SUGAR COMPANY CASE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 19 December 1913, Page 5

SUGAR COMPANY CASE.

PRIVY COUNCIL'S DECISION

'. BY; CABLE—PEESS ASSOCiAttOS—COPTBIGHT. LONDON, Dec. 18. The Privy CounciTsludgment on the appeal case, Attorney-General of the Australian Commonwealth v. the Colonial Sugar Company, states that the question at the root of the controversy remains: Were the Royal Commissions Acts ultra vires? The burden of proof rests on those affirming that the Acts were within the Commonwealth Parliament's powers. In their lordships' opinion, the authority over the individual sought to be established by the Royal Commissions Acts or the new offences created thereby, or the drastic powers conferred thereby, cannot be said to be incidental to any power at present existing by statute or common law. Eng<lish law gives Royal Commissions no title to compel answers from a witness. Until the Commonwealth Parliament had. entrusted a Royal Commission with a statutory^.duty to enquire into a specific subject, legislation regarding which had been assigned to Parliament by the Federal Constitution, that J Parliament could not • confer such •powers as the Acts contain, on the : footing that they are incidental to en•quiries which it may some day direct. Having arrived at this conclusion,, their lordships do not think the Commissions Acts, in the form in which .they stand, can, without amendment, be brought within the powers of the Commonwealth Legislature. Their lordships hesitate to differ from the High Court of Judges, particularly Chief Justice Sir Samuel Griffith and Justice Sir Edward Barton, who have a special knowledge of the Australian Constitution, but the question they have decided depends simply upon the interpretation of an Act of Parliament. In their lordships' opinion, without redrafting the Commissions Acts, it is impossible to use them as justification for the steps contemplated by the Sugar Commission in order to make the Commission's enquiry effective. _ Their lordships thought, in conclusion, that the views of Justices Isaacs and Higgins were entitled to weight, namely, that" it was imppssible to pronounce in advance that the questions might not prove relevant to the matter which all judges held to be proper subjects of enquiry. If the Colonial Sugar Company were compelled to answer certain questions, particularly those relating to business, there would be serious' interference with liberty; but their lordships neither had the liberty nor were competent to express an opinion regarding the policy of doing so.

PRESS COMMENT

The Times, in a leader on the sugar judgment, says it does not know whether all colonial lawyers will agree that the Royal Commissions Acts are ultra vires, but they see in the Privy Council's decision a sign that the tribunal is not shirking its responsibility. An ingenious argument was based upon the suggestion that the information sought for might be useful for the purpose of constitutional alterations, but there was force in Sir S. Griffith's rejoinder that such a construction would virtually delete some most important constitutional restrictions on conflicts between Federal and State legislation, which in the United States were fierce and heated. Australia was fortunate in _ being able to settle conflicting claims by means of the Privy Council.