Hobart, 11 May 1973
The Tasmanian Government has noted your recently announced intention to introduce legislation to request and consent to the enactment of legislation by the British Parliament abolishing appeals to the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty’s Privy Council in all matters arising under State jurisdiction.
This announcement has seriously disturbed my Government, not because of the subject matter (if, in fact, the legislation is to be confined to the abolition of State appeals), but because no opportunity has been afforded for consultation as to the most appropriate means of effecting the desired result.
Indeed, last January my Attorney-General advised the Commonwealth Attorney-General that we support a declared (Federal) policy that appeals from all Australian courts to the Privy Council should be abolished, but such support has never purported to waive what is conceived as our constitutional right to be fully consulted about any proposed alterations to existing institutions or procedures which are part of or vitally concern the State of Tasmania.
We view with considerable apprehension a proposal which appears to have the widest implications threatening the very structure and existence of the Federation. If action of the type proposed were permitted to pass without the strongest protest from the States of Australia, there is a real danger that the precedent it would undoubtedly create would open the way for alteration to the Constitution Act, 1900, without regard to the safeguards which it has been understood for more than seventy years were entrenched within it at the behest of the ‘Founding (State) Fathers’.
My Government is anxious that there should be the fullest exchange of views between all Governments concerned before the matter proceeds any further and trusts that you have not sought, and will not seek, from the British Government any accommodations on behalf of your Government in relation to this very serious matter.
The situation has been reached at which, in the opinion of my Government, positive steps must be taken. I have therefore requested the Governor of Tasmania to convey my Government’s views to the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
I also wish to inform you that, in view of the introduction in the House of Representatives yesterday of the Seas and Submerged Land Bill 1973, the Government of Tasmania has decided to petition Her Majesty The Queen to refer to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for hearing and consideration certain questions relating to legislative power to grant mining leases in respect of certain areas of seabed within three miles of the Tasmanian Coast.
1 Eric Reece, Premier, Treasurer and Minister for Mines, Tasmania, from 1972.
[NAA: A432, 1973/3262 PART I]