Statutory Interpretation in Australia : Delegated Legislation

Abstract

Problem of interpretation. Parliaments and other bodies pour out a steady flow of written laws that affect all our activities. It is thus not surprising to find that the courts are frequently concerned with cases that turn upon the meaning of a particular piece of legislation. In Australia, a rough sample shows that in forty per centum of recent reported cases the courts were required to rule upon the meaning of some legislative instrument. In a further thirty per centum of cases the courts had to apply an Act, regulation, rule, etc., — its meaning this time not being in dispute. 1 It is never easy to express ideas in words and the more complex the idea the greater the difficulty. That which seems to have been clearly explained by the writer may not be so found by the reader. There are many reasons for this. All writing assumes a certain knowledge on the part of the reader, but the writer may have assumed that his reader knew more than was in fact the case and as a result the document may be stated too succinctly or abstrusely. The document may be concerned with something such as a mathematical calculation that does not readily lend itself to a description in words. The idea may be so complex that it requires a very large number of statements, qualifications, exceptions and so on to set it out. Or the writer may not have foreseen all the subtle variations of human conduct relating to the topic dealt with in the document and thereby not have provided for some particular activity. These are but some of the difficulties that confront both writer and reader of any document and they are all magnified in regard to legislation.