W & D Engineering Pty Ltd v Chief Executive Officer of Customs

THE COURT: 1 The first attempt to build an automat was made in ancient Greece, 2300 years ago, by Archytas of Tarent. The first android, an automat with a human appearance, was built by Leonardo da Vinci. Automatic apparatus that perform functions ordinarily ascribed to humans are now commonly referred to as robots. This case is concerned with the meaning of "robotic machine" in the Bounty (Machine Tools and Robots) Act 1985 (Cth), a statute which, according to its long title, was passed "to provide for the payment of bounty on the production of certain machine tools [and] certain robots and related equipment." 2 Before turning to the relevant provisions of the statute, it is helpful first to say something about the task of a court in attempting to understand a statute. The object of statutory construction is to determine what Parliament intended so that the legal consequences can be put into effect. This object assumes that there is an intention behind every enactment, an assumption that is probably false: see F Bennion Statutory Interpretation 3rd ed (1997) at par 168. It also proceeds on the basis that what is to be ascertained is the collective intention of the members of Parliament rather than that of the sponsor (usually the ruling political party), or of the draftsman (generally parliamentary counsel), or of persons not connected with the Parliament, of the bill that gives rise to the enactment. 3 Speaking generally, the intention of Parliament is to be found solely in the words of the enactment. But it is not the meaning of the words in isolation that must be gathered. It is the meaning that is to be given to the words used having regard to the context in which the words appear and the purpose of the enactment as a whole. In In re Bidie v General Accident Fire & Life Assurance Corporation Ltd [1949] Ch 121 at 129-130 Lord Greene MR explained that: "The first thing to be done … in construing particular words in a section of an Act of Parliament is not to take those words in vacuo, so to speak, and attribute to them what is sometimes called their natural or ordinary meaning. Few words in the English language have a natural or ordinary meaning in the sense that their meaning is entirely independent of their context. The method of construing statutes that I myself prefer is not to take out particular words and attribute to them a sort of prima facie meaning which may have to be displaced or modified, it is to read the statute as a whole and ask myself the question: 'In this statute, in this context, relating to this subject-matter, what is the true meaning of that word?' … The real question that we have to decide is, what does the word mean in the context in which we here find it, both in the immediate context of the sub-section in which the word occurs and in the general context of the Act, having regard to the declared intention of the Act and the obvious evil that it is designed to remedy." 4 The word "robot" was first used by the Czech playwright Karel Capek in 1920. It appeared in his play Rossum's Universal Robots, a science fiction parable in the guise of a farce. Rossum's Universal Robots was a manufacturer of mechanical labourers that looked like real people. They worked endlessly, never complained and never spoke in anything but a monotone. Eventually the robots rose up against the humans and destroyed all but one. Written in the aftermath of World World I, Capek sought to show that the most advanced technology is no better than the human nature it serves. 5 As a young chemist, Isaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in his first robot story "Robbie", originally published in 1940 as "Strange Bedfellow" in Super Science Stories. The Oxford English Dictionary wrongly attributes the first use of the word to Asimov in a short story published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941. 6 The industrial robot or "robotic machine" with which this appeal is concerned does not behave like Mr Rossum's robots. Nor does it bear any similarity to "the faithful Robbie" of the I, Robot collection. Nonetheless, it is extremely useful. By the 1980's robots were in widespread use in industry. The cost of retooling machinery restricted their use to factories that turned out thousands of products. However, the development of reprogrammable machinery made it economically feasible to introduce automatic production processes into manufacturing concerns that involved short product runs. 7 What is the nature of a robot? Various definitions have been given. The British Robot Association in the December 1982 edition of Robotfacts defined robot as: "An industrial robot is a reprogrammable device designed to both manipulate and transport parts, tools or specialised manufacturing implements through variable programmed motions for the performance of specific manufacturing tasks." According to the Robot Institute of America a robot is: "a reprogrammable, multi-functional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools or specialised devices through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks." The Japan Industrial Robot Association defined industrial robots as: "[T]hose devices providing flexible moving functions similar to those of the moving parts of organisms and/or providing intellectual functions so that they can operate in compliance with human request. Here the intellectual functions mean the ability to govern any of the functions like judgment, recognition, adaptation and learning by means of sensing, memory and other capabilities." The following definition of an industrial robot was proposed by the International Organization for Standardization in November 1980: "The industrial robot is an automatic position-controlled reprogrammable, multi-functional manipulator having several degrees of freedom capable of handling materials, parts, tools, or specialized devices through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks …It often has the appearance of one or several arms ending in a wrist. Its control unit uses a memorizing device and sometimes it can use sensing and adaptation appliances that take account of environment and circumstances. These multi-purpose machines are generally designed to carry out repetitive functions and