WTF? Tag me into this if you’re going to ascribe crap to me. If you think I said that people just go having late-term abortions for the fun of it, then I’m sure you’ve misunderstood me.
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The Victorian Charter doesn’t stop any bad legislation; it just requires a sentence to say why the legislation isn’t consistent with the Charter. And if that sentence isn’t even included, possibly because the legislature couldn’t be bothered or had actual contempt for the Charter, there are no teeth to do anything about it - the new legislation would still be entirely valid.
To be honest, I hope I did misunderstand that one.
Doesn’t each new Act require a statement or report demonstrating that it complies with the Charter? Or has that either gone away or not been implemented in the first place?
It does require it, but there are no penalties or remedies if parliament doesn’t comply.
To clarify, by “doesn’t comply” I mean either:
a) A statement is provided that the law doesn’t comply; or
b) Parliament doesn’t comply with the requirement to provide a statement.
In either situation, IIRC, nothing can be done to force the parliament to follow the Charter. It’s more of a public opinion remedy, but most people haven’t even heard of the Charter and therefore, I assume, wouldn’t care.
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My guess would be if the Commonwealth tried to impose its influence where its power isn’t explicitly granted by the constitution e.g. if a ‘Bill of Rights’ impacted on state laws and if that influence is constitutional.
I reckon though to get around that, would be to put a legal ‘shim’ in the constitution that references a Bill of Rights, that limits the scope of what can be put in that section (to stop faff like 'Every Australian has the right to be powered exclusively by coal) but leaves the text of that to parliament to define using the same process as passing a bill (Bill of Rights Act 2017).
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Are you sure? I thought there was something in the news a few years ago about the AG running into trouble over something because it didn’t meet the standards set by the Charter.
Not to mention also being the barrier preventing things like the anti-biker legislation and anti-consorting legislation passed in Queensland and NSW from being able to be passed here.
Maybe, but even if most of the public haven’t heard of it, there are enough non-government organisations who have and can cause a bit of trouble. Aside from Liberty Victoria and us, there’s also all the media organisations and they will raise a fuss it it means a story and therefore higher ratings or selling papers.