After Papes'case, it became a common assumption that the Commonwealth power to spend money would extend not only to the non-statutory power, but to all matters on which the Commonwealth legislative powers could be exercised. These broad brushes, however, were challenged when a Queensland father of four children brought a constitutional challenge before the High Court against the Commonwealth powers to spend money and fund the National School of Law. school's chaplaincy program.
This case, actually two constitutional challenges, are known as the Williams Cases. And this is the topic of our video today. Hello everyone, my name is Renato Costa, this is Aussie Law, and today we will talk about the Williams Cases. to back-to-back constitutional challenges brought by Ron Williams against the Commonwealth's power to spend money. If you ended up in this video and you have not yet watched the video that I did about another case called Pape, I strongly recommend you to pause this one, click on the video that is appearing here, and then watch that one and come back to this.
Also, why don't you just click the like button and subscribe to our channel. Ron Williams, as I said, was the father of four children who studied at the Darling Heights Public School in Queensland. He challenged payments made by the Commonwealth to the Scripture Union of Queensland under a contract that was made according to the National School's Chaplaincy Program. Now, the thing is, the contract and the national program as a whole were funded pursuant to an appropriation made by law.
But no other legislation supported this penny of money that had been appropriated. So the agreement between the Commonwealth and the chaplaincy service provider was never given effect by any statute. There was no specific power given to the Minister for Education to enter contracts and expand funds under the guidelines that gave support to the agreement.
Also the Scripture Union of Queensland was not a corporation so the powers under section 5120 did not apply here. All in all, the money had been validly appropriated by the Commonwealth, but there was no authorisation by law that gave the power to spend money with that chaplaincy program. So Ron Williams challenged the whole scheme. He basically argued two things.
The first one was rapidly dismissed by the High Court. It related to section 116 of the Australian Constitution. That refers to the freedom of religion.
We won't consider this here because the High Court didn't recognize the validity of the argument. Now, the second argument was important. Williams'claim was that the Commonwealth could not use its executive power to finance the program.
And since the executive powers couldn't authorize that spending, it needed an authorization made by law to expend that money. Williams argued that the Commonwealth didn't have any statute that gave it powers to expend money in this area. In opposition, the Commonwealth argued basically two things. One, that it could expend money just like any other person, unrestrictedly.
And two, that they could at least spend money without statutory authorization if the money was spent in subject matters that related to the heads of federal legislative power. So the question before the High Court was whether the Commonwealth had the power to enter and perform the agreement to pay the funds to the Scripture Union of Queensland. Did the Commonwealth have legal authority to enter the contract and spend money under it?
The majority of the High Court decided that the contract and the funding under it were invalid. They were not authorized by the executive powers, broadly speaking, and they had not been authorized by any statutes. The conclusion of the justices was that the Commonwealth lacked capacity to enter into a contract without legislative support or without the support of at least one of the types of executive power.
Like the nationhood powers that authorize the expanded chain PAPE, remember? Justice Gummell and Bell, in the majority, even said that this case was different from PAPE because it did not involve any natural disaster or a national economic crisis. So the nationhood powers could not be a source of government expenditure here.
In his Honour's opinion, Chief Justice French said that one should not mistake the executive powers with legislative powers. And so, contrary to what the Commonwealth had argued, he stated that neither the agreement nor the expenditure made under it constituted an exercise of the prerogative aspect of the executive power, neither involved the exercise of a statutory power nor executive action to give effect to a statute enacted for the purpose of providing chaplaincy, or like services to state schools, whatever the scope of that aspect of the executive power which derives from the character and status of the Commonwealth as a national government, it did not authorize the contract and the expenditure under it in this case. Justice Haynes said that the limit on the power to spend must be consistent with the general proposition that it is for the Parliament and not the executive to control expenditure and the Parliament can control expenditure only by legislation.
Justice Crane agreed. She said that Parliament's control over expenditure is affected through the legislative process, and further, that despite recognized exceptions, expenditure by the Commonwealth executive will often require statutory authority beyond appropriation acts. But, as Justice Skiffle and Hayne acknowledged, in this particular situation, the Commonwealth could not even grant that legislative support.
That's because the subject matter of the contract fell outside of the scope of the Commonwealth's legislative power under sections 51, 52 or 122. Justice Hayden was the only one in the sentence's case. In summary, the majority of the High Court found that government expenditure needs to be authorised by federal legislation under an appropriate constitutional head of power. Since the funding of the chaplaincy program lacked, that statutory authorization, it was unconstitutional. But, as I said, the story doesn't finish here.
We have two Williams cases, don't we? So you may be asking, what happened? What happened was that the Commonwealth had a number of other programs, just like the chaplaincy program, that were funded without an appropriate authorization made by law. So the government amended certain statutes, that ultimately gave it the authorization to expend money in certain contracts, grants, etc.
And these programs were listed in the Financial Framework Supplementary Powers Regulations from 1997. The amended legislation inserted more than 400 schemes that could now be funded by the Commonwealth under this new law. Among them, guess what? Yep, the chaplaincy program.
The problem, however, was that many of these programs had no connection to an appropriate constitutional head of power. That is, they related to matters that fell outside of the scope of the Commonwealth's legislative powers. Ron Williams realized that this whole thing was not working out. The new scheme had that fatal flaw that was identified by Justices Kiffel and Hayne in Williams'number one. Some of the programs lacked an appropriate head of power for Parliament to authorize them.
So, Again, Williams challenged the payments authorized under the Financial Frameworks Act, saying that the Commonwealth could not spend money that way. This case is from 2014 and is known as Williams case number 2. And this time, the High Court of Australia was unanimous in upholding Mr. Williams'claims. The justices of the High Court in Williams number 2 said that federal spending and contracting needed statutory authorisation. and that that authority needed to come from an appropriate head of power in the Australian Constitution. Hey, do you think that the Commonwealth government just gave up after that decision?
Nah, yeah, nah. The Commonwealth decided to redirect the payment of the chaplaincy program, this time via the States, through section 96 of the Australian Constitution. But this is something that we can talk about in another video.
I hope you enjoyed this video though, and if you did, Leave a comment below, click the like button, click the subscribe button, hit the bell icon, do whatever you can to show me some love. And since you are now subscribed, I know I'll see you again very soon. Until then, ciao!