A federal court judge has slammed Australia’s use of makeshift hotel detention centres as lacking “ordinary human decency”, but ruled they are not illegal in the case of a Kurdish refugee who was held for 14 months in two Melbourne hotels.
Notional GST payments by local councils under an intergovernmental agreement with the Commonwealth are a voluntary act, not an impermissible tax in breach of the Constitution, the High Court has ruled.
Eight companies in the Dubai-based Emirates Group have lost a court bid to recoup more than $10.5 million paid to Australian staff during the COVID-19 pandemic on the mistaken belief that the money would be repaid as part of the federal government’s JobKeeper subsidy scheme.
The Supreme Court of Victoria has appointed 16 barristers to silk, nine of whom are women, including two barristers who have worked on high-stakes class action litigation.
Mining magnate Clive Palmer and two of his mining firms have lost a High Court challenge seeking to overturn a Western Australian law which prevented him from suing the state government for $30 billion over mining tenements in the Pilbara.