpus Act 1640 is for present purposes significant. There was a time, in the seventeenth century, when the Court of Star Chamber, a judicial arm of the Privy Council, acted as "the curious eye of the state and king's council prying into the inconveniencies and mischiefs which abound in the Commonwealth". Its procedures notoriously included the "oath ex officio" which the Puritan John Lilburne, who famously refused to take it in 1637, described as "the inquisition Oath". By that procedure, without necessity for prior particularisation of the subject-matter on which he was to be examined, a defendant would be told to swear at the outset of a proceeding "[t]hat you shall make true answer to all things that are asked of you" and would be punished for contempt if he refused. The Habeas Corpus Act 1640, after providing for the dissolution of the Court of Star Chamber, went on to provide that "from henceforth no Court, Council or Place of Judicature, shall be … constituted … which shall have, use or exercise the same or the like Jurisdiction" as well as to declare that neither the King nor his Privy Council were to have jurisdiction, power or authority "to examine or draw into question, determine or dispose of the Lands, Tenements, Hereditaments, Goods or Chattels of any the Subjects of this Kingdom; but that the same ought to be tried and determined in the ordinary Courts of Justice, and by the ordinary Course of the Law".
From that time forward the general rule, to which it is possible that exceptions might be found were the books to be trawled, has been that courts administering common law do not exercise common law or statutory powers to inquire into subject-matters unconnected with the determination of some claim of legal right. A "court of justice" has been conceived of as distinct from a court of investigation, such as a coroner's court or a court of marine inquiry.
The issuing of a search warrant, for example, has never been conceived of as an exercise of judicial power or as of a nature that is susceptible of becoming an exercise of judicial power even if it might be capable of being exercised judicially. Even the conduct of a preliminary inquiry to determine whether a sufficient basis exists to commit a prisoner for trial - a "plainly inquisitorial" feature of criminal process undertaken by justices of the peace since the middle of the sixteenth century having "the closest, if not an essential, connexion with an actual exercise of judicial power" - has been seen not itself to be an exercise of judicial power but rather to be the performance of an executive or ministerial function: the inquisitor acting not as a "Court of Justice" but as "an officer deputed by the law to enter into a preliminary enquiry".
In Rees v Kratzmann, Windeyer J explained:
"There is in the common law a traditional objection to compulsory interrogations. … The continuing regard for this element in the lawyer's notion of justice may be, as has been suggested, partly a consequence of a persistent memory in the common law of hatred of the Star Chamber and its works. It is linked with the cherished view of English lawyers that their methods are more just than are the inquisitional procedures of other countries."
His Honour immediately continued:
"But, strong as has been the influence of this attitude upon the administration of the common law, of the criminal law especially, it must be admitted that in the Chancery Court it had less place: and in bankruptcy jurisdiction it has been largely displaced."
The extent to which equity, administered by the Court of Chancery, was a counterpoise to the common law in this respect should not be overstated. A bill of discovery in equity, as I have already noted, was a process directed to the pursuit of a claim of legal right. It was not available to assist the prosecution or defence of a criminal action. There was, moreover, by 1736, "no rule more established in equity, than that a person shall not be obliged to discover what will subject him to a penalty, or any thing in the nature of a penalty".
A unifying theme of the core area of equitable jurisdiction exercised exclusively by the Court of Chancery might well be said to have been supervision of administration. That is a particularly apt description of the role of a court administering equity in relation to the Court of Chancery's most significant creation - suggested by Professor Frederic Maitland at the turn of the twentieth century to be "the most distinctive achievement of English lawyers" - the trust. Fundamental to the law of trusts is that the court has jurisdiction to supervise, and in appropriate circumstances to intervene in, the administration of a trust. Indeed, a test of the validity of a trust is that it must be of such a nature that it can be administered by a court. Appurtenant to that jurisdiction is a capacity for a court on application in appropriate circumstances both to advise a trustee and to compel the provision of information by a trustee.
Supervision of administration is also an apt description of the role of a court administering equity in relation to "one of the oldest remedies" in the Court of Chancery - the appointment of a receiver, who as an officer of the court and subject to its direction is "to take possession of, get in, or recover, property for the benefit of the persons who are ultimately determined to be entitled to it".
The longstanding statutory jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery to supervise the administration of insolvent estates was of the same ilk. In In re Condon; Ex parte James, a trustee in bankruptcy was described as "an officer of the Court", having "inquisitorial powers", whose duty it was "to hold money in his hands upon trust for its equitable distribution among the creditors".
The jurisdiction with respect to companies in winding up, which the Court of Chancery came to exercise in the middle of the nineteenth century, fitted much the same pattern. The winding up of a company has appropriately been described in generic terms as a process, "comparable to an administration in equity", that "consists of collecting the assets, realising and reducing them to money, dealing with proofs of creditors by admitting or rejecting them, and distributing the net proceeds, after providing for costs and expenses, to the persons entitled".
The legacy of the jurisdiction so exercised by or conferred on the Court of Chancery, as Brennan CJ, McHugh, Gummow, Kirby and Hayne JJ remarked in Patrick Stevedores Operations No 2 Pty Ltd v Maritime Union of Australia, is that in modern times "courts are well accustomed to the exercise of supervisory jurisdiction upon applications by trustees, receivers, provisional liquidators and others with the responsibility for the conduct of administrations".
Within the context of administration, the statutory powers first reposed in the Court of Chancery in the middle of the nineteenth century to make orders for the examination of bankrupts and of officers and other persons in relation to the affairs of companies in winding up, which came correspondingly to be conferred on the Supreme Courts of the Australian colonies by the end of the nineteenth century, could not be regarded as anomalous. But they were regarded as "extraordinary" and could "only be described as being sui generis".
Of the power to make an order for the examination of a bankrupt, Jessel MR said in In re Wright; Ex parte Willey:
"Now that is a very grave power to entrust to any Court or any man, viz, power to summon any other man whom you suspect (for mere suspicion will do) to be capable of giving information, and to get any information from him, although that information may be extremely hostile to the interests of the man himself. It is a power which, so far as I know, is found nowhere except in bankruptcy and the winding-up of companies (which is a kind of bankruptcy); it is a very extraordinary power indeed, and it ought to be very carefully exercised."
In In re Greys Brewery Co, Chitty J referred to s 115 of the Companies Act 1862 (UK) - the provision originally conferring power on the Court of Chancery to order an examination in relation to the affairs of a company in winding up - as the "'Star Chamber' clause".
How then, in light of that history, should this Court approach the characterisation of a power to order an examination conferred on a court by what those who support its validity argue to be a modern equivalent of that "'Star Chamber' clause"?
We must be careful not to slip into "Montesquieuan fundamentalism". We must bear in mind that the Constitution as a whole was framed as "an instrument of government meant to endure and conferring powers expressed in general propositions wide enough to be capable of flexible application to changing circumstances". We must recognise that "[t]he modern regulatory state arrived after 1900", with consequences which include that "modern federal legislation creates rights and imposes liabilities of a nature and with a scope for which there is no readily apparent analogue in the pre-federation legal systems of the colonies" and that "[d]eciding whether a governmental power or function is best exercised administratively or judicially is a regular legislative exercise". We must also be sensitive to the consideration that "the exercise of powers, independently, impartially and judicially, especially when such powers affect the liberty of the individual, would ordinarily be regarded as a good thing, not something to be avoided".
Fidelity to the values which inform the separation of the judicial power of the Commonwealth nevertheless requires that we be extremely cautious about accretion to the judicial power of a power to inquire which is unrelated or tenuously related to the core judicial function of quelling controversies about legal rights. To admit that an inquiry into a subject-matter is in the public interest is very different from admitting that the conferral of a power to conduct such an inquiry on a court accords with the constitutional structure that has been created to secure the enduring interests of the Commonwealth. Our job is to take a long-term view.
In Highstoke Pty Ltd v Hayes Knight GTO Pty Ltd, French J held that s 596A of the Corporations Act is limited on its proper construction to requiring the making, on the application of an "eligible applicant", of an order for examination of a person who is or was during a prescribed period an officer or provisional liquidator about the "examinable affairs" of a corporation that is in "external administration" within the meaning of Ch 5 of the Corporations Act. That holding has not been challenged.
External administration within the meaning of Ch 5 includes winding up by order of the court in the event of insolvency under Pt 5.4 or on other grounds under Pt 5.4A. External administration also includes voluntary winding up, by special resolution of the company, under Pt 5.5. Commencement of winding up results in each case in the appointment of one or more liquidators (which may include a "special purpose" liquidator): who is or are subject to the supervision of the court; who, on cause shown, can be removed by the court; and who can apply to the court for the determination of questions arising in the winding up.
Other forms of external administration within the meaning of Ch 5 are many and varied, but they have in common the temporary control over the property or affairs of a company (or other body under Pt 5.7) subject to the supervision of the court. They include administration of a company's affairs with a view to executing a deed of company arrangement under Pt 5.3A, which may be triggered by the appointment of an administrator who is to have control of the business of the company, as well as administration conducted by an administrator under such deed of company arrangement as the creditors of the company might resolve that the company execute under Pt 5.3A. They include such administration as might be conducted by a person appointed to administer a compromise or arrangement approved by a court between a company and its creditors or members under Pt 5.1. Finally, they include such administration as might be conducted by a "controller" of property of a corporation, being a receiver or another person having possession or control of that property for the purpose of enforcing a security interest. Under Pt 5.2, a controller, like a liquidator: is subject to the supervision of the court; can be removed by the court; and can apply to the court for directions arising in the performance or exercise of any of the controller's functions or powers.
Eligible applicants for an order under s 596A are limited to liquidators (including provisional liquidators), administrators, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (and persons appointed by it to be applicants). Examinable affairs, although broadly defined, do not extend beyond the affairs of the corporation and connected entities or matters connected to those affairs.
The purpose of Pt 5.9, it has repeatedly been recognised, is to aid persons who have the responsibility of the external administration of a corporation in carrying out their duties, and it has been recognised that an examination could be restrained as an abuse of process were it to be conducted for an improper purpose such as a purpose of establishing guilt. Moreover, as Martin CJ explained in Saraceni v Jones, the court making an order under s 596A has an important role in supervising under ss 596F and 597 the conduct of the examination it has ordered, being a role which coincides closely with what Barwick CJ described in Rees v Kratzmann as "the traditional judicial function of ensuring that the examination is not made an instrument of oppression, injustice, or of needless injury to the individual".
Construed and confined in that way, the duty s 596A imposes on a court to order an examination does not take the court beyond the role of supervising an administration. The section meets in its entirety the description given by Lockhart J in BP Australia Ltd v Amann Aviation Pty Ltd and adopted by Brennan CJ and Toohey J in Gould v Brown of "part of the processes … which ultimately protect and adjust the rights of companies, their creditors and in some cases contributories" in which the overall role of the court is "supervisory". Not all of the processes of administration in question are triggered by a court order, but the supervisory role of the court in relation to each is not materially different.
The persons who may apply for an order for examination under s 596A, the persons who may be examined and the subject-matter of an examination resulting from such an order, all go beyond the persons and subject-matter of an examination capable of being ordered in the exercise of powers conferred on courts in the Australian colonies before 1900. They do not, however, do so in a manner or to an extent that engages any more acutely the concerns which have resulted, as a general rule, in the exclusion of a mere power to inquire from the concept of judicial power.
On that basis, which I understand to correspond with the substance of the reasoning of French J in Highstoke and to be consistent with the observations made on refusing special leave to appeal in Saraceni v Jones, I consider s 596A to confer a judicial power.
The concept of a "matter" was chosen by the framers for inclusion in ss 75, 76 and 77 of the Australian Constitution in preference to the expressions "cases" and "controversies" in s2 of Art III of the United States Constitution in order to ensure that federal jurisdiction would not be confined to cases in which there were parties but would encompass all "such matters as can arise for judicial determination". In the paradigm case of an exercise of the judicial power of the Commonwealth that is directed to the quelling of a controversy about legal rights, the "matter" extends, if not to the entirety of the circumstances giving rise to the totality of the controversy, then to at least so much of the circumstances as give rise to so much of the controversy as is committed by the Parliament to the judicial determination of a court exercising federal jurisdiction. Outside the paradigm case, the "matter" might be otherwise defined. For example, the jurisdiction that was conferred on the Family Court by s 63(1) of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) "in relation to matters arising under" Pt VII of that Act in proceedings in relation to the custody, guardianship or welfare of a child is a statutory jurisdiction similar to the parens patriae jurisdiction traditionally exercised by the Court of Chancery. In that context, the "matter" has been treated as properly identified as "the welfare of a child".
The "matter" to which the exercise of the judicial power of supervision under Pt 5.9 of the Corporations Act (of which s 596A is a part) is directed is that appropriately identified as external administration under and in accordance with the Corporations Act. It is a matter within s 76(ii) of the Constitution.