20 buyers now circling Virgin Australia

[MickG0105]

Originally Posted by Ragnor

Well I hope Clive wins, that will set the precedent for the other states won’t it?

It depends on the ruling but probably not.

There are two issues for the Federal Court to consider in Clive's (and the Commonwealth's) action against the WA government;

1. Can the states exercise border control in the pursuit of managing public health ostensibly contrary to the intent of s 92?
2. If yes, is the states' right to do so absolute or must it be subject to some form of reasonableness test?

It's widely accepted that the states can exercise border control in the pursuit of managing public health and other matters such as agricultural protection and quarantine so the matter will likely turn on the issue of reasonableness, that is, should Western Australia be allowed to impose a total border closure when that includes restricting travel from Tasmania and South Australia, states with very low new case counts. That's a bit of a slippery slope issue for a court and might likely come down to dualing public health experts. One way or another the matter will end up in the High Court so don't expect it to be resolved conclusively by the Federal Court next week.

The reason that any decision is unlikely to impact other states, say Queensland, is that if the ruling is based on reasonableness Queensland can probably demonstrate that they have been reasonable in their approach; they re-opened and then only re-imposed restrictions selectively based on point of origin new case data.