MUNRO V. LOMBARDO

ee

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at. MELBOURNE on_.. WEDNESDAY , 6TH MAY 1964.

'A. Brooks, Government Prater, Melbourne 0.7639, 60

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Ve LOMBARDO

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t DECISION OF THE COURT

: DELIVERED BY BARWICK C.J.

CORAM: BARWIGK C.J.

: TAYIOR J. i. MENZIES J. | WINDEYER J.

ti OWEN J.

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LOMBARDO

This cause comes before the Court removed from the Fall Court of the Supreme Court of Western Australia under the provisions of sec. SOA ef the Judiciary Act. The cause is one in which the respondent was charged, under sec. 24(3) of the Western Australian Fisheries Act, with having bad in his possession at Bunbury female crayfish with eggs or spawn attached to the underside of the body. The magistrate discharged the respondent, taking the view that, although the respondent did have the crayfish tails in the condition as charged in his possession on the Fishermen's Jetty at Sunbury, he iad no knowledge of that condition and that his possession was the result of accident or honest mistake.

On appeal from the decision of the magistrate, the Pall Court of Western Australia were of a contrary opinion te him on the facts and gonciuded that the respondent had had crayfish, as described, in his possession in breach of the Western Australian law, Before the magistrate a number of submissions of law had been raised which included a submission that the provisions of the Commonwealth Fisheries Act 1952 were ineonsistent with the relevant provisions of the Fisheries Act of Western Australie and that the latter, particularly sec. 24(3), were rendered inoperative by sec. 109 of the Commonveaith Constitution. The magistrate did not find it necessary to déal with this submission.

Before the Supreme Court of Western Australia, however, the appellant took a course in argument which virtually eonceded that there was an inconsistency between the