Ignore a court ruling? This is Australia not some tinpot dictatorship. Don't be absurd. Every single Australian government, state or federal has at some point in its lifetime had an instance where a court has told them to go shove a spade up its backside.
In a few lines this is where we're at in constitutional law; (On about 2 gallons of coffee so I apologies for my insane ramblings).
Governments have for the longest time assumed they could spend money and enter into contracts. This is false, they need specific legislation allowing public money to be spent (Pape)
The Federal Government assumed that they could enter into contracts, when specified by legislation on any subject matter. This is false, as federal parliament can only legislation on certain issues they can only ever spend money directly on things that they're allowed to by a head of power under the constitution. (Williams v Cth no. 1) - As an aside there's a power to basically give money to the states for any reasons they want and that's fine
The Federal Government then tried to put a band-aid on the whole thing and decided they'll try directly funding them..they were basically told to go jump this morning.
Basically this case just cements what came before it (from my INITIAL PRIMA FACIE READING);
1. The feds can't fund anything other than a state directly unless there's a head of power. I.e there can be no contracts between local councils and the federal government, they have to go through the state.
2. Once again the power of the Federal Government has been narrowed.
3. The benefits for students head of power has been severely narrowed. The government argued that funding for chaplains was a benefit to students. The High Court rejected that idea. I'm going to need a deeper reading to figure out why exactly...and if secular councilors would be as well (initial reading says yes, that would also fail to be a benefit to students).
4. Oh god I'm so tired and need sleep. Basically this goes a lot further than just chaplains. Any program that the Feds have that doesn't go through a state and is about something that isn't specified as a Federal Power is basically now invalid. This is a lot bigger than it seems on the surface.
Sorry to say, if you were just hoping to destroy the chaplaincy program, you can rest assured that they'll find a constitutional way of funding chaplains....probably by giving grants to the States to fund chaplains directly. There is no doubt in my mind that that would be constitutionally valid.
This is good for people like me though, who think federalism is a good idea...and the full effects remain to be seen...and the news sites have actually done a decent job of explaining what's going on...but this is about a highly technical part of the constitution and how it's meant to operate. It's difficult to explain without another 5k words. I've tried my best though.
I expect they will. They will funnel the funding through an intermediary or something.
This case basically says that the intermediary HAS to be a state. Edit: That's what this is about...this is the second instance of the case...the first being told to go jump...so they tried to go through an intermediary and were told they're not allowed to do that either.
